Uniting for a Brighter Future

We cannot move forward together while hundreds of thousands are left behind to suffer, because intentional suffering fractures the very foundation of progress. When more than 770,000 people are unhoused in a world of abundance, this is not a tragedy of inevitability but a choice we continue to tolerate, and no society can claim strength, unity, or advancement while allowing harm to be built into its systems. We do not move forward despite one another—we move forward because of one another, and when we permit suffering to persist by design, we weaken the collective intelligence, creativity, and resilience we need to survive and thrive. We need every person, every mind, every contribution, and progress that excludes is not progress at all.

We must begin by telling ourselves the truth: we are the creators of the world we live in, not passive occupants of it, and government is not a force of nature but a collective instrument shaped, funded, tolerated, and corrected by the people themselves. The outcomes it produces—good or harmful—are therefore reflections of our collective choices and our collective inaction. If we want different results, we must acknowledge where responsibility truly lives. Power does not exist only in institutions; it exists in consent, participation, and the willingness to correct what is harming others. When government fails people, that failure does not occur in isolation—it occurs within a society that allowed it to persist.

If we believe that the essence of any species is survival, adaptation, and protection of its own, then the idea that some must suffer so others may succeed represents not strength or evolution, but a biological failure. Successful species do not sacrifice large portions of themselves for comfort or profit; they build environments where survival is stable and where intelligence is used to reduce harm, not justify it. To frame suffering as necessary is to misunderstand evolution itself. Adaptation is not cruelty—it is cooperation, efficiency, and the preservation of life. A system that thrives only by harming its own is not advancing; it is consuming itself slowly.

To owe our success to the tears, hunger, fear, or displacement of others is not only absurd—it is incompatible with real progress. Achievement built on suffering is not success, it is extraction disguised as merit. I do not want my personal progress, stability, or comfort to make life harder for others, and I refuse to believe that advancement must come at the cost of another person’s dignity or survival. My personal essence, like our collective one, is to make life better for the next generations, not more fragile, more unequal, or more cruel. Progress should widen opportunity, not narrow it to those who can endure harm the longest.

We carry both a biological and moral obligation to improve the conditions of life for those who come after us and for those who live alongside us now. No government, no economy, and no society that considers itself functional should ever accept that more than 770,000 human beings are unhoused and suffering as an acceptable outcome. Ever. This is not a failure of imagination or resources; it is a failure of priority. When suffering reaches this scale and persists, it is no longer accidental—it becomes normalized, defended, and quietly maintained.

The question we must confront honestly is whether we are willing to allow businesses and corporations to pay wages below the threshold required for basic survival—food, shelter, healthcare, and stability—and whether by doing so we are collectively agreeing to intentional suffering. Not suffering caused by scarcity or disaster, but suffering designed into the system. For what reason? Especially when we are the creators of everything in our modern world, when abundance exists, productivity is immense, and access is governed by policies written and upheld by people. Are we truly saying that with all our intelligence and capability, we cannot create a better way?

Perhaps the deeper issue is that many have not yet recognized that they themselves are the power behind everything being created today. Governments do not exist without consent. Markets do not operate without participation. Policies do not persist without tolerance. We hold full responsibility for systems that produce harm, and when suffering becomes widespread, preventable, and ongoing, responsibility becomes obligation. Silence and delay do not remove accountability; they simply extend the harm.

A clearer way to examine this is personal and unavoidable: would you accept your own children suffering under these conditions, or would any creator—biological or spiritual—permit hundreds of thousands of their children to be unhoused while others live in excess? Would we accept a system that allows suffering for some but not others if those lines were drawn around our own families? From a biological perspective, intelligence and capability were never meant to be applied in isolation. They evolved to protect the group, to stabilize environments, and to ensure continuity—not to justify exclusion.

Yet today, intelligence is often applied singularly, detached from collective responsibility, when it should be shaping systems that do not allow this level of harm to exist at all. We do not need policies that intentionally allow suffering; such allowance runs against everything we were created for. Companies resist paying livable wages, prices have risen beyond what survival allows, and pathways out of being unhoused are blocked not by impossibility but by unwillingness. We must look at this truthfully rather than hiding behind complexity or delay.

We can continue ignoring suffering, normalizing it, or rationalizing it—or we can acknowledge that it is within our power to end it. The world we live in is one we collectively chose to build, and therefore it is one we collectively have the responsibility to change.

What weighs heavily on my heart is the silence—especially from institutions that claim moral authority, spiritual guidance, and alignment with a creator whose central message is love, care, and protection of life. Churches and religious institutions are not powerless observers of suffering; they are among the most organized, resourced, trusted, and influential structures in society, and with that influence comes responsibility. When frameworks exist that produce perpetual suffering—poverty wages, exclusionary systems, policies that leave more than 770,000 people unhoused—and those frameworks are ignored rather than challenged, silence becomes participation. If one believes in a creator, then the correction of harm is not optional; it is the assignment. To witness suffering and choose comfort, neutrality, or institutional preservation over intervention raises a question not of belief, but of alignment.

If spiritual evolution, salvation, or heaven is real, how can it be reconciled with intentional ignorance of harm that is visible, measurable, and preventable? How can a soul evolve while turning away from the suffering of others, especially when the tools to intervene exist? Faith without action is not faith—it is abstraction. Prayer without correction is not devotion—it is avoidance. At some point, belief must translate into responsibility, or it becomes hollow ritual. If churches are meant to be the rock, the refuge, the moral compass, then when will they stand against the systems that fracture human dignity instead of adapting to them?

And for those who are not religious, the obligation does not disappear—it simply changes language. Evolution itself assigns responsibility. Intelligence did not emerge so individuals could succeed alone while the group collapses around them. Consciousness did not arise to justify indifference. Every social species that survives does so by protecting its vulnerable members, stabilizing environments, and correcting threats to collective well-being. To ignore suffering at scale is not neutrality; it is a deviation from the very mechanisms that allow a species to endure.

Whether one speaks in terms of God, creation, or biology, the conclusion is the same: we are not meant to advance while others are left to suffer. Silence in the face of preventable harm is not spiritual maturity, nor is it evolutionary wisdom. At some point, institutions—religious or secular—must decide whether they exist to preserve themselves or to protect life. And so must we.

This responsibility does not stop at religious institutions; it extends to every public voice with a platform—especially those who speak to millions through television, media, and positions of influence. Anyone addressing the public must ask themselves a fundamental question: what framework am I speaking from, and what outcomes does it produce? Vision without examination of framework is empty rhetoric. If the framework being defended or normalized results in perpetual harm, rising inequality, or more than 770,000 people being unhoused, then the vision being presented is not progress—it is maintenance of suffering.

Frameworks are not neutral. They are the engines that determine outcomes. When public figures argue within systems that structurally require exploitation, poverty wages, or exclusion to function, they are not offering solutions; they are reinforcing the problem, even if the language sounds compassionate. If the framework itself generates suffering, then any goal achieved within it will inevitably reproduce that harm. Progress does not come from better messaging—it comes from better structures.

The real question is not what policies are being debated on television, but what assumptions those debates are built upon. Are we discussing how to manage suffering more efficiently, or how to eliminate it entirely? Are we defending systems because they are familiar, or because they actually serve life? If a framework cannot lead to the reduction of suffering—if it cannot realistically move 770,000 unhoused people toward safety and stability—then it should not be defended, normalized, or broadcast as viable.

Frameworks are the aim of progress. Outcomes are the proof. And any public vision that cannot reconcile its framework with the elimination of large-scale, preventable suffering must be questioned—not out of hostility, but out of responsibility.

If we are the creators of the systems we live under, why do we act as though we are powerless to change them? If suffering is not necessary for progress, why do we continue to defend structures that produce it? If we would never accept this reality for our own children, why do we accept it for others? And if our abundance, intelligence, and capacity already exist, what are we waiting for to use them? The question is no longer whether a better way is possible—it is whether we are willing to claim the responsibility, courage, and collective power required to create it.