Our Current Crisis

Opening Remarks

I promised myself that I would try to keep this entry short. Which is fitting, considering the fact that, as I've mentioned elsewhere, irony is one of the themes of this website. After all, how could anyone adequately explain our current crisis in a short essay? Well, they can't, of course. But, that doesn't mean an attempt shouldn't be made. Besides, that we are so often compelled to at least attempt to explain something that we could never fully explain is perfectly in keeping, not just with one of the themes of Writings, but with the whole point of this essay, which, again, I hope to keep short. We'll see.

The point is, as with all of my writings here, there will be no attempt to be exhaustive. My aim, as always, will be to simply direct attention to the subject in question. So, just consider this entry as another interim report.

Speaking of this entry, I was going to title it Our Current Chaos, since that would work just as well as Crisis. Except our times are not just chaotic, they're also stagnant, and the fact that they are is, again ironically, what kept me in business for years in Argentina. Because the overall aim of the work I did with PRC partners was to create a pervasive spirit of dynamic stability within the institution, whether it be an oil company, IT start up, a language institute, or even a medical clinic. The justification for this aim being human imperfection, the motive - a desire to grow. The stability comes from the justification and the dynamism from the motive. That is, stability is found in an honest and open recognition of human imperfection, shared by us all, since nothing is more stable, ie; constant, than human imperfection; while the dynamism comes from growth, or, Continuous Renewal.

Obviously, the best place to achieve such a goal would be with an entire culture, even an entire civilization, assuming such a thing could even be possible (in itself rather doubtful). But, whether possible or not, an attempt could still be made, and if it were, one would have to begin with the basic building blocks of any culture and civilization - our social institutions.

This has always been PRC's starting point. Whether it was the work I did with PRC partners in the past, or the writing I do today on this website. The starting point was then, and is now, our social institutions, and the aim - dynamic stability. And though dynamic stability is an attractive notion and inspiring goal, at least to me, it is not, unfortunately, what we have.

What we have is stagnant chaos. A pervasive spirit can work both ways, in the direction of dynamic stability, or stagnant chaos. And today there is no doubt that the pervasive spirit is that of stagnant chaos. Just as there is no doubt why this is so. It is because our institutions are controlled by those who not only refuse to so much as recognize, let alone accept, their imperfections, but who also use their now considerable power to effectuate their insane three-part demand to be placed above criticism, loved unconditionally, and blindly obeyed, no matter what - or else. In short, our social institutions are controlled by those who insist on Playing God.

If this accounts, at least in part, for the stagnation, then what accounts for the chaos? Certainly one explanation for the chaos is that human life is not just synonymous with imperfection, but with energy, with motion. In fact, from both a scientific and philosophical point of view, life is energy. And though energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can be tranformed. And one way to transform energy is to suppress it. If our energy is suppressed to the point of stagnation it comes back up as incompetence and dysfunction. That's why human energy must be competently, and consistently, directed.

But if human energy is not subdued to the point of stagnation, it also doesn't go away, it goes down and under and festers, only to resurface in a way that is irritable, restless, angry, and explosive. That's why dictatorships spend so much of their time suppressing energy, as it were, by putting out small fires so as to avoid the one big fire - revolution. Needless to say, this is why dictatorships don't last. Too much wasted energy. On the other hand, it's also why there are so few revolutions. Because of the human brain's primary attribute, randomness of response, human beings don't simply prefer stability, they need it to survive. Unfortunately, stability quickly becomes conformity, and the shadow of conformity is stupidity. When that stupidity spreads the result is cultural stagnation, institutional incompetence, and societal dysfunction. At that point, the pervasive spirit becomes one of widespread helplessness. That's why the slide from stability to conformity to stupidity and helplessness does half of the dictator's work for them.

Of course, the other half comes from the blind confidence and hard-headed support so many, including intellectuals who should know better, have so often shown dictators. After that the dictator's work consists mainly in reinforcing the population's sense of learned helpless, thereby increasing the dysfunction while undermining their power. And now we're back to why dictatorship's don't last. No wonder Orwell described the trend of British intellectuals blindly supporting the USSR as the stupid cult of Russia.

But what we have today is unprecedented. Today, the West, the single most energetic, productive, and successful civilization in world history, has been placed under the iron paw of a Global Super Tyranny. A tyranny run by an occult dictatorship that has more power over human and natural resources in the history of power. And, like every dictatorship before them, they too have instilled a sense of learned helplessness in those they rule over, while at the same time demanding more and more from them than ever before. The result? A mix of cultural stagnation and societal chaos, or, stagnant chaos.

In fact, an apt and somewhat humorous symbol of the world today, especially as it relates to the elite and the masses, would be a dysfunctional clothes dryer spinning noisely and monotnously round and round, while a bundle of trapped clothes tumbles chaotically within. Or, stagnant chaos.

If our problem is stagnant chaos, then the solution is dyamic stability.

Obviously, there is a lot one could say about all of this. But I did promise myself that I would try to keep this one short. And though, as I said above, there is no way that any of us could ever fully explain our current crisis, or anything for that matter, that doesn't mean an attempt should not be made.

So, to this attempt to explain our current crisis, we shall now turn.

I

Let’s start where where one would normally end, with a conclusion. Since the source of our current crisis is Reality Denial, then the only solution to our current crisis is a collective commitment to The Drive Toward Reality.

If the human drive toward reality is not satisfied we won't make it. So, if we are to surivive, we must satisfy the human drive toward reality.

Well, that's it! Thanks for coming! Good night everybody! See ya next time!

But seriously folks. From the point of view of adaptation, The Drive Toward Reality is by far the most important drive we have. Not the drive toward belief, conformity, stupidity, or chaos, but toward reality. What sets that drive apart from the others is that in order to be experienced and satisfied it has to accept the fact that these other drives exist, whereas the other drives mostly ignore, attack, and misrepresent The Drive Toward Reality. And though they do accept The Drive Toward Reality and offer it a place in human affairs, they do so begrudgingly, and with much hesitation (fear), simply because they know they have to in order to keep the other drives going. A fact that does not exactly inspire confidence in those other drives. Or, rather, it doesn't inspire confidence in us, since we are those drives. But it does go a long way toward helping us to understand our current crisis.

Before continuing, there are two other ways I have for referring to The Drive Toward Reality: Pragma, as in Dogma vs Pragma, and Open Simple, as in Open Simple vs Closed Simple. Actually, they are three different ways of talking about the same thing - human response. Or, rather, modes of response. And since they are vital to an understanding of human life in general, and our current crisis in particular, it would help at this point to clarify what I mean by them and how I intend to use them.

The Drive Toward Reality is something innate. Humans simply can not live without it. I don't think the reasons need to be spelled out to the reader.

However, though innate, this drive is not natural. It must be learned, which means it must be taught. As we shall see later, this is the value and importance of our teaching-learning institutions in the West, to keep us grounded in reality through acquired knowledge of ourselves and the world, and why science, in its most advanced state, has rightly been referred to as the model of knowing. This would explain the movement, most conspicuous in Western Cultural Life, from Myth, to Metaphysics, to Science. That this tradition has been under attack for a long time now speaks directly to our current crisis. In fact, our current crisis is the consequence of this atack.

Pragma is The Drive Toward Realty as Philosophy. As a philosophy, Pragma functions as a practice that restructures an individual's habits, values, and actions, to align with The Drive Toward Reality.

Open Simple, is a mode of inquiry that aligns itself with Pragma.

All three, The Drive Toward Reality, Pragma, and Open Simple, are best seen as defenses against both collective and individual insanity. That is to say, they are defenses against the fact that the human mind is literally insane.

The difference between Dogma and Pragma is that Pragma is willing to expose its ideas to a process of continuous feedback and correction for the purpose of continuous learning, change, and growth - and Dogma isn't.

Regarding Open Simple, with any inquiry into anything, but especially something everyone would consider important to our survival (except for the usual number of oddballs), we have to start simple and work from there.

Closed Simple ends where it should begin. But, unlike my example above of ending where I should begin, Closed Simple doesn't do it as a thought exercise in the spirit of fun irony. Not at all. It assumes from the get go that its ideas are right and good and perfect and final, making every inquiry an "inquiry", since there is no inquiry, just affective congruence and confirmation bias. This is why The Know-It-Alls use Closed Simple.

One amusing consequence is that The Know-It-Alls can't explain themselves, or anyone else. Hence their dependency on censorship and ad hominem attacks. It also explains why The Know-It-Alls shun debate the way the Devil shuns holy water. Whereas practitioners of Open Simple don't fear debate and can explain both themselves and The Know-It-Alls.

On second thought, it would be better to say that that consequence would be amusing if the Closed Simple-dependent Know-It-Alls weren't so dangerous whenever they get into positions of power, like they are now. Though, there's no denying that today's Know-It-All elite are unique. Not only in their hostility, but in their destructive power. In fact, destruction seems to be the only thing they're capable of or are even interested in. A destruction justified, not by their uniqueness - we're all unique - but by their terminal uniqueness, or, as they're constantly reminding us, their chosenness.

II

But, wait. Let's back up a bit.

What is the justification for saying that the human mind is literally insane? Is there any? And how is insane being defined here? I’ll answer the last question first. By insane I mean The Denial of Reality. As to the justification for saying that the human mind is literally insane, viewed from an historical and contemporary perspective, a glance at both history and current events will provide us with all the evidence we need. Humans don’t seem to be very fond of reality. An undeniable and rather unpleasant fact that human beings must face if they are to satisfy The Drive Toward Reality.

But, one might ask, what proof could I offer?

The proof I would offer for saying that the human mind is literally insane is the human impulse to convert beliefs into truths, and to use those “truths” to account for all of reality so as to then provide justification for everything from child abuse, to scapegoating, to murder, and even, or especially, wholesale slaughter. Such as communist Russia’s slaughter of over 60 million people (still waiting for the movie), or the Zionist slaughter of Palestinians today. And with that we can add evil to insanity. And by evil is simply meant The Denial of Value. The value, that is, of the other. Some ready examples of Insane and Evil can be found in family scapegoat abuse and in both Zionism and Communism - the only two winners of WWII.

Actually winner, not winners, since together Zionism and Communism make up what I refer to as Supremacy Inc. Identity Politics being merely the latest iteration of Communism. Identity Politics is to domestic policy what Zionism is to foreign policy, and what Supremacy Inc. itself is to economic policy. And not just the domestic, foreign, and economic policies of the United States, but of the Western world. And make no mistake about it, Supremacy Inc. is the driving force behind our current global crisis.

How so? Well, not only because Supremacy Inc. has complete institutional power and culture control in the West, and not just the West, but because it is also the master par excellence of belief as truth, Dogma, and Closed Simple. All of which rests, not at all confidently, on a pre-modern foundation of rabbinical absolutism that permits no feedback and correction. It is for this reason that Supremacy Inc. is a maladaptation, quite literally a human maladaptation, and as such constitutes a threat to human survival. Put bluntly, Supremacy Inc. is the real cancer of the human race. Which means treason against Supremacy Inc. is loyalty to humanity. How could it not be?

III

But treason against Supremacy Inc. is hardly the only way to be loyal to humanity. The best way to demonstrate one's loyalty to any person, place, or thing, is to be able to look at it, and our relationship to it, as honestly as possible in our attempt to satisfy The Drive Toward Reality. And if one is to do that with our current crisis they would have to acknowledge and accept the fact that, though Supremacy Inc. is the driving force behind that crisis and its chaos, they hardly invented both. The fact is, that crisis and chaos are simply unavoidable. The reasons are many, and if I'm going to keep this essay as short as I can I can scarcely go into those reasons here. But certainly one worth mentioning would be that, strictly speaking, no one ever gets anything "right", as in perfect and final. Or they do, at least in the judgment of enough people among the competent and accomplished, and then someone else comes along to point out their wrongness, or badness, or whatever, sometimes by throwing doubt on exactly what qualifies as competent and accomplished. When that happens in an individual's life the impact on life itself is as nothing, though certainly not to the individual in question. But when a lot of people get something wrong then everyone is going to know. When that happens a crisis invariably breaks out, all hell breaks loose, and the crisis and chaos once again blend indecipherably into each other. Life then becomes unmanageable as the many begin to feel powerless against the crisis and chaos that seems to have no end in sight.

It's only fair at this point to ask what I think is wrong and bad, so wrong and bad that it qualifies as the driving force behind our current crisis. Well, we won't have to look far, since I've already said what I think is wrong and bad: belief as truth, Dogma, and Closed Simple. Which are really three ways of talking about the same thing - Redemptionism, Salvation Systems, or Utopia, and it's latest and most powerful manifestation - Supremacy Inc.

Q: And what is so wrong and bad about Utopia? Someone might ask.

A: Because it's maladaptive.

Q: How do you know it's maladaptive?

Well, again, I've already said. Because it converts its belief into the truth. Because the purpose of its mode of inquiry, Closed Simple, is affective congruence and confirmation bias, both of which actively and aggressively prohibit feedback and correction, the two-fold source of human adaptability.

Q: ---- Silence ----

A: And besides being maladaptive, it's immoral.

Q: Isn't the whole point of your writing to replace value judgments with analytical statements?

A: No. One aim of my writing is to postpone value judgments as long as possible, not eliminate them, since no one can live without the sense of value, which is often expressed in judgments of appropriateness.

Q: What have you got against value judgments?

A: Nothing. It's just important, for me at least, to recognize the fact that once we've made a value judgment we have to defend it and so can't see its limitations, which might range anywhere from mild to severe. The paradox of value judgments is the less you make them the stronger they tend to be.

Q: So then why do you think Utopias are immoral?

A: Because instead of increasing the realm of moral choice Utopias reduce all of morality to an a priori absolute, and because for a Utopia to "work" lots of people, places, and things have to be destroyed.

Q: And what's wrong with destroying lots of people, places, and things, as long as the Utopia in question says that they deserve to be destroyed?

And if that little impromptu Q & A were to continue one would be involved in what is sure to be an endless argument about right and wrong, and good and bad. An argument that could only be settled by power. That is, when the powerful decide to end the conversation. And let's face it, the only way to get rid of an explanation one doesn't like is to kill all of the people who believe in it. A unpleasant fact that a glance at history will easily confirm.

Hence the value of civilization, which is the greatest and most adaptive human strategy for circumnavigating the use of force. But even the best civilization in the world is hardly incorruptible. The most honest and profound look into this harsh truth can be found in Wagner's The Ring.

The point of that masterpiece being that morally responsible power is an impossibility. But, instead of being tragic, it's ultimately triumphant, exactly because it faces this unpleasant fact so as to accept and transcend our limits by increasing the realm of moral choice and moving into a larger freedom.

In fact, and while we're on the subject, though Schopenhauer, who had a profound influence on Wagner, helped Wagner clarify his deepest convictions, he went far beyond Schopenhauer in the depths of his pessimism. The reason is not hard to find. It is much more difficult to symbolize a vision than to conceptualize it. That is why a symbol is so much more convincing, more real, and more irresistable, than a concept.

Schopenhauer is a stimulating writer, not to mention clever, witty, and amusing. But The Ring, when experienced intellectually, symbolically, and musically, is chilling, even terrifying - or would be, if it weren't for the fact that it is, as I said, triumphant. And that triumph starts from an acceptance of imperfection in the three most vital areas of human experience, the intellectual, social, and moral. But it doesn't end there. The triumph continues and culminates in a triumph of creativity over pessimism.

This is why Wagner's life was one of continuous creativity spanning forty years. Whereas Schopenhauer wrote his masterpiece in his twenties and spent the rest of his life explaining it to himself and his readers.

But, to return to the above Q & A, what is perhaps most instructive about it is that it reveals our biases. Another way of putting it would be to say that such a Q & A would be a conversation about which bias is the right bias.

And that would require that I state my biases openly right now. And the first bias that I would state here is that a right bias is an oxymoron. My bias says, to hope to be right in matters such as these is a fool's errand. My bias is against being right and for judgements of appropriateness. My bias is that no explanation is worth killing people over, but that some are worth fighting against. And the ones worth fighting against are the ones that claim to be, not only right and good, but perfect and final, as well. My bias is against any explanation that demands to be placed above criticism, and for explanations capable of self-criticism without anxiety. My bias says that bloody dictatorships are wrong and bad because they are insane, evil, and maladaptive, and so constitute a threat to human survival. My bias is against interpretations that do not permit feedback and correction, and for interpretations that thrive on feedback and correction. And the justification for that bias is that if our interpretations don't make sense then our institutions won't work. And when our interpretations and institutions don't work a crisis breaks out, leaving us powerless against our own biases while making life itself unmanageable and, in time, a maladaptive nightmare. And that is the situation we are in today. A fact proven everywhere you look.

IV

So, what is the remedy for that powerlessness and unmanageability, for that stagnant chaos? In short, what is the solution to our current crisis? Well, again, I've already said. The Drive Toward Reality, Pragma, Open Simple, and dyanmic stability. Just as the crisis and ensuing chaos were started by the drive toward belief as truth, by Dogma, and Closed Simple. I've mentioned Closed Simple, Dogma, and the drive toward belief, a number of times in what is still a fairly short essay. But I haven't said that much about them and what part they play in our current crisis. So I'll do just that now.

Hegel's famous What is real is rational; and what is rational is real is helpful at this point. Though still - still - often derided, I've never once heard, or read, anyone offer an explanation for what Hegel meant by that phrase, or what they think he meant by that phrase, and why it deserves to be derided. They simply declare it nonsensical and let it go at that, failing to see the irony that their response is itself irrational and so proves Hegel's point.

This imperceptive response of the semi-educated and intellectually undisciplined is symptomatic of the relentless attacks on Western Cultural Life mentioned in part I, and so also speaks directly to our current crisis.

To understand this and to test the usefulness of Hegel's dictum we can look at it from the point of view of human behavior, which, as PRC Readers know, is here simply meant People Doing Things. And one thing all of us have to do to stay alive is respond. From this perspective Hegel was saying that response varies independently from stimulus. But he was saying more.

He was saying that the meaning of something, anything, is not in that something, but is a consequence of what happens between stimulus and response, or, the mind, a word we use to conceal the abyss of our ignorance about what lies between stimulus and response. Mankind cannot help but make sense out of the world, and the kind of sense that it makes is culturally established and transmitted, but that the mind of the individual is also radically innovative, especially in thought, creativity, and belief, or, for Hegel, philosophy, art, and religion. And by religion as it is used here is not meant organized religion, but rather, the ultmate source of belief and valuation. As the history of independent thought, creativity, and belief in Western Civilization makes perfectly clear, the sense we make out of the world is emergent, historical, changing, and increasingly more adequate.

This radically creative aspect of mankind is Meaning, Order, Value, Identity, Experience (and Explanation), it is in a word, Spirit, or, MOVIES.

MOVIES is the sense we make out of life in everyday human affairs. That sense is rational and it is what makes, for human purposes, the world real. The real and the rational are identical. This is what Hegel was saying.

Or, as I put it here at PRC - The meaning of life is your response to it.

V

The Rational, The Extra-Rational, and The Irrational

At this point, the reader might still be in the dark and so beg the question, What does your take on Hegel's dictum have to do with our current crisis?

To answer this let's now add the extra-rational, and the irrational.

If the rational is the ability to make sense out of the world, then the extra-rational is everything we don't know, and everything we do know but have as yet gotten around to responding to. This fits in perfectly with what I have discussed a number of times at PRC Writings, and what I will refer to here as The Consequences of Applied Thought, or, The Consequences of Theoretical Application. It is a two-fold problem of Quantity and Quality.

Whenever we put our ideas into action (and we are our ideas as well as our actions) two things happen. The first is that we produce a quantity of data that is more than we can respond to at any given moment - and life is a series of given moments. It's exactly because no one can ever respond to everything, and certainly not to everything at once, that we all end up living on the surface and in the abstract. That is the quantitative problem.

The second thing that happens whenever we put our ideas into practice, or test a theory, is that it invariably produces a quality of data that we can't respond to at all, even if we had all the time in the world, which, of course, we don't, and even if we had the training and are prepared, and, it has to be said, most are neither trained or prepared. Or, as one director of an IT start up once told me, "We have a human resources problem in Argentina." To which I responded, "We have a human resources problem in the world." In fact, if anything today is truly global it is the yawning and ominous gap between the complexity of our problems and the capacity of our minds.

The reason we can't respond in this second case is not just because we don't have enough time, it's because we can't make sense out of the data. And this applies not just to all of us, but even to the well-trained and prepared.

This two-fold quantitative and qualitative problem represents what I refer to at The Limits of The Rational. This is what is meant by the extra-rational.

If the meaning of life is your response to it, then ths obviously applies to words, which, of course, are subsumed by life itself. For example, it could be said that the extra-rational is God. That is to say, the word God means everything we don't know, and everything we could know, and everything we do know, but have yet to act on. God is everything we don't know, but that someone else might. This, one may hazard to guess, is why it is said that God can be found in other people. The one thing celebrity atheists don't get about God is that before God is anything, God is a word, and words don't come from God, they come from human beings, they come from us.

And with this we arrive at the irrational. As the reader might have guessed from what has been discussed thus far, the irrational is the driving force behind our current crisis. How so? If the rational is the ability to make sense out of the world (MOVIES) and the extra-rational is everything we don't know about ourselves, each other, and the world (internal-external), then the irrational is the refusal to acknowledge the internal and external limits of the rational, and the failure to even recognize the extra-rational.

Today the most obvious manifestation of the irrational is Supremacy Inc.

Concluding Remarks

It might seem abrupt and inappropriate to stop here, since there's obviously so much more to say about all of this. But stopping here, while accepting the fact that our discussion leaves so much more to be said, is a good example of recognizing the limits of the rational, at least as it applies to this essay.

Besides, I promised myself I would try to keep this essay short, or, at least attempt to, which, after all, is what an essay is - an attempt. And what I have attempted to do here is direct attention to our current crisis by directing attention to the human need to make sense out of the world, the rational, our limits in that respect, the extra-rational, the stubborn, arrogant, and insane refusal to even so much as recognize those limits, the irratonal, and the most destructive manifestation of the irrational today - Supremacy Inc.

To put it as baldly as I possibly can, our current crisis is the result of power having fallen into the hands of the irrational. If our sense of value and identity comes from our power to make sense out of the world, then the emotional temptation to surrender to that power without correcting it, and compromising it, is enormous. We must make sense out of the world. But to have blind confidence in this regard is to be irrational. And the elite currently running and deliberately ruining the world are irrational, and hostile, to their core, and so constitute the greatest threat to human survival.

The best defense available to us against the surrender to the irrational is Cultural Transcendence. But the relentless attacks on High Culture (from which Cultural Transcendence emerged) by the irrational, not to mention its complete ignorance of Cultural Transcendence and its adaptational value, has, ironically, rendered the irratonal defenseless against itself! And, to repeat, the irrational are now the ones with complete institutional power and cultural control. That is, control over human and natural resources. And, it will be remembered, we have a human resources problem in the world today. A problem made worse by the anti-human actions of Supremacy Inc.

This is the explanation offered here for why Supremacy Inc. is the driving force behind our current crisis. Naturally, proud memebers of Supremacy Inc. would respond to this by climbing on to the highest horse they can find and shriek about being scapegoated. Supremacy Inc. is nothing if not predictable. But this accusation is absurd, since all scapegoating is done from a position of power, and Supremacy Inc. is clearly the most powerful entity in the world today. Though, if things continue as they are, not for much longer. Since, as I said in the Opening Remarks, dictators exercise power in a way that undermines it. Let's just hope we live to tell the tale.

In any event, the best thing, the most important thing, one could say about Western Civilization, especially its cultural life in the last 500 years, is its attempt to make knowledge central and belief peripheral, since for the last few thousand years prior to this the opposite obtained, and still does throughout most of the world, a world that is migrating to the West.

The purpose of making knowledge central was to recognize the limits of the rational. The need to recognize those limits grew out of a recognition of human imperfection, not some barbaric belief as truth about original sin.

The recognition of human imperfection has served as the foundation and justification and need for continuous learning, change, and growth. It is this that has led to Cultural Transcendence, which is, in terms of human adaptation, the best response, so far, that the human race has ever conceived.

This is exactly what Supremacy Inc. has been attacking, and "successfully." An attack that, again, is fast undermining their power. A better example of a Pyrrhic Victory would be impossible to imagine. But, since psychotic arrogance and self-awareness don't go together, they remain as blind as ever.

Since the only protection we have against the collapse of our defenses against the irrational is Cultural Transcendence, and since it is, as yet, available to only a few of us willing to dig past the surface, then the source of our current crisis is found in our defenselessness against the irrational. That is, our defenseless against the destructive power of Supremacy Inc.

The only rational solution, the only humane solution, would be to work with all of the courage, honesty, and intelligence we can muster, to spread the word about the threat to human survival that Supremacy Inc. poses, while directing attention to the survival value of Cultural Transcendence. As PRC Readers also know, Cultural Transcendence is the beating heart of PRC. Making this essay yet another attempt to continue in that direction. A direction, or re-direction, that represents our only hope. It very well may be.