Have you ever wondered why with all the talk of progress, great and clear works of wonderful beauty survive from even before there was writing and print? It is quite obvious. If you turn the pages of ancient works like Isaiah and the Tao Te Ching, you encounter beauties we might equal perhaps, but they were there before we knew much at all.
The simple reason is that with all the changes we remain much the same.
We have minds. We have a conscience. And we act on the basis of what we believe. But that is only half the truth.
We determine progress
The original Tao Te Ching was written to instruct rulers in the control of masses. The poets who gave us Isaiah were addressing savage behavior with insight that rivals anything written since. But the culture they emerged from was a binary, war-infested mess destined to be binary and a mess, unless, unless what? Unless we evolved. Slowly but surely it dawned on us that we determine and accept how things will be.
Progress comes from the awareness of what is right and what is wrong.
To the extent that individuals choose what is right, we move forward. On the way, there is what we call progress.
Elon can go to Mars. But the simple need to move from the binary thinking that dominates life to a triadic understanding that embraces all people eludes us.
A world in limbo
It's not just Bannon who is in limbo. It's us. We need to remind the world that we, in this case, the clear majority of Americans, want more tolerance, more civility, less bluster and certainly no more binary war talk and preparation for same.
As I write, the popularity of trump has hit the record low of 34. This descent has been unbroken of late. It keeps creeping down.
Damage done
People are in limbo because with or without Trump great damage has already been done, No one knows how much more there could be to come.
But if the reasoning here is correct, we are the authors of what happens. Democracy actually works. It is more than voting. It is an opinion too. It is choices. It will more and more determine how we live. If we get past Trump, it may usher in a time of difficulty but an attainable achievement for the entire world.
The Bannon problem
Steve Bannon is on record as one whose love is not democracy or tolerance or helpfulness to all people. The very foundation of his politics is exclusion, an evil premise. I have written more than once that Bannon, Trump and Pam Geller have the will and the means to gin up a global conflict between what they style as the Christian West and that portion of the Arab world that centers in Iran.
Triadic solutions experiment and shun violence. Triadic find another way forward,