by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
published in The Stream, August 2007
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Ours is the Axial Age. Things are happening fast enough now that we get to live with some of the consequences of our own decisions and actions. Not only individually and as families, but as communities, states or provinces, corporations, nations, and humanity as a whole, we are snowballing into opportunities both negative and positive.
The positive opportunities are greater than you think. They stagger the imaginations even of the writers of science fiction. You don’t want to miss out on these!!!
The negative you’ve been seeing in the news, or alluded to in back corners of the news. A lot of it has already happened, even though we’ve barely begun the process of encountering issues and problems affecting not only our comfort and well-being but our very survival. I don’t need to catalog these here; just let me invite your attention to the Winsights article, “Frog Warming” (February 2000).
I invite you to reflect upon how much “frog warming” you have already undergone since February 2000. Do you think it’s over? Do you think that this “frog warming” is due to ease off and quit, or that the process has but barely begun and is accelerating?
Please note that we are also swimming in a sea of positive opportunities.
From time to time YOU have the opportunity to take matters in your own hands and turn them toward more favorable directions.
Your not doing so is also a choice, an action with consequences for which you are responsible. This is not a lecture – I am not saying what you “ought to” be doing or not doing. It is an observation helping to underscore my own conviction that our “prognosis,” over these next few years and beyond, is greatly improved to the extent that more people become more able to solve the problems they find themselves in – and become more inclined TO solve the problems they find themselves in.
Thus came about my purpose of finding and developing effective methods of problem-solving which are as easy as possible, enabling a far wider range and number of human individuals to become effective problem- solvers and creative achievers.
Of the techniques you already know – tomorrow, can you show one of them to a friend or to someone whom you care about, help them learn its use while they are solving THEIR own problem or situation? Are any of these things just too hard to do? Or not worth your while to do?
Your abilities, as are ours, are very considerable. Our resolve and will may mostly yet remain to be demonstrated, and much of our potential for experiencing high rewards.