Neil Young was on the David Letterman show last night. He said he had written a song called "You can't Change the world singing a song". He was a 1960s antiwar rocker in the group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young way back when the draft brought our country to the edge of revolution. The social revolution of those times really tore the soul of America up. It has never really recovered from those times. He said, "This government was smart enough not to re-institute the draft because if they did they would have been voted out of office. Instead they just kept sending the same guys in again, again and again." (the previous was paraphrased)"
The old Chinese Curse of "May you live in Interesting times" comes to mind. Interesting times meant people dying and many changes. This curse was created as a norm before the idea of progress really took hold in China. So "interesting times" mostly meant a whole lot of people dying in a war or famine.
I think you can educate people by singing the right song. You can join like minded people emotionally by singing the right song but most real change comes from bad things like famine, plague, war, pestilence, bad storms and earthquakes. So, change tends to be a bad thing more than a good thing in human history. It has taken a long time for humans to think of change as a good thing. With Global warming, oil prices, terrorist wars etc. I think it is quite understandable why people are wondering if there actually could be good change to their lives in these difficult times.
Falling in love might be a good thing. Raising a family might be a good thing. Staying alive might be a good thing but it is getting very hard to see beyond this for the average person on earth now. Maybe the era of believing in big dreams is dead for humanity. Is believing in something just being naive? Keep hope alive!
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