I just saw this story about the outpouring of support for a mosque in Texas that was destroyed in a fire last week. I wanted to make a quick comment.
Despite all the news of political rancor in Washington D.C. as President Trump sets up his administration, I see a whole lot going in the world that tells me that we're headed in a good direction, when it comes to we, the people.
As I have said other times on these pages, I believe that the role of a large central government is on the decline. And acts of people networking together to help each other is on the rise. I think it is a mistake to concentrate only on news regarding conflict and forget about news of cooperation and love.
Our ability to share information, as well as emotional and financial support keeps building. We are doing amazing things we never conceived of, even just a decade or so ago.
We are demonstrating our great potential and, at the same time, we are facing some serious challenges. There is nothing wrong or unusual about this. After all, mutual support through networks is still in its infancy, considering that so-called 'social media' has only been around for about a decade, more or less (Facebook opened to the public in September 2006; the iPhone was introduced in January 2007). So, we're just getting started, really.
One challenge we face is how to decide where we want to devote our energies. Some causes make a big splash (such as this mosque fire) and become the 'poster child' for a particular kind of networked support. Meanwhile other causes languish for lack of attention and publicity. So we face an important question: Of the millions of causes out there, how do we sort through them all and decide what to do, given our limited resources (24 hours in a day, limited balance in our bank accounts).
I don't have an easy answer for this, but what I can say is that I have no doubt that we will continue to work on all this and come up with better and better ways as we gain more and more experience.
Despite all the news of political rancor in Washington D.C. as President Trump sets up his administration, I see a whole lot going in the world that tells me that we're headed in a good direction, when it comes to we, the people.
As I have said other times on these pages, I believe that the role of a large central government is on the decline. And acts of people networking together to help each other is on the rise. I think it is a mistake to concentrate only on news regarding conflict and forget about news of cooperation and love.
Our ability to share information, as well as emotional and financial support keeps building. We are doing amazing things we never conceived of, even just a decade or so ago.
We are demonstrating our great potential and, at the same time, we are facing some serious challenges. There is nothing wrong or unusual about this. After all, mutual support through networks is still in its infancy, considering that so-called 'social media' has only been around for about a decade, more or less (Facebook opened to the public in September 2006; the iPhone was introduced in January 2007). So, we're just getting started, really.
One challenge we face is how to decide where we want to devote our energies. Some causes make a big splash (such as this mosque fire) and become the 'poster child' for a particular kind of networked support. Meanwhile other causes languish for lack of attention and publicity. So we face an important question: Of the millions of causes out there, how do we sort through them all and decide what to do, given our limited resources (24 hours in a day, limited balance in our bank accounts).
I don't have an easy answer for this, but what I can say is that I have no doubt that we will continue to work on all this and come up with better and better ways as we gain more and more experience.
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