Our Mission, should we choose to accept it
First off, I've had to disable anonymous comments due to spammers. Sorry about that, but that is the price of existence in an anarchical world. There will always be those who will abuse the commons, so there must always be those who would rise to defend them from predation and over-use.
From this basic principle, we can derive the entirity of our civilization. We must create rules, draw lines and boundaries around our behavior, our living space, our freedom, in order to protect ourselves. The balance between these restrictions can, at times, be hard to find.
We find ourselves forced to surrender a part to protect the whole. We pull over when the police flash their lights at us, because the alternative is a world where there are no police, no rules on the road, and those with the biggest, toughest, most powerful vehicles can do whatever they wish to those of us stuck with bicycles.
Naturally, such a world is highly desireable to those who have the strength and power. The longing for personal freedom becomes twisted and perverted when it shines through the prism of power. It becomes not just a desire to further one's own wishes, but to subvert the will of others. The more free one feels, the more they become trapped by a need to ensure that freedom by dominating all those around them.
The more one has to lose, the more one worries about losing it. In this way, extreme wealth and extreme happiness and fulfillment are polar opposites. While the wealthy can experience pleasure, humor, and exhiliration, happiness will always for them be just over the horizon. Just one more aquisition away, one more servant, one more bedroom in their mansion, one more pleasure cruise in their yaght, one more private compound, one more dead prostitute, one more molested child, one more stolen election.
In no way do I think people should avoid wealth and consign themselves to the poor house. Being poor is also no way to live and be happy. When you are worried about where your next meal is coming from, and when you worry that if your child gets the flu they could die due to lack of the simple medicines needed to treat it, happiness will also be outside your grasp.
It is, as it almost always is, in the middle ground that we find the happiness. Those with the means to medical care, shelter, food, education, and entertainment, in a stable and steady supply, they are the ones who find true happiness.
Bringing a majority of the people in the world stably into middle class lifestyle is the only way to bring about permanent world peace.
Those who currently own the government of the United States have been blinded by that need for the next, they are the wealthy elites desperately trying to make that purchase of happiness, a purchase that does not transact in coins, a reality to which they have blinded themselves in their zeal.
Some could be educated. Some will never give up their fanaticism. These people are lost in the dark valley of a pleasure filled misery, but they are still people. It is up to us to rescue them from their wealth and power, and deliver them either to a better life or to a quiet rest.
It may be that all it would take is a few words to break that dam in their mind and let reality flood in on them. If Warren Buffet can give up the balance of his fortune to help the poor, then there is hope for any of them.
We have a mission. We must save our brothers and sisters from themselves, and in so doing save us from the results of their sickness. If we fail, then all are lost.
From this basic principle, we can derive the entirity of our civilization. We must create rules, draw lines and boundaries around our behavior, our living space, our freedom, in order to protect ourselves. The balance between these restrictions can, at times, be hard to find.
We find ourselves forced to surrender a part to protect the whole. We pull over when the police flash their lights at us, because the alternative is a world where there are no police, no rules on the road, and those with the biggest, toughest, most powerful vehicles can do whatever they wish to those of us stuck with bicycles.
Naturally, such a world is highly desireable to those who have the strength and power. The longing for personal freedom becomes twisted and perverted when it shines through the prism of power. It becomes not just a desire to further one's own wishes, but to subvert the will of others. The more free one feels, the more they become trapped by a need to ensure that freedom by dominating all those around them.
The more one has to lose, the more one worries about losing it. In this way, extreme wealth and extreme happiness and fulfillment are polar opposites. While the wealthy can experience pleasure, humor, and exhiliration, happiness will always for them be just over the horizon. Just one more aquisition away, one more servant, one more bedroom in their mansion, one more pleasure cruise in their yaght, one more private compound, one more dead prostitute, one more molested child, one more stolen election.
In no way do I think people should avoid wealth and consign themselves to the poor house. Being poor is also no way to live and be happy. When you are worried about where your next meal is coming from, and when you worry that if your child gets the flu they could die due to lack of the simple medicines needed to treat it, happiness will also be outside your grasp.
It is, as it almost always is, in the middle ground that we find the happiness. Those with the means to medical care, shelter, food, education, and entertainment, in a stable and steady supply, they are the ones who find true happiness.
Bringing a majority of the people in the world stably into middle class lifestyle is the only way to bring about permanent world peace.
Those who currently own the government of the United States have been blinded by that need for the next, they are the wealthy elites desperately trying to make that purchase of happiness, a purchase that does not transact in coins, a reality to which they have blinded themselves in their zeal.
Some could be educated. Some will never give up their fanaticism. These people are lost in the dark valley of a pleasure filled misery, but they are still people. It is up to us to rescue them from their wealth and power, and deliver them either to a better life or to a quiet rest.
It may be that all it would take is a few words to break that dam in their mind and let reality flood in on them. If Warren Buffet can give up the balance of his fortune to help the poor, then there is hope for any of them.
We have a mission. We must save our brothers and sisters from themselves, and in so doing save us from the results of their sickness. If we fail, then all are lost.
posted by WalkingShark at 2:34 PM
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