INTRODUCTION

     Our vision was a world radiating harmony.  Our vision embraced a society which valued a person’s uniqueness and welcomed every contribution towards universal love.

    But whether we entered adulthood with flowers in your hair or wearing a combat steel pot, the Establishment proved victorious.  It broke our communal free spirit.  Bureaucrats remained bureaucratic.  Our generation, high on ideals, fell victim to a life of status quo.  We aided and abetted the Establishment to flourish.  We all know why we bought-in.  That isn’t important.  It’s what we do now with our passion: for a life that could be, that could change the future, that could reprise our vision.

     So how do we jump-start our social aspirations, stalled right now in an oppressive selfish state of I-want’s and I’ve got mine? If our dreams have fallen prey to bleak realities, how do we retool our dream while getting by? We have the wisdom and the passion at our disposal – but they’re in hibernation.  We need to reawaken them by rededicating ourselves. 

The following essays offer fifty-two insights intended to increase our wisdom and spark our passions.  One insight might just enough to begin a Renaissance.  More likely, each insight will have to struggle to break through our encrusted shells of rote behavior.  But ideas can awaken and evolve. There can be personal renewal.  There can be family unity.  And, there can be peaceful social reform and harmony in the world.

It is time for our plow of personal discontent to unearth creative action of stagnant ideals.

 Ó Copyright T.B. Fisher & Assoc., 2009, All rights reserved