Dear Steve,
Indeed as you say it is possible to fundamentally change things for the better.
Indeed, no one can do this alone. It needs a mass movement, that requires a team to get that started.
Yet, every individual should also take mental care of him or herself whilst attempting such a venture. It is akin fighting a safe just war against poverty, due to injustice being the root cause of war.
Warriors need to rest and take time to think. I gather you are French(?) so then general Joffre springs to mind, of which the book Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman is a recommended read. President Kennedy had a copy of that book on his desk during the Cuban Missile crises, in order not to blunder in to a WW III. Anyway, Joffre according to Tuchman, let himself be driven along the front, yet always took time to have a decent lunch. Some of us are gifted with the talent to see further into the future than others and have difficulty to communicate this, or to be more precise get the message across.
Being forced into small talk by your partner was an important old school thing my uncle a psychiatrist head of a large psychiatric hospital had told my dad. You need time to switch off.
Wikipedia on William Tecumseh Sherman: "Although his brother, Congressman John Sherman, was well known for his anti-slavery views, Captain Sherman was not an abolitionist and he had expressed some sympathy for the white Southerners' defense of their agrarian system, including the institution of slavery. On the other hand, Sherman was adamantly opposed to secession. In Louisiana he became a close friend of Professor David F. Boyd, a native of Virginia and an enthusiastic secessionist. Boyd later recalled witnessing that, when news of South Carolina's secession from the United States reached them at the Seminary, "Sherman burst out crying, and began, in his nervous way, pacing the floor and deprecating the step which he feared might bring destruction on the whole country."[30] In what some authors have seen as an accurate prophecy of the conflict that would engulf the United States during the next four years,[31] Boyd recalled Sherman declaring:
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it... Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.[32]"
This history of the US Civil war shows what the Romans and colonial powers also knew: when you endanger a way of prosperous living such as via abolition of slavery, it will go suicidal. We Dutch as a colonial power kept the Sultans in power for that very reason. A brain game that keeps the powerful in power, yet forces them to cooperate. No way of rational warning will be heeded, not even by a secessionist professor, even a friend such as Sherman.
The reason Sherman sensed that the North would fight, has been very well shown in a 4 minute film I can't at the moment find: the gest of it was that most immigrants had for the first time the right to vote. Seeing the Union and thus democracy being endangered by succession due to the election of Lincoln being perceived by the South as an abolitionist, even by people such as Sherman who weren't abolitionists would make them fight for that reason. It led to a nervous breakdown of Sherman, knowing as well that he would have to fight his classmates of WestPoint. And he indeed made Georgia howl.
Yet an important other lesson looms namely that of course slavery is a condition sine qua non for the Civil War. The USA is as I'm writing this again at the brink of civil war, due to slavery. Namely not everyone having the fundamental human right to play along for a guaranteed decent income. The root cause.
Most people will only follow authority. It is in our DNA as a survival trait. As you already pointed out as well.
I befriended then prof Richard Gill due to the murder case Lucia de B. A nurse convicted of multiple murders. It was thanks to Richards contact via KNAW that Nobel prize laureate Gerard 't Hooft wrote a short open letter in the newspaper. That was what made the supreme court shift.
The case was about Bayesian versus Empirical statistics and is more fundamental than they then knew.
A new insight for me since last week is that it is even most fundamental.
If you don't want to end up in a Science in Transition bog down, then a decent systematic search for the truth, science will need to redefine in a Bayesian way into: idea, concept with a painted picture in a testable way, the proof thereof (i.e. a proven prime suspect); theory (a concept with the algebra formulas) and a law such as the theories of Einstein should be seen. Yet in their respective boxes.
According to my model the pure mathematical formula of Pierre Laplace taken in the interpretation of Thomas Bayes is an already proven most fundamental law of the cosmos/ nature/ god. Taking all three these words as absolutely identical and thus have consistency i.e. no conflict.
The synapse of our brain is consistent with the cosmos, and it works both deterministic as well as probabilistic. It thus also shows us what the cosmos must be like. Inconsistency with Bayes means pseudoscientific per logical definition. It shows you proper legal proceeding in a very practical way. It is not trivial. It can prevent wars.
It also shows via the Block Model that was found via this Bayesian approach that without Martinus Veltman, Gerard 't Hooft wouldn't have had the Nobel prize and vice versa. Veltman has a clear resounding voice.
The same goes for Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Robert Hooke seen by some as the Leonardo da Vinci of his day. Hooke had to shut up and calculate. Wrong: first paint the whole picture in a testable way. Like Einstein did, knowing he was wrong.
And the same goes for Albert Einstein and his first wife who he needed for the algebra.
The last weeks I've formed a little team, that don't dispute the correctness of my model on their respective areas of expertise, now see if I can bag a big fish (with some help maybe?).
Again I have a beginning of successful tests, hilariously on a private Facebook where an intelligent person objecting to my claim that some people don't have irony tried to use irony, not grasping that correct use of witty irony is more than just state the opposite of what you mean and call that irony. In so doing obviously proving the opposite and having that still to be seen by anyone who does have irony that the attempted falsification not only failed but added stronger proof (/evidence for those not yet convinced) to the contrary.
The situation is dire people. We are on the brink of WWIII.
Yet even so: Carpe Diem! & Savoir Vivre! (Pardon me my French пЃЉ)