“We can have any kind of world we choose we just have to take our power back”
— Ron Adams
“If enough of us dream, if a bare thousand of us dream, we can change the world. We can dream it anew! A world in which no cat suffers from the malice of humans. In which no cats are killed by human caprice. A world that we rule.”
–Neil Gaiman
In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman story “A Dream of a Thousand Cats”, a legend is told of how cats were once giant beings whom humans served until a thousand humans dreamed the world as it is and caused it to change. In the story, a visionary cat travels the world meeting with other cats to try to get a thousand of them together to dream the world anew. One cat scoffed and suggested how difficult it would be to get a thousand cats to do anything together much less dream.
I believe that a thousand dreamers can remake the world. We don’t have to take our power back, it is ours inherently. The problem is that each of us have a different idea of what the world they want to live in looks like. In some cases there is a strong resemblance, in others it is vastly different. Some of us want peace, others want power and still others can only feel secure if they can control what people in other countries do. Social justice is another area that people disagree about. Everybody wants their idea of social justice and the ideas of what that is differ greatly.
I believe if we can get enough people to agree upon the dream, we can make it a reality. Getting people to agree tho can be as difficult as herding cats.
Blessings, G
“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
I often try to be agreeable even when I am challenged by the ideas of another. I tend to go by adages such as Ken Wilber’s that “Everyone is right but partial.” If I listen long enough surely I will begin to understand the ways in which they are right and be able to integrate that into my own world view. I even try to do this in my relationships. I know I don’t hold a monopoly on truth (no one does) so surely there are ways in which I am both wrong and correct in most situations. Until I perceive how I tend to agree. At least it keeps the other person talking and explaining when they feel I am open to what they have to say. Eventually tho I ask questions for clarifications. If something at that point doesn’t feel right, I will examine my own biases in my outlook towards life and also test to see whether the person speaking has put any critical thought into what they are saying. Have they considered that they may be wrong? Have they looked at other viewpoints? If they have, have they just leaped from one fixed point to another without considering how to integrate the two? At that point I either reach agreement within myself and have something new to integrate or I disagree. This whole process usually takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a few months depending on how new the ideas are to me, how fixed the person is in their viewpoint and my willingness and availability to continue the conversation.
Too many people find either a person or a group of people with whom they share some ideas and start agreeing with them no matter what they say. They sometimes take it to the extent that they stop examining their own thought processes in their need for approval from this group or leader. This is the type of machine like thinking that all too often leads to ‘one solution fits all’ or ‘if you don’t agree with us, you’re evil’ type thinking and in the worse cases religious extremism, intolerance and war. At the very least it is a form of mental, emotional and spiritual suicide.
Blessings, G
Ophidian Awakening by G A Rosenberg 
Shaken by Outside Influences by G A Rosenberg 
