Excerpt:

Let me explain.

Every positive change in human behavior is always preceded by an expansion of consciousness. This is true whether you're talking about positive behavioral changes in an individual or in a collective.

By "expansion of consciousness" I mean an increase in awareness — someone or a group of someones becoming more aware of something than they previously were:

• Someone gaining a new perspective on the forces within themselves which drive them to seek out dysfunctional relationships.
• An addict becoming more conscious of the inner dynamics that compel them to use.
• A victim of abuse realizing that abuse is happening, and that a better life is possible, and that they deserve it.
• A community becoming aware that their clergy have been sexually abusing children.
• The US civil rights movement making Americans more aware of the injustice and destructiveness of racism.
• Increased literacy and a greater ability to distribute the written word giving society a greater hunger for freedom and democracy and less tolerance for overt tyranny.

Etc.

Conditions don't get better until the forces which give rise to them are clearly seen and understood. This movement from the darkness of unconsciousness into the light of awareness can create the illusion that things are getting worse, because they turn up so much ugliness.

After the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, his mother made the decision to hold an open-casket funeral to expose the world to the cruelty that black Americans were being subjected to by showing his mutilated body to the public. In that moment it looked like the world was being made more ugly, because an ugliness that had previously gone unseen by many people was being published in papers across the country. But it was later said that "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention on not only American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy."

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