“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
BARACK OBAMA, speech, Feb. 5, 2008

I had a conversation with a friend from the US last weekend. She is doubtful that Obama’s stimulus plan will work!

Stimulus is defined in the Oxford English dictionary as ‘something that promotes activity, interest, or enthusiasm’.

I attended a gathering in Dublin recently where we had discussion about the times we are in. I spoke to a man in his late sixties who said he was feeling a sense of dejavue. He said he was involved in similar discussions in the late sixties and seventies. He said we made changes all right as a result, but are we any better off? I then wondered if with all that has changed over the last 50 years how much real learning has taken place? I’m afraid I’m skeptical that the answer to that is ‘very little if anything’. 

I’m now wondering if we make a recovery from where we are right now will we make enough fundamental change that will positively impact the quality of life for the majority of the planets population. I know what you’re thinking on this one already! NO We Won’t.

I then wonder what it will take for us to truly learn, to learn that the way we manage our world is fundamentally flawed with half the world’s population officially in poverty, 13,000 children under the age of five dying every day from preventable causes, and so on!!!!

I wonder if the US stimulus plan were not to work would it create a wake up call for the people of the US and the rest of the world.

Imagine your alarm clock goes off and you wake up. You wake up to find out that you had been living a terrible nightmare, but now it’s all over; now there is peace in the world, resources are fairly shared, people care more about others and less about themselves, people have values and morals, etc, etc.

Imagine?

What is it that we need to wake us up from this nightmare?