The Value of Your Dreams
Ancient wisdom aims to shed light on those intrinsic blessings that are so easy to overlook in this life, yet so essential to human happiness, even and especially in our age. We still dream of a better world for our young. But having forgotten what the ancients tried to teach us, we lack the skills to turn dreams into memories, what the ancients called practical wisdom.
These skills, which allow us to actualize our potentials to turn what could be into what is, are precisely what our children are going to need to avert the crisis we have set them on the path for. And don’t get me wrong; I am not pointing fingers. I myself, like most everyone else raised in my generation and in my culture, have been conditioned into habits we’ve all found difficult, and sometimes impossible, to change. And some of those bad habits have robbed the world of a sustainable future.
In the world I’ve lived in, security and wealth has been measured in extrinsic goods and material terms, and these are zero-sum, such that one persons gain is another persons loss. So, thanks to us, you’re unlikely to have the kind of contented confidence about your future that you deserve, and that others before you have enjoyed, if only because their ignorance of the harm they caused was their bliss. The truth is, ignorance isn’t bliss, it just doesn’t know what it’s missing, including true wealth, security, and even happiness.
Which is why I’ve done my very best to compile between these pages the so-called ‘secrets’ upon which the well-being of the world depends, the inspiration we all need to overcome those bad habits you too are sure to be taught, and to help you develop instead the healthy habits upon which your truer intrinsic wealth, security, and happiness depend.
These include many profound lessons the ancients understood and tried to pass on to us, but there is little if any of this wisdom to be found in the education you are likely to receive. So my hope is that these insights will ultimately help, not only to inspire you, but to illuminate the kind of education the ancients understood to be the key to true intelligence. We have never needed it more, and this may be something that simply won't get done if we - you and I - don't do it.
So if there is one thing I would hope you would take from this, it would be the propensity to dream, and to believe that wonderful things are possible that simply won’t happen if you don’t do them.
It may be that this power of imagination is the single most important thing we all need, individually and collectively, if we hope to get over the humps in front of us. I hope it will help uplift your aspirations, as these ancient voices have uplifted mine, that you too might live the life you’ll be happy and proud to look back on, and one for which all of our grandchildren will be better off.
But the truth is, we are not all equally fortunate to have the opportunity to make such dreams become memories. Even in a perfect world, our fortunes are only partially in our power. And in a world rife with injustice, there is much in the way for many, obstacles that may not be in our power to move, so that others may do their part too. The truth is, none of us changes the world by ourselves, but each of us is key in some way to helping others do their part - usually without even realizing it.
Everyone matters critically to someone else, and that someone to yet others, and those others to many more. All of us have someone, perhaps many, who are dependent on us, and all of us are ultimately dependent on the actions of every other individual. Whether we give the world our best or our worst, we bring out the best or worst in the world around us, and all told, it makes a huge difference…certainly to our own lives, but also those at the receiving end of our actions. Every human life, even a very humble life, changes the fabric of reality for all others, for better or worse, and sometimes plants a seed that might grow for all time – or at least seven generation into the future.
If dreams sometimes seem unrealistic to us, with all our privilege, then we can imagine how they must seem to those without a fair opportunity to actualize them. Some speculate on why the poor don’t work harder to get ahead, as if to suggest that it’s their own fault that they are poor. But what point is there in trying when paths are blocked at every turn? What hope is there for what one might want, when one cannot even get what one needs?
In a fair world, people fortunes would follow their actions, and so dreaming big would make sense. But in the world such as it is – as anyone with any empathy can see – injustice of opportunity drains hopes and dreams, replacing them with despair and depression. And without a dream, we cannot have a dream come true!
These are just a few among many self-evident truths, but only evident to those who view the evidence empathically - that is, from inside looking out. But what is evident to us depends largely on what we are looking for, so we tend to see only what we want to see. And so some who are not on the receiving end of it can more or less successfully ignore injustice, especially that they cause. But when we restrict our own scope by turning away from what we don’t want to see, we’ve restricted our own potentials and volunteered for ignorance in the process, since ‘to ignore’ is its root verb.
So again, what is self-evident to anyone who opens their eyes may well be invisible to those who (either actively or passively) ignore the injustice they dish out to others. And while they may tell themselves that ignorance is bliss, they really don’t know what they are missing.
To realize our own higher ideals, we must pay attention to the true nature of human beings in their best light – not merely the stories we are told about how we are naturally corrupted, or even the apparent abundance of evidence that practically everyone around us seems to exhibit. Rather, we have to imagine what might have and might still be if each of us could recover our higher potentials. For we each and all have the power to turn what is into what could be - but only if we believe we do. For we cannot hit a target we don’t aim at!
This is what the ancients understood better than we do today – our realistic powers to actualize those potentials we can imagine. Little happens in the world that does not first take form in the imagination.
By contrast, traditions that teach us our nature is corrupt are dream thieves! They rob us of our power to see our better selves, and so to navigate our lives intelligently by way of ideals that guide our journey.
And so we need to dream – to set our sights on the real thing – true happiness, true friendship, and true love. And those of us on the fortunate side of injustice have a duty to do with our lives and our education what we would hope others would do, if it were us on the receiving end of injustice. And it’s in this way that we earn the self-respect that is essential to these higher potentials.
Self-Fulfilling Prophesy and Realizing our Expectations
The single best thing you can do to uplift your state of mind is find a way to believe in human goodness, beginning with yourself. If we believe in the good in others, we tend to bring it out of them. Whereas, if we do not believe in that good, then we tend to treat them in a way that actually brings out the bad (defensive) in them, by self-fulfilling prophesy. Either way – this one factor has powerful implications for the quality of our lives! So optimism, hope, faith, love, or what Gandhi called satyagraha can have powerful butterfly effects! (*explain) Likewise, pessimism, cynicism, misanthropy also provoke the very thing they assume. For this reason, it makes no sense to ask, what is ‘human nature’ – for it is our nature to actualize our potentials, for better or worse, because both are potential. The ancients knew – everything living is always changing, always ether getting better or getting worse, toward our divine or our diabolical potentials. We choose, sometimes without even realizing it. Humans are both good and bad – depending on what we believe about others and choose for ourselves. If we believe in the good, we feed it. But if we believe others are bad, we feed that too. (*into intro?)
“In the absence of a clear-minded idea that virtue means social justice…our species faces serious and almost overwhelming odds for the long-term future.”(OI, Mohawk, 57-58)
Ancient wisdom aims to shed light on those intrinsic blessings that are so easy to overlook in this life, yet so essential to human happiness, even and especially in our age. We still dream of a better world for our young. But having forgotten what the ancients tried to teach us, we lack the skills to turn dreams into memories, what the ancients called practical wisdom.
These skills, which allow us to actualize our potentials to turn what could be into what is, are precisely what our children are going to need to avert the crisis we have set them on the path for. And don’t get me wrong; I am not pointing fingers. I myself, like most everyone else raised in my generation and in my culture, have been conditioned into habits we’ve all found difficult, and sometimes impossible, to change. And some of those bad habits have robbed the world of a sustainable future.
In the world I’ve lived in, security and wealth has been measured in extrinsic goods and material terms, and these are zero-sum, such that one persons gain is another persons loss. So, thanks to us, you’re unlikely to have the kind of contented confidence about your future that you deserve, and that others before you have enjoyed, if only because their ignorance of the harm they caused was their bliss. The truth is, ignorance isn’t bliss, it just doesn’t know what it’s missing, including true wealth, security, and even happiness.
Which is why I’ve done my very best to compile between these pages the so-called ‘secrets’ upon which the well-being of the world depends, the inspiration we all need to overcome those bad habits you too are sure to be taught, and to help you develop instead the healthy habits upon which your truer intrinsic wealth, security, and happiness depend.
These include many profound lessons the ancients understood and tried to pass on to us, but there is little if any of this wisdom to be found in the education you are likely to receive. So my hope is that these insights will ultimately help, not only to inspire you, but to illuminate the kind of education the ancients understood to be the key to true intelligence. We have never needed it more, and this may be something that simply won't get done if we - you and I - don't do it.
So if there is one thing I would hope you would take from this, it would be the propensity to dream, and to believe that wonderful things are possible that simply won’t happen if you don’t do them.
It may be that this power of imagination is the single most important thing we all need, individually and collectively, if we hope to get over the humps in front of us. I hope it will help uplift your aspirations, as these ancient voices have uplifted mine, that you too might live the life you’ll be happy and proud to look back on, and one for which all of our grandchildren will be better off.
But the truth is, we are not all equally fortunate to have the opportunity to make such dreams become memories. Even in a perfect world, our fortunes are only partially in our power. And in a world rife with injustice, there is much in the way for many, obstacles that may not be in our power to move, so that others may do their part too. The truth is, none of us changes the world by ourselves, but each of us is key in some way to helping others do their part - usually without even realizing it.
Everyone matters critically to someone else, and that someone to yet others, and those others to many more. All of us have someone, perhaps many, who are dependent on us, and all of us are ultimately dependent on the actions of every other individual. Whether we give the world our best or our worst, we bring out the best or worst in the world around us, and all told, it makes a huge difference…certainly to our own lives, but also those at the receiving end of our actions. Every human life, even a very humble life, changes the fabric of reality for all others, for better or worse, and sometimes plants a seed that might grow for all time – or at least seven generation into the future.
If dreams sometimes seem unrealistic to us, with all our privilege, then we can imagine how they must seem to those without a fair opportunity to actualize them. Some speculate on why the poor don’t work harder to get ahead, as if to suggest that it’s their own fault that they are poor. But what point is there in trying when paths are blocked at every turn? What hope is there for what one might want, when one cannot even get what one needs?
In a fair world, people fortunes would follow their actions, and so dreaming big would make sense. But in the world such as it is – as anyone with any empathy can see – injustice of opportunity drains hopes and dreams, replacing them with despair and depression. And without a dream, we cannot have a dream come true!
These are just a few among many self-evident truths, but only evident to those who view the evidence empathically - that is, from inside looking out. But what is evident to us depends largely on what we are looking for, so we tend to see only what we want to see. And so some who are not on the receiving end of it can more or less successfully ignore injustice, especially that they cause. But when we restrict our own scope by turning away from what we don’t want to see, we’ve restricted our own potentials and volunteered for ignorance in the process, since ‘to ignore’ is its root verb.
So again, what is self-evident to anyone who opens their eyes may well be invisible to those who (either actively or passively) ignore the injustice they dish out to others. And while they may tell themselves that ignorance is bliss, they really don’t know what they are missing.
To realize our own higher ideals, we must pay attention to the true nature of human beings in their best light – not merely the stories we are told about how we are naturally corrupted, or even the apparent abundance of evidence that practically everyone around us seems to exhibit. Rather, we have to imagine what might have and might still be if each of us could recover our higher potentials. For we each and all have the power to turn what is into what could be - but only if we believe we do. For we cannot hit a target we don’t aim at!
This is what the ancients understood better than we do today – our realistic powers to actualize those potentials we can imagine. Little happens in the world that does not first take form in the imagination.
By contrast, traditions that teach us our nature is corrupt are dream thieves! They rob us of our power to see our better selves, and so to navigate our lives intelligently by way of ideals that guide our journey.
And so we need to dream – to set our sights on the real thing – true happiness, true friendship, and true love. And those of us on the fortunate side of injustice have a duty to do with our lives and our education what we would hope others would do, if it were us on the receiving end of injustice. And it’s in this way that we earn the self-respect that is essential to these higher potentials.
Self-Fulfilling Prophesy and Realizing our Expectations
The single best thing you can do to uplift your state of mind is find a way to believe in human goodness, beginning with yourself. If we believe in the good in others, we tend to bring it out of them. Whereas, if we do not believe in that good, then we tend to treat them in a way that actually brings out the bad (defensive) in them, by self-fulfilling prophesy. Either way – this one factor has powerful implications for the quality of our lives! So optimism, hope, faith, love, or what Gandhi called satyagraha can have powerful butterfly effects! (*explain) Likewise, pessimism, cynicism, misanthropy also provoke the very thing they assume. For this reason, it makes no sense to ask, what is ‘human nature’ – for it is our nature to actualize our potentials, for better or worse, because both are potential. The ancients knew – everything living is always changing, always ether getting better or getting worse, toward our divine or our diabolical potentials. We choose, sometimes without even realizing it. Humans are both good and bad – depending on what we believe about others and choose for ourselves. If we believe in the good, we feed it. But if we believe others are bad, we feed that too. (*into intro?)
“In the absence of a clear-minded idea that virtue means social justice…our species faces serious and almost overwhelming odds for the long-term future.”(OI, Mohawk, 57-58)