We Can Change Our Wicked Problems!
Description and Contents
We Can Change Our Wicked Problems! gathers densely packed factual information on twenty-five social systems/issues and applies common sense to them, without partisanship or preconceptions, focused primarily in the U.S. It largely finds brokenness, unsustainability and big, urgent problems. There are about 300 pages with 2,000 references. It encourages and suggests impactful changes.
It is difficult reading, because these naked facts assemble a picture of each issue that is generally ugly and hard to look at. Cognitive dissonance will kick in, and you will want to stop reading this, because that degree of brokenness is shocking and challenges our worldviews. Rather than quit, skim through it until you accept the premise that a hard case for hard change has been made. Essentially, we cannot continue living as we are, or we will suffer harm from catastrophic collapses. Either we proactively change big, or we will be reacting to disastrous changes as systems fail. Then, read one of the other sections.
This is painful. We are supposed to be the good guys, but our systems are broken and causing harm. It hurts to recognize that, but it defies common sense to ignore it. We are all a part of all of that. We’re complicit, at least by going along with it, but there are ways we can change and make it better. We seem to want somebody else, some hero, to rise up and do something about it, but we each have to find the hero in each of us and do what we can about these things, in our own lives and networks. There are many things each of us can do. Share information, take action, set examples, and live life as you wish it was, now, using common sense! Don’t wait for anyone, or anything! We can change!
Read it in the order of chapter contents below, or jump to any topic via its link. At least read the Introduction, which is a summary of all site content.
If you value any of this, please share it! Link to it and share it via social media, so it becomes more visible to others! We can change! Thanks.
Chapter Contents:
Need for Big and Conscious Change
We Can Change Our Wicked Problems!
We Can Change Our Deep Programming!
We Can Change Our Future!
Need for Big and Conscious Change.
We Can Change Our Wicked Problems! Download As Free PDF
Greenhouse Gasses and Global Warming Climate Change
Current Impacts of Global Warming
Crisis Response by the U.S. Government
Need for Change to Slow Global Warming
Pollution and Other Environmental Harms
Disconnection from Nature and Spirit
Need for Change in Pollution and Environmental Harms
Not Renewable or Sustainable Energy Sources
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Sources
Need for Change in Energy Production and Consumption
Telecommunications and Deregulation
Bicycle, Pedestrian and Animal
Need for Change in Transportation Systems
Need for Physical Infrastructure Change
Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Problems
Need for Change in our Relationships with Substances
Need for Change in Housing and Homelessness
CIA and Other Intelligence Agencies
Mercenaries and Other Contractors
U.S. Constitution and Amendments
Global Human Rights and Freedoms
U.N. International Human Bill of Rights
Other U.N. International Human Rights
Need for Change in Relation to Human Rights and Freedoms
Marketing, Advertising, Selling and PR
News, Information, Entertainment and Distraction
Media Addiction and Attention Deficits
Public Opinion That Government is Corrupt
Need for Change to Address Government Corruption
Climate Change
Environmental Harms
Science and Technology
Energy.
Telecommunications and Deregulation
Transportation
Physical Infrastructure
Agriculture and Food
Gun Violence
Health and Healthcare
Drug, Alcohol and Tobacco Problems
Prisons and Incarceration
Legal
Income and Wealth Inequality
Community, Family and Poverty
Housing and Homelessness
Taxes and Debt
Economy, Banking and Finance
Education
Immigration
Empire and Its Agents
Human Rights and Freedoms
Marketing, Advertising, Selling and PR
News, Information, Entertainment and Distraction
Government Corruption
Need for Change to Address Corruption of People in the U.S.
An excerpt:
We need to wake up, change and evolve to higher levels of sensitivity, awareness, understanding, compassion, sustainability, consciousness, cooperation and organization. We need to change our ways of thinking, being, behaving and doing, and stop going along with what doesn’t feel right. It’s urgent.
Humanity’s population and impacts are now so great that our continued ignorance, irresponsibility, apathy, and unenlightened and fragmented self-interests, behaviors and actions are badly harming Earth’s life support systems and species - and human social organizations and quality of life.
The vast majority of the world’s informed scientists agree human activities are contributing to harmful climate changes all over the planet, changes affecting weather, ecosystems and species everywhere. We’re polluting everything. See it where you are? Human population and practices are unsustainable, continue to expand with little restraint, and are creating very real risks for catastrophic collapses. Quality of life for human and other species is suffering. We’re about to cause a million extinctions.
Everywhere on Earth, people acknowledge wicked personal, social and environmental problems negatively affecting our lives, wicked problems like: population growth, inadequate water supply, pollution, health and healthcare problems, war, immigration and integration issues, energy problems, education problems, transportation problems, crime, corruption, racism, dysfunctional governments, exploitation, unfair income and wealth distributions, abuses of power, needs for meaningful work, problems providing for families, hunger, unhappiness, and lack of spiritual experience and growth. Generally, many of our problems are becoming worse, not better. We can do better than that.
In the U.S., neglected bridges, dams and other infrastructure are about to collapse; we’re harmed by growing storms and fires; political divisions and social fragmentations are angry and mean, on all sides; there’s a mass shooting a day, of kids at school weekly, and 10,000 people a month are shot by guns; militarized police target, kill and arrest people unjustly; we imprison our people at 5.4 times the rate of the rest of the world, a higher percentage of our adult blacks than South Africa at the peak of apartheid; we feel unsafe and unhappy; racism is getting worse; government barely pretends to represent people; obesity, opioid and media addictions are epidemic; most painfully waste tons of time in traffic, can’t afford a home, have no savings or time and are about two paychecks away from living on the street; many people are homeless everywhere; bad feelings are growing and creating problems everywhere; and our daily news has become a surreal nightmare of craziness that does not make any sense.
The default paradigm is not working. Things are already broken, and it’s getting worse. It isn’t working to sort of try to incrementally patch big system problems in isolation, without enough power to do so, or to just sit here, angry, afraid or resentful, thinking somebody else ought to do something about this. This is the great challenge of our era. It’s do or die for many. Things are already changing, for the worse if we sit in stupor and wait for it or resist it, for the better if we wake up, get up and make it wonderful.
We must each change, deep inside, changing what we think, how we are, what we do, how we behave and what we accept. We have the power to do that already. We don’t have to wait for anything.
Let’s rise to this challenge by raising our spirits, embracing change, and creating our ideal situations! Let’s empower and ennoble ourselves to be and make the great positive changes that save our world!
We Can Change Our Wicked Problems! Section Input
Submit and discuss comments, ideas or suggestions at the level of this entire We Can Change Our Wicked Problems! section here.
(Please submit suggestions for how we can change with regard to specific content chapters in the space for that on each content chapter page.)
Please provide only constructively intended and respectful interactions addressing information, ideas and content, not persons interacting with this site. Mean-spirited or disparaging interactions, especially anything disrespectful directed toward persons and their qualities, rather than ideas and content will be deleted. Thanks!