Together we have the power, the money, and the smarts to do anything. The fact that we now divide our capacities into groups that spend time competing with each other is a failure in growing up. We are literally a World that has less wisdom than little children that come into the world with.
Jesus understood the power of together. He mastered the art of sharing. He pioneered the art of organizing for good. After he died there were actually communities where people lived together and got things done and managed to get along without brutality and violence.
For a time community was understood and practiced
True, the world outside was evil and the cynics of back then, like cynics now, had an arsenal of putdowns for the rabble who formed the earliest churches. But these early Christians exercised their powers of choice and the spirit of their effort helped launch the global enterprise we now call the Christian Church.
It is easy to see what happened. As the initial buzz wore off and more worldly interests intruded, the early churches morphed into the imperial church of Rome. It sunk into superstition and messiah worship with little sense that Jesus meant people to succeed together by following a way of peace and justice.
Religious cynicism is not a virtue
Nowadays some Christians appear to despise anything that has any hint of peace or justice.
But still, we can and will build a new world even in the face of religion that has failed the tests of modernity. Modernity is actually good, despite everything, the world improves. People are safer and so forth.
The media does not report this, but science and the stats support it.
UN News - At UN Assembly, Turkmenistan stresses importance for greater global cooperation https://t.co/KBDxywdZ0j
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) September 28, 2017
Evil is not the default, good is
The answer is easy. Most people are inclined to be reasonable. Many leaders heed the loudest voices and act as though evil is the default.
It isn’t. But good is not sexy. It has no violence. Good is fighting for good honest bureaucracies. Good is insisting on fair and decent law enforcement. Good is ending brutality and increasing nonviolent practices.
Community is the loser in a dictatorial environment
There is indeed joy in community. The danger of community is the temptation to gravitate toward cult behavior when leaders rise up who are gripped by their own evil and run with it. We have seen how this did not work out at Jonestown. But Jonestown is a sign that we need to understand the problems and move forward.
Our task is to fashion a law-Based world where excitement stems from good clean fun rather than ugliness born of resentment, want and injustice.
