by Ray Jason
It
was the last full moon of winter. My
little ship, which was facing north, gently veered around to the east - as
though she too wanted to admire the luminous moon as it rose above this jungle
lagoon. Some unknown instinct had prompted
me to write this essay not in the daylight or not by lamplight, but under the
spell of moonlight. I abide by such mysterious
murmurings.
So I sat on deck with my back
leaning against the mast. In my lap was
a pen and my trusty clipboard, but tonight it had a small book-light attached
to it. Beside me was a cup of soothing green
tea. This seemed appropriate - because
the catalyst for this essay had been an old Chinese proverb. That morning it had sailed back into my
consciousness after years of languishing in my philosophical backwaters. It states with almost unsettling clarity and
simplicity a truth that Humanity seems to be ignoring.
“If
we don’t change our direction, we will end up where we are headed.”
My philosopher’s mission is to meditate on the
sweeping trends that impact the human caravan and to not be distracted by the transient
frenzy of day to day events. My quest is
to separate the message from the background noise. An effective way to do this is to focus on
our most elemental needs. Some of these
basics include: water, food, jobs, security and entertainment.
When I step back and contemplate
these essentials from a lens that is even as long as my own lifetime, it seems
indisputable that the trend-line has not been good. It has not been good for the great mass of
ordinary, “just trying to get by” humans.
But for those at the apex of the wealth and power pyramid, the last 50
years have been an obscene bonanza.
These “haves,” who I prefer to call The Malignant
Overlords, now possess a higher percentage of planetary riches than at any
point in history. And they have managed
to hypnotize most of the world with the false promise of Representative Government. But those who govern are also rich; and so
they “represent” the interests of the few rather than the needs of the many.
Another tool that the rich and powerful use to
undermine our interests, is the false promise of Progress. But instead of delivering more freedom, less
poverty, greater justice and worldwide peace, we have reaped a very different
harvest from the seeds of progress. We
have been burdened with too much technology and too much complexity – which have
spawned too much dependency.
When I was young, I used to be able to fix my own car. But if I pop the hood on a modern car, I can
barely find the engine in there under the canopy of useless doodads … “turn
right at the next corner.” A teenager
might say, “Awesome, it’s got a talking GPS.”
But a philosopher asks, “Should a person who cannot read a map, actually
be driving a 3,000 pound missile?”
*******
With that as an initial example, let’s now go back and
examine those basics that I listed a few paragraphs ago. Let’s see how the greed of the rich and
powerful has affected our lives - despite their supposed panaceas of Democracy
and Progress.
·
Water Only a few decades ago, water flowing directly
from the household tap was safe to drink.
It was also inexpensive. But as
our techno-industrial civilization polluted more and more water sources, the
need for bottled water accelerated. This
concentrated control of this most precious human necessity into the hands of
fewer and fewer multi-national corporations.
Now, high-tech fracking is causing water havoc in two more ways. It requires a huge amount of water to remove
the oil, and it often contaminates nearby aquifers and wells. I could also throw in excessive water
diverted to Big Agriculture through political lobbying and the dangers of fluoride. But instead, I will ask this important
question. Did you, my unknown reader,
have any influence on this major shift in the water landscape? Were you consulted before our streams and
wells were poisoned? Did you get to ask
for further studies on the pros and cons of fluoridation? Of course not, this was just imposed upon
you.
·
Food And what have the advances in “food technology”
bequeathed us? They have blessed us with
substances that have to be labeled as “food products” because they are not
actually food foods. They are laced with
hormones, anti-biotics, insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and other additives
that our biological systems do not recognize - and can barely process. The result is a significantly obese
population that is overfed but undernourished. But that is in the so-called advanced
world. In many countries billions of
people are both undernourished and underfed.
On a planet of plenty, these unfortunates are actually starving to
death.
·
Jobs This is a category in which we get to witness the ruthless
malignancy of our overlords. As absentee
owners, they do not care if a factory is shut down and the jobs shipped
overseas. They don’t worry if people’s
dignity is debased and their community turned into a ghost town. The important thing is the bottom line. And the future gleams even more brightly for
the wealthy, as morons disguised as scientists, create better robots to
completely negate the need for human workers.
And so more and more people are forced to rely on government
handouts. But only a fool fails to see
that the hand that gives is the same hand that can take away.
·
Security Although governments constantly claim that they are
providing more and more security FOR their citizens, what they are actually doing
is providing more and more security FROM their citizens. Our overlords suspect that the underclass
will only tolerate this degree of shafting for so long before they start to
display some significant counter-malignancy.
They have even invented a new term for this severely stressed sector of
the population. They call it the Precariat. Full-spectrum surveillance and militarized
police forces certainly do not help me feel more secure.
·
Entertainment So, in a world of meaningless work, with Big Brother monitoring
you while you are eating processed junk and drinking questionable water, the
need for entertainment is obvious. The problem is that the Malignant Overlords
realize they must keep the Precariat in a trance. So they force feed them violent superhero movies
and music that is vapid or vicious and sporting spectacles that reinforce the “us
against them” message. Our Rulers want
us distracted, but they certainly do not want us awakened. That is why the alternative media, which is
willing to oppose the status quo, is being branded as “fake news” and being severely
attacked. And because it is such a
genuine threat, those in control have already developed the capacity to shut
down the Web. Only an iFool would not
believe that the M.O.s would gladly do so.
*******
After editing my moon-spun notes for
this essay, I sailed over to a little thatched-roof restaurant for some Sunday
brunch. Along the way, I had to alter
course to avoid a pretty nasty reef.
While doing so, I couldn’t help but recall the proverb that had inspired
this meditation.
“If
we don’t change our direction, we will end up where we are headed.”
Is the Ship of Humanity not headed
for a deadly reef? Have we not been
lulled into danger by the comforting belief that because today is like
yesterday then tomorrow will be like today?
If that is how you feel, then you might want to ponder this. Almost every ship that was ever splintered
upon a reef, believed that there was “clear sailing ahead.”