A cloud of dark fear is engulfing the entire human race and depressing the eternal light of hoped-for progress. It is palpable in the air we breathe, the streets we walk, the land we covet, and the communities we cherish. Humanity has chosen to move backwards. We are all moving into a total world-wide permutation of reality where “gut reaction” will become more valuable than “reasoned thought.”
According to the latest report (2023) from the V-Dem Institute, at the University of Gothenburg, for the first time in decades there are more closed autocracies than liberal democracies in the world. Between 2002 – 2022, 42 countries experienced some level of “democratic setback and backwards slippage into autocratization.
Currently, 72% of the entire world is living under autocratic rule. This translates into 5.7 billion human beings who owe their very existence to the changeable demands of an autocratic ruler in possession of absolute power. In less than three months, another 335 million Americans will join these ranks pushing the global domination of human beings through autocratic rule up to 73%.
Does this not, in stark detail, reveal the systematic enslavement of entire nations and whole continents? Whatever your personal faith, religious belief, name of God, and cultural fidelity, is this dehumanizing global reality truly why we were born and live? Are we not capable of coming together in the name of mutual and shared freedom? Can we not offer each other this lighted path forward?
Making a global U-turn in the dark will not be easy or quick; yet, it will not happen at all without the first step: mobilization. In every nation on every continent, a unified mobilization of all human beings seeking reasonable freedom, objective judicial rule, and rejuvenation of civil and cultural society. A realized democracy requires universal recognition of individual responsibility for her ideals; and a truly transparent democracy demands the steady elimination of corruption. Institutions, which are meant to endure through the ages, can only be built with pillars of truth and trust.
So, let us begin with ourselves. Are we ready to face the truth of how the world has arrived at such a perilous place? Have we not participated through fear, apathy, and abdication of duty? Duty to life, our loved ones, to all we hold dear and worthy in our planetary existence? Can we learn how to trust ourselves and to reach for a new freedom? The freedom to do what we know is good and true and right, even in the face of overwhelming fear?
Yes, we can. We can anchor ourselves in true faith and begin in the communities in which we all live. We can encourage our families, our friends, our neighbors, even complete strangers to share in this world-wide mobilization of a new freedom for all humanity by anchoring themselves in their faith.
Those of us who believe in goodwill, kindness, and inclusiveness can pray and practice these principles by living out their expression daily. Those amongst us who know the continuity of Life and the inevitable (albeit slow!) progression of human evolution can honor their privilege of knowing by moving through each day, each moment, within the eternal Loving Light and joyfully shining it outward.
This simple action, of living truth where you are, will not change today’s reality. But it will alter tomorrow’s; and the day after. It will also bring strength and calmness in the face of turmoil and chaos; and as more and more people around the world mobilize it will push back the darkness of human fear and bring forward the light of human faith. Solutions live in the Light.
