Suz.. very frank and eyeopening admissions there. I offer my future posts for counselling/therapy purposes :)

David f.,

Can we recognise the problems that we have as human beings? I hope so.
Our survival on this planet depends on it. Many of us tends to be less tolerant of others than we know in our hearts that we should be. A healthy, civilized society can absorb some dysfunction, as a healthy immune system can absorb some disease. But a massive buildup of mean-spiritedness bombarding our social system day in and day out in millions upon millions of individual doses overwhelms our social defenses. Medicine does little good in the absence of a healthy immune system. In our society today, there is a widespread malignant thought form that "other people are the problem." Conservatives tend to blame the current government, the media blames almost everyone, and almost everyone blames immigrants. Some people are convinced that homosexuals are the problem, while others think that the Christian Right and Churches are the problem, far too many people think that that their way is the right way and that people who disagree with them are "bad." Malice and intolerance stalk our society, staking claim to our minds, and not one corner of our social order is unaffected. Within each of us lies the disease, and within each of us lies the physician. The choice is ours to make. Shall we continue with dangerous scapegoating, small-minded intolerance for the views of others? At what point do we wake up enough to know that without treatment this will destroy us? We need to take a fearless moral inventory, do the work on ourselves that needs to be done - remove from our hearts the illusion that we are separate - and realize that
our ultimate choice should be to enhance the life on this lovely planet of ours not only for ourselves - but for all of humanity.

cont'd...

The last sentence of my post should read: "... not only for ourselves, but for all of humanity, and all of the other species with which we share our earth."

DavidF,
the we/they ideas are born of tangibles and intangibles, of inequality and ideology. I despise the latter as those who think their ideology superior. But I also despise the former as those in the favourable dispensation that allows them to be philosophical and "tolerant". Tolerance is a luxury of material, ergo ideological, superiority. The poor and outcast are not in a position to "tolerate" the wealthy and the wise (which go incongruously together).

Lexi,
these are inspirational thoughts: <We need to take a fearless moral inventory>
Agreed, but we also need to take a fearless "material" inventory.
As my old father in law used to say, "talk's cheap".

Squeers:

The only things we can be one hundred percent responsible for is our own minds.

cont'd...

I appreciate your father's comment, "Talk is cheap."

However, my father would have added this to that comment,
"Anybody who thinks talk is cheap should get some legal advice." ;-)