The primary threat to America, Democracy, and our future is not Trump. It isn’t the GOP. It’s not Congress. It’s not North Korea. The primary threat to our nation is the binary, one-sided, either/or, black and white inflammatory, extremist thinking designed to distract us. This either/or thinking is dumbing down the American public to the important issues that threaten our Nation, our Democracy and the future of humanity.

When asked if there will be more rain associated with a given hurricane in the future, Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said: “ that is not a hard question to answer…..the answer is yes”.She continued “Hurricane Harvey was a perfect storm of flood risk due to the obsolete assumption that we have a stable climate.” We don’t!

Environmental scientists have been warning us of this growing climate warming crisis for decades. Those warnings were not based on their personal beliefs, they were warnings basing on actual global temperature measurements and physics.

The future isn’t what it used to be…..and we know it.

Why It’s So Easy To Ignore What’s Coming

We hear a lot about global climate change, but unfortunately, there are a lot of wealthy corporations and individual who would like us to think that all is well; that there’s nothing to worry about. It’s called denial. The tobacco companies used this technique for years….until the evidence buried their ability to use denial.

I believe inflexible, rigid ideological beliefs, whether religious, political, or economic, are humanity’s most dangerous threats to the future of our planet….and the survival of our species. More than any other human behavior, I am convinced that rigid ideological beliefs, coupled with the human ego’s need to be right, create more conflict, violence, pain, and suffering than any other human behaviors.

I also believe that taming the primitive ego is a powerful, nonreligious way of intentionally awakening the human consciousness, and reducing humanity’s unconscious tendency to adopt inflexible, rigid ideological beliefs, and the need to be right.

I am appalled at the egregious lack of moral fiber in the GOP and their lack of courage to protect the foundational values of our American democracy. Republicans control both the Senate and House. The potential for them to pass measures that would help America become stronger and a leader in the world is being squandered.

It’s hard for many of us to accept, but life does not come with a checklist of guaranteed entitlements…..just because we want something.

For example, we are not entitled to freedom. We are not entitled to health care. We are not entitled to a living wage. We are not entitled to be successful simply because we worked hard. We are not entitled to an education. We are not entitled to live a happy life. We are not entitled to a happy marriage. We are not entitled to financial wealth. We are not entitled to good health. Stated simply….we are not entitled to anything in life…. just because we want it.

There are times when insight strikes without warning. That happened to me recently when I read the simple wisdom for success in a quote by Chief Justice Earl Warren. “To get what you want, stop doing what isn’t working”. It’s that simple! To create a successful life, the day will come when you realize that you have to stop doing what isn’t working.

Why is America using violence to achieve its goals? Even more importantly, why are we not winning the wars we are waging around the world? We are at war with much of the world….and then we wonder why there is such growing anger and violence in our own Nation.

For thousands of years, we survived yesterday. So doing today, what we did yesterday, makes sense. Over time we became genetically conditioned to fear and avoid change. Today, our primitive ego adds another layer to our genetic resistance to change. Our primitive ego avoids change because it undermines and challenges our self-identity. Who we are and what we believe. When our self-identity is threatened by change, we feel internally fragmented. We become anxious.

We are facing a Constitutional crisis. A crisis that threatens to undo the Constitutional checks and balances that have protected our country for over two hundred years. We are rapidly moving away from the American Democracy we’ve enjoyed for the last two centuries.

Rigid ideological beliefs are dangerous. They create arrogance, ignorance, polarization, and conflict. We are facing a Constitutional crisis. A crisis that threatens to undo the Constitutional checks and balances that have protected our country for over two hundred years. We are rapidly moving away from American Democracy

In all the years that I’ve been writing the Stonyhill-Nugget newsletter, I have never experienced the volume of email that I now receive daily from folks who are frightened. Folks who are struggling with despair. Folks who feel insignificant and totally powerless in the face of overwhelmingly complex problems that threaten their future and life as they know it.

The concerns voiced in these emails are both sobering and heartbreaking. How do I survive when the future isn’t what it used to be? How do I find hope and purpose in a world that seems to be falling apart? How do I find meaning in all the chaos? How can I move beyond the anxiety, depression, and fear that seems to be consuming my life?

The top four reasons that people contracted with me as a mental health therapist and life coach were the desire for happiness, the desire to be successful, wanting to improve their relationships with others, and the desire to create a more meaningful (spiritually grounded) life. In each case, the underlying feelings that brought them into treatment were high levels of stress, a sense of powerlessness, and a pervasive feeling of anxiety. Essentially, they were not satisfied with the quality of their life.

Are you, like so many American’s, struggling to create a happy and meaningful life? Are you wondering what’s happened to our great Nation? Is America really falling apart as so many pundits are now predicting? Is happiness a myth? Should we just throw in the towel and call it quits?

A while back I came across a humorous post on Facebook that said: “More and more I find myself completing my thoughts, statements, and sentences with “just saying”… because ending them with “ignorant dumbass” would be considered offensive

So I guess I should call this article on ignorance a “just saying” article.

Have you noticed we are living in an increasingly contentious, ideologically rigid world? There are few times in American history that match the levels of polarization, emotional angst, anger, stress, anxiety, and division we are witnessing today. We are divided over issues of gay marriage, Trump, abortion, healthcare, politics, religion, wealth inequality, the economy, job creation, immigration, building walls, building pipelines, race, ethnic background, poverty, social programs, hunger, and women’s rights.

Until we fully understand and tame our unconscious primitive ego through growth in self-awareness, every solution we come up with to deal with these three rapidly growing problems will be ineffective; an exercise in folly. Until we understand the underlying nature or cause of these three threats to our human civilization, no solution, no matter how creative, will successfully solve those threats. The underlying nature of the threats that we face will continue to impact every decision we make in our attempts to resolve these threats.

Why is humanity ignoring six critical threats to human civilization and global stability?

For example, why are supposedly smart politicians and government leaders around the world so adamantly denying the findings of 97% of all the world’s credible environmental scientists? An alarming number of our nation’s elected politicians and government leaders continue to publicly deny the reality of global warming and climate intensification…..without offering any hard data to support what are clearly their own personal opinions. They are blatantly ignoring the world’s credible environmental scientists who, supported by scientific data, are clearly warning us that……

• the devastating consequences of global warming are happening,

• they are arriving faster than predicted, and

• they are expected to intensify to dangerous levels for human civilization in the years ahead.

“I want more happiness in my life”. Unfortunately, happiness is not an object one can achieve directly. It is always the by-product of goals that improve the world…..or the lives of others.

Here are a few insights I have discovered about the nature of happiness over the years.

We ended our discussion in the previous Stonyhill-Nugget on the importance of embracing reality if we want to embrace hope in what feels like dark times for our nation. Today I want to continue Part 2 of that conversation by taking a deeper look at the subject of value, and the importance of value clarity if we want to embrace hope in what feels like dark times for our nation.

To get us back up to speed, here are the last few paragraphs of Part 1. We left off our discussion at Reality #8……….talking about how values matter.