Thursday, January 25, 2018

Writing When Chaos is the New Normal


Flying Through the Smokescreen of Impossibility

                        by Mike Larsen / Author, Author Coach

“A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse, when acquired.”
– Alexander Hamilton

“Morality is a luxury of peace and prosperity.” – Robert Hennion, Professor, C.C.N.Y.

”Chaos is the new normal.” – Fahrad Manjoo, New York Times

Now’s the best time ever to be a writer. Writers have more subjects to write about, more ways to write about them, and more ways to share their work with more people in more places faster and more easily than ever for free. Thanks to technology, writers have more power than ever, not just to make a living, but to make a difference. And as Philip Roth said: “Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.”

But a sense of dread, uncertainty, and unpredictability is spreading because of:

·         Accelerating change we can’t understand, predict or control
·         The impacts of climate change: global warming, pollution, mass migration, fossil fuels adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, desertification, rising sea levels, natural disasters, the affects of beef and pork production, ocean dead zones killing fish, and the great man-made extinction
·         The best governments money can buy, regardless of who’s in office
·         Corruption from the growing concentration of political, military, economic, and technological power
·         Systems of law, health care, criminal justice, education, finance, agriculture, and manufacturing that have become part of the problem they were created to solve
·         The inability of individuals, government, business, and institutions to understand, agree, or act on what needs to be done
·         Capitalism without conscience--business and government putting profit instead of people and the planet 
·         Profits earned without adding value to society
·         The inability to give individuals and institutions enough power to be effective but not enough to be corrupted
·         Extreme political and religious belief that polarize attitudes and the media resulting in the inability to communicate or compromise which leads to hatred, violence, discrimination, migration and war
·         The substitutions of means for ends
·         Economic inequality
·         The inability to understand how to limit technology
·         The victimization of women and the loss of the balance they can bring to domestic, social, political, cultural and spiritual life
·         The loss of work and identity, and marginalization of millions of victims of automation magnified by the the lack of help for them
·         The lack of necessities, including food, lodging, jobs, free training and college education, everyone is entitled to that causes anger, despair, and unjustified suffering for people of all ages
·         The consumption of salt, sugar, fat, alcohol, nicotine, red meat, and recreational marijuana—all legal and marketed relentlessly—that kill, sicken, and incapacitate tens of millions of people, creating a culture of sickness instead of health
·         Wasteful and harmful consumption
·         The lack of inspiring leaders
·         The inability to see that the desire for power should be grounds for disqualification for running for office
·         Modern culture that undermines our humanity by replacing people with machines and the representational with the abstract; and by sacrificing the innate need for color, ornament, human scale, natural materials, and lyricism  
·         A catastrophic mix of military conflicts that kill more civilians than combatants, tribalism, individual and organized crime, injustice, prejudice, pornography and other forms of sexual exploitation, manmade disasters, organized gambling, ageing infrastructure

These problems are out of control, but they can be paralyzing or galvanizing. The challenges of balancing work, home, and family in an age of distraction can make you feel time-starved and overwhelmed by problems that seem unsolvable. But doing nothing is collaborating on what you don’t want to happen.

            Because change isn’t coming from the top down, it’s rising from the bottom up.  Individuals, organizations, communities, and states are leading the way. The Kentucky Coal Mine Museum has switched to solar power. Georgetown, a conservative town in Texas, runs on 100% renewable energy. What unites us is rational; what divides us is irrational. As William James wrote: “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.

Humanity’s Ascending Spiral

The world-changing power of words empowers you to be an agent of change. You can use your unique ability to express and share your love, vision, wisdom, gratitude, knowledge, inspiration, and guidance in seconds with the three billion people on the Web.  

Napoleon said: “Humanity is only limited by its imagination.” If we can conceive it, we will achieve it. The Wright brothers “flew through the smokescreen of impossibility” and flight instantly went from being impossible to being inevitable. Global brains--collaborations online and off--will generate unimaginable breakthroughs that will transform people’s lives and heal the Earth.

·         The invisibility cloak is in the works.
·         A machine is making water out of air.  
·         You will be able to draw a picture on a computer just by imagining it
·         Quantum computers will be 100,000 times more powerful than today’s computers.
·         Mammoths will live again.
·         Immortality in peak condition is coming.

Humanity’s ascending spiral from fauna to flora, hate to love, the physical to the spiritual, possessions to experience, division to unity, emotion to reason, fear to serenity is also inevitable. Your contributions to this glorious adventure will help you achieve your potential as a human being.

But nobody knows how much time we have before a mistake by a person or computer, or Gaia succumbing to the stresses we’re inflicting on her to will bring us to a tipping point that precludes solving our problems before humanity becomes a victim of them. P=our problems and our potential arfe running necj and neck. Writers will help determine which wins.

People of all ages need prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction, music and images that give them help and hope. May the amazing power at your fingertips inspire you to bring into the world what only you can and what will be forever lost without you.

Pick the problem that most energizes and inspires you, and devote your talent to helping the human family understand and, if possible, solve it. Make it your gift and legacy to those you love, the human family and the Earth. As Mother Teresa said: “We belong to each other.”
                                  
                                                                                                                     
About: Mike Larsen / Author, Author Coach
Co-director, San Francisco Writers Conference: A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community
www.sfwriters.org / info@sfwriters.org / sfwriters.org/blog
San Francisco Writing for Change Conference: Writing to Make a Difference

1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, 94109 / 415-673-0939  


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Brian Feinblum’s insightful views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2018. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.  This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. 

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