Courage Strength to Love
The courage and bravery of Martin Luther King Jr. has long inspired me, but it only does so much when only a few people stand up for truth, sincerity, translation and greater understanding. I believe all world religions and the entire public library can be cherry-picked and have something positive to offer us. Pale Blue Dot perspective as spiritual / faith of the entire planet.
"I say to you, today, there is another way that combines the best points of both of these and avoids the evil points of both, and that is what we call nonviolent resistance. For here you have discovered a way of struggle which combines the militant and the moderate; a way of struggle that combines the realistic and the idealistic; a way of struggle that combines the calm and courageous. You need not now bow to hate, you need not now bow to violence, for you have now discovered another way and another approach. It comes to us from the long Christian tradition, Jesus of Nazareth himself, coming down through Mahatma Gandhi of India, who took the love ethic of Jesus Christ and made it effective as a sociopolitical force and brought about the transformation of a great nation and achieved freedom for his people." - "Keep Moving from this Mountain" – Founders Day Address at the Sisters Chapel, Spelman College (11 April 1960)
"Everybody is busy, as I have said so often, trying to obey the eleventh commandment: "Thou shalt not get caught." And so, according to this view, it is all right to lie with a bit of finesse. It's all right to exploit, but be a dignified exploiter. It's all right to even hate, but dress your hate up into garments of love and make it appear that you are loving when you are actually hating. This type of moral and ethical relativism is sapping the very life's blood of the moral and spiritual life of our nation and our world. And I am convinced that if we are to be a great nation, and if we are to solve the problems of the world we must come out of this mountain. We have been in it too long. For if man fails to reorientate his life around moral and ethical values he may well destroy himself by the misuse of his own instrument."
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The focus of King on "instruments", is technology, machines, inventions. And I have had privileged access to the development of the Internet and I have seen 1980's dreams of a better world turn into the 2013 onward hate-preaching mass dehumanization. The bravery and courage for people to admit that smartphones and social media since 2013 have turned collective behavior nasty, angry, hate-filled. And that medical psychologists and psychiatrists of Russian military and Cambridge Analytica deliberately manipulated crowds to for gang-like behaviors of hate the out-group.
“But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Now in 2024 we are living in Malignant Normality - what Kremlin Surkov techniques and Cambridge Analytica have gamed us to avoid confronting.
“We are all vulnerable to manipulation. We make judgments based on the information available to us, but we are all susceptible to manipulation when our access to that information becomes mediated. Over time, our biases can become amplified without our even realising it.” ― Christopher Wylie, Mindf*ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to Break the World
Power of Nightmares is ruling our current world, and all signs indicate the mediums of electric messages have normalized it and want the appetites in the audience keeps growing stronger. That street gangs of mocking enjoy the engagement and stimulation. And humanity is not resisting, people find it "amusing" and LOL at their fellow man. And groups of people will grey rock, turn away from each other, alienated - not having the courage and bravery to stand up to to Putin's psychological tactics.