A Better World

You can't build a better world for people, people have to build a better world for themselves. Granny Weatherwax said that or something like it. Of all the inequities in the world, the Bible comes close in nailing down what I believe to be the root cause: selfishness. From selfishness comes greed and from greed comes the proverbial love of money. It's pretty easy to come up with situations where love of money isn't the cause of evil but selfishness is harder to factor out.

If I could pull out selfishness from the spectrum of human behavior, would I?

There's a reason that selfishness is such a base behavior: it's beneficial to the survival of the individual of the species therefore the selfish survive and procreate and pass on their selfish ways. Lately, humanity has turned evolution on its head somewhat. Where someone, say, with poor vision might have had difficulties surviving in the past, today it's a non-issue. Not only can we correct the problem, but we don't even really need to. Not every person has to be able to track down his own food anymore. So this previously "poor" genetic material that would not have been as likely to replicate can now "pollute" the pool and we could end up going backwards.

If you take away selfishness, at least at some point in the indeterminate past, we would not be where we are today. This position I refer to includes the good of where we are today along with the bad, technologically, culturally, intellectually, etc. The question is, do we still need this trait? Or more broadly, is it possible that we could someday do without it? As an aside, I offer that the oft expressed discontent of humanity has also been crucial to our progress.

Selfishness has gotten to a point in our society where a select few can govern and control the masses for their own benefit. The super rich got that way through the exploitation of the anyone lower in the food chain, which turns out to be everyone. Some people just feel the effects more severely. I can't fix this myself and neither can you. The question is, will we fix this?

There are various signs that point towards optimism even amongst all the problems we face as a species. The greatest hope I feel is the increasing interconnection between practically everyone on the planet. The level of communication is coming closer to truly putting power in the hands of the people. All the people. Free access. It has never really been feasible to do this, but maybe soon it will be. Those in power are legitimately worried. I see attempts to stop this access and most folk don't even see the war that's going on. They rely on the old media for their information and thus have more difficulty seeing with open eyes. But the times, they are a changin'.

In the end, a species is a self-correcting mechanism. While the selfishness is beneficial, the species can thrive. If not, it may disappear. We're taking some of this power into our own hands now, but the effects will be the same as if they had arisen naturally. We're speeding up the process of evolution. Not all species survive. In fact, most don't. You'd better start swimmin'.

Desert of the Real

And now for a stream of consciousness...

I find a certain comfort in the familiarity of routine. Yet I cannot abide the sameness of things. I crave change. I get tired so easily. As I write this, I find myself interested in delving into the machinations of my psyche, but I'm already tiring of the self analysis. It's getting old. Let's do something new. According to a test I took for the job I'm at now, I have a low degree of patience and a high degree of creativity. Top of the scale creativity. Maybe that's a bad combination. The lack of patience - which I see more clearly now after having learned of the test results, perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy - means that I easily get bored with things, not to mention getting pissed off at having to wait in line or traffic. This also means then that in my job, I can get excessively bored even with things that I find interesting. The fascination fades with exposure. And it doesn't take long. "Well, this is new. Now it's not." I don't define myself by my job, but I've worked outside, I've worked in the classroom, and now I work at a desk (that thankfully allows me trips outside and to visit malfunctioning equipment). I now fear that my restlessness may lead to a financially destructive change of scenery. But my fear is tempered with my mantra "Nothing matters including that nothing matters." I could do with less money as I'll explain. I've heard that familiarity breeds contempt, so maybe that's it. I'm not unique in my ennui of sameness; it's happened before. Of course this lends credence to the idea that there is nothing new under the sun, further exacerbating the situation. Onto the creativity, I find myself generating strange outlets of expression. Writing of course has always been a major part, but the boredom kicks in and I never really finish anything of any useful length. At least towards doing something for public consumption. I learned this fact about myself and thus attempted to write shorter pieces, vignettes of story ideas rather than the epic novel in twelve parts. But writing's not that weird. Everybody does that too. So I enjoy art, but have long since abandoned any attempts at it. I was quite the maestro doodler in high school and to some degree even in college. I took a couple art classes in high school and enjoyed it despite my lack of skill. Creativity doesn't mean that you're any good at it. Lately I've been doing weird things with food. Experimentation if you will. Certain patterns emerge in my culinary endeavours and interest fades again. Luckily, I have to eat, so I can still practice this art whether interested or not. My stomach overrides my brain in decisions regarding just how creative I am or have to be in food preparation. I can't exactly quit, so I still practice. Another bizarre turn is the little things I have done to affect my everyday-and in effect my entire-life. Call it the art of living. I eat more healthy in addition to more creatively. Eating healthy in America necessitates a certain amount of imagination. Or sublimation of the will. Speaking of the sublimation, I try to make do with less as a general rule. It's not asceticism, but at first I called it minimalism. It's all about balance, so now I call it essentialism. If I don't need something, I get rid of it or never acquire to begin with. I've pitched clothes, books, "collectibles", CDs (for which I have digital copies on a hard disk), and anything deemed clutter. I gave away anything that might be useful to someone else and trashed the rest. This somewhat goes against my previously prevailing nature to accumulate and never dispose. I was a terrible packrat and still worry that I may lapse. Essentialism also complements my so called diet; I only eat what I need. Well, usually. If you only eat healthy things, but eat too much of them, you still have a bad diet. Quality and quantity are both important aspects here. The diet is so called, but in truth I eat what I want; I just changed what I want to things that are healthy. This may seem simplistic in theory, but the implementation is tricky. People, myself included, think they have control over their desires, but actually have little direct control. Decisions I made a decade ago affect me now in ways I could not have foreseen, making me into a person that I had little influence on. At least cognizant influence. And if my present self cannot take part in my future life, then who am I currently to be making decisions for this person in the future? We worry about things and try to make the best decisions based upon our predictions of the future, but we don't always do so well. As mother Mary whispered, "Let it be". There is a certain hint of taoism in there that trucks with me. Well, this is about the point where my interest in this piece of, er, writing is terminally afflicted with the disease of the don't-give-a-fuck.