Freedom From Want and Fear

I was reading The Universal Declaration of Human Rights when I discovered something I haven’t noticed before:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

After a simple search of the phrase, the Four Freedoms came up.

How much was Roosevelt’s promise in that speech realized today?

If I understand the words correctly,
To not live in fear is to have freedom from fear;
To have one’s basic needs met is to have freedom from want.

Whereas fearmongering is a staple of world-wide politics and something something poverty [TK: need more thinking], how advertising boosts people’s desires (i.e. commercialization) is concerning to me as well. [TK: due to lack of knowledge, this paragraph is left for my future self to complete.]

This has been a common reoccuring theme in human history, which suggests that it has something to do with human nature. If we want to change that, we must try something we haven’t tried before, like teaching everyone introspection.

Adding a inner loop to a strange loop is bound to cause weird things to happen to the individual. For one, their actions will become less predictable. Is the unforseen cost worth the whatever social change I want to see? [your answer here]. We may or may not see it come to fruition.

If you want to change something about this world, you may start by learning how to inspect yourself.

Using True Names For Individuals

I invite you to join the following experiment.

Find a news article. Any article.

Replace the names of people appearing within that article with descriptions of what they believe, what they advocate, what they do - the end result could be paragraphs long, but that’s ok.

If you do this consistently - instead of using names to refer to someone, use what they are - you might discover a new way to look at the world.

Good luck, have fun, bye!