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I am a student at ASU and I am taking an online class this time around. I have come to the conclusion that the world is overrun with enablers. Enablers of the resistance towards progress for anything in this life or the next.
People really genuinely do not want change, or have thoroughly convinced themselves that it is not possible.
Allow me to elaborate.
The discussion question the teacher posted last night was this:
"Discuss the following making sure that you provide well-reasoned supporting argument for your statements:
Good governance is important for increasing sustainability in cities. Provide argument which supports or refutes this assumption."
...
So I respond:
"The argument itself is flawed.
You have two paths that the human race can go down:
1. We stay on the path where we are in which we continue to learn, grow, explore, expand, and continue our quest for knowledge of the things around us. Humans are inquisitive and will continue to try to answer all of the questions of life, in an attempt to make life easier. The problem with this is that there is tons of collateral damage. Some examples of this collateral damage are crime, poverty, war, famine, and hunger. We give the few we assume have more common sense to tell us how to not destroy ourselves (my definition of what a government is), but that doesn't seem to be working out too well at the present moment. This quest to learn and make things easier only makes it easier for us to disagree with each other, which inevitably leads to our destruction.
2. The other path is that we evolve in a different manner all together. Inwardly. Enlightenment as far as becoming comfortable with our place in the universe and return to a series of tribes roaming the earth. Life is not easy but it is simple. We do things out of necessity as opposed to need. Because we all share a common goal - survival - governance is a lot less likely to be a necessary evil. Individual self-governance of enlightened beings - my only wish for civilization.
So... sustainability in cities, to me, is a pipe dream and more or less an illusion of what we think is the closest we can get to any kind of "utopia." It's foolish to think that with the way people are that any kind of behavior that is displayed these days can be sustained on any level, with or without "good governance"."
To which another student has replies:
"Brice,
I see what you are saying and I think you are right about us governing ourselves but I just do not think everyone is capable or as willing to do that without guidance or rules. I know that there is still crime and problems in this and I do not believe we will every live in a world without those problems but I think without governance it would be much worse.
Don't you think that more people would harm other people, liter, not recycle and our environment would be work without governance?
I do not see how we could organize the world to work together and gather information without it, even if every one of us had the best intentions.
Jessica (with a picture of a nice teaming cup of coffee added to her signature line)"
To which I replied this evening:
"How's it goin' Jessica!
Nice cup o' joe you got there.
In all seriousness, it seems to me that everything in this existence appears to present two paths at every turn. In this case I think that the problem with us is that there is a little problem called choice. Would people harm other people? Sure. Would it happen extremely often to the point of ridiculousness? Absolutely. The question is that if we had enough brain activity going on could we make a conscious effort to, well... act consciously?
We could play nice and work together towards a common goal. This would result in harmony. The other option is to basically do what we're doing now and metaphorically put a band-aid of governance on the gaping hole of a shotgun blast to the face - which is our society. Sure it may stop the bleeding somewhere but is it the solution?
The mentality that something is unachievable is what prevents ANYTHING from getting done in life. I think John Lennon's message was completely lost when he said Give Peace a Chance. I think he meant, "no seriously, really give peace a serious chance. We've never done that so... it wouldn't hurt to, like, try it just so we could, like, see if it actually works." Give Peace a Chance is not just some hippie words that sounded cool. It was a radical, and most sensible, idea. Really give it a serious full throttled effort. What do we have to lose at this point?"
Now... my point is this: Am I alone? Am I truly and utterly alone on this? If I am I will apologize for my abrasive behavior in class, but I have to know if I'm the only one that feels this way. Am I naive???
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