(now comes the second part)
As for what we can agree upon, we can agree upon that we
want to make our world a better place. To make this earth,
a place worth living in. And how do we accomplish this?
The answer is a very hard answer. You must improve yourself.
If you want a better world, then you must begin with yourself.
I can already hear the critics. But it isn’t me. All those other
people are screwing up the world. I am just living my life,
quietly and without interfering with other people.
and that is where you are wrong. There is no them,
there is only us. One might think that because everyone else
is screwing up the world, it doesn’t matter what I do, but it
does matter. It matters a lot. If you want to make a better world,
you must start with yourself. It doesn’t matter what everyone else
is doing, or not doing. You can’t control over that. That is outside of
what you can do. So deal with what you can deal with, and that is
yourself.
Now one might say, why should I improve myself, when others don’t.
Because they are evil and impure, they might take advantage of me,
because I am improving myself…
I shall give you a reason as to why. Let us say, you decide to
seek out god. You decide to become religious and follow god.
you might say, I can’t seek out god because other might take
advantage of me while I am seeking out god. I ask, what do
other people have to do with you seeking out god?
what business of theirs is it?
Are you going to base your life on what other people may or may not do?
The business of self improvement is yours and yours alone. Now most
people use the example of others not improving themselves to justify
them not improving themselves. Other people are the problem with the
world, not me. Forget what other people are doing because you have
not control over other people. You have control over one person and
one person only, that is you.
This business of improving oneself is, frankly hard work. It takes
time, dedication, effort and failure is going to happen. That is the real
problem. The fact that to improve oneself does take time and effort.
Blaming other people is just an excuse to avoid the hard work
of making yourself a better person.
so, you have a choice. That is to remain an animal with animal values
of hate, greed, lust, anger, or to strive to become a better person
with our higher values of love, charity, justice, peace, hope.
That is the real discussion here today. It is not about the policy differences
between candidates. It is about the values we are seeking. That is the true
choice we are making today. Do we accept responsibility and accountability for
ourselves by reaching for our higher, more human self or do we lower ourselves
with animal values?
Society can only be helped, improved when each of us takes responsibility
for who we are and who we want to be, by choosing the values we
want to become.
Policy differences come and go. They are a dime a dozen. But the real lasting
outcome is our decision to grow into our better selves.
I mean, the choice is yours. I cannot decide for you and your spouse
cannot decide for you and your children cannot decide for you.
The choice to rise up and become a better human being and by doing so,
improving society, is yours.
and if we each strive to become better human beings, then much
of the policy decisions become easier because we can see where
we are going to, we can see what we are striving for, we can see
what values we want to become. The choices you make, make
policy decisions that much easier. If we choose to lower ourselves,
then we must, must build prisons over schools and we must arm the
police with ever more brutal weapons and we must engage in an ever
increasingly more violent and brutal society.
If we choose, if we choose to improve ourselves, regardless of what
other people are doing, then we improve society, we improve our state.
We can then focus on meeting the basic needs of people with an increasing
focus on feeding people, putting people in shelters, educating people,
giving better health care choices to people……
But one might argue, that I am being Naïve or unrealistic.
But I am not telling you what to do, I am simply giving you a choice.
My job as president is not to make policy choices, America is of the
people, for the people, by the people and I believe the policy
choices are the people to make, you. But I want your choices to
be made with the values that make us better people. For the values
you hold determines your choices. And I want you to make good, honest
choices based upon the higher values of human existence, not making
choices based upon the lower, animal values of anger, lust, greed, hate and
violence. My job as president is to simple execute your policy choices,
based upon your values. Not my choices and not my values.
If this is an America of the people, for the people, by the people,
then I must, must follow the will of the people, based upon
your choices. All I want is to make sure your choices based
upon your values are the values of the highest order. Values
based upon the higher nature of what it means to be human.
You decide that, I don’t.
If you want a better society, you have to be a better you.
You have to be a better human being, it is as simple as that.
If each of us strives to be a better human being, we then create
a better society, a better society… the choice is yours and yours alone.
The values we hold decides the choices we make.
So decide, what values do you hold?
Do you hold the higher, better angels of our nature or do you hold the lower,
base nature of animals?
Only you can make that choice.
Kropotkin