Dear Michael,

I hope you are right about this, but I have doubts. The current existential crisis of humanity (from climate catastrophe to war to economic collapse) has indeed brought us collectively to a place where we must either evolve into our higher, nobler selves—or die horribly, whether from violence, starvation, or nuclear holocaust. Collectively, I fear, we will be swayed by our greed, ignorance, fear, denial. and vanity to bring on our demise (cf Barbara Tuchman’s “March of Folly”). But individually, we can choose the higher path, but this will take effort and dedication. And with extraordinary luck, we will find charismatic Bodhisattvas most will follow (like Gandhi, ML King, Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, or Wangari Maathai) rather than malignantly charismatic tyrants like Putin, Trump, Bolsonaro, etc. We can only hope…