Generation Skip — Planting the Seeds

We have now offered up several site locations, built infrastructures, but there are no beings present to occupy these frameworks.  We must now begin the difficult process of selecting and then planting the seeds.  There are multiple options available to us.  We could, on one end of the spectrum, populate this infrastructure with orphans, unwanted babies, those up for adoption.  On the other end of the spectrum, we could develop a very systematic, scientific, goal focused method to populate the framework with our best newborns.  At this far end of the spectrum, we could use genetic testing on the parents, measure the parents IQ quotient, judge their physical beauty, the temperament and quality of their being and traits.  We could ensure these potential parents eat the best foods, are cared for and nurtured to result in a healthy and unstressed pregnancy term, and then analyze and review all the infants to select the best quality from the crop.  And then there are numerous options in between.

I offer up the entire spectrum.  Part of me wants to pick the orphans, and part of me wants to pick the other end of the spectrum.  The former appeals to me because it eliminates so many problems with the status quo when it comes to my ideas of what needs to be done with these infants.  I also find it appealing because these little innocent beings have come on-line without really being wanted.  I fear this occurs far too often which I already covered in the prologue.  The later appeals to me because it more closely resembles what occurs in the natural world, where there is a battle to earn mating rights and the victor, assumed to be the strongest and most healthy specimen, passes on the best genes to the offspring and thereby increases the probability of survival and perpetuation of the species.  As such, I am going to select the later, but will not exclude the former or all those in between the two extremes as options.  But to be clear, I choose the scientific and more naturalistic approach.  Besides, picking the later is more interesting for now it forces me to describe sacrifice, approach Freud, and offer an alternative and point of differentiation from the status quo.  These parents and offspring will be a cross-section of races and ethnicities and the selection process will ensure a well-rounded representation.  We must also ensure a balanced representation of males and females.

Once the prime infants have been selected, they will be transplanted to the utopian sites and infrastructures.  The participating parents may live in the infrastructure as guests, but not as permanent residents.  The mother will have access to the infant for nurturing and breast-feeding, and the father given access for whatever purpose he may serve, but overall, parent time with the infant will be limited.  In fact, this is the sacrifice which I spoke of earlier.  The parents will play a very limited role with the child.  Once the child has developed his or her own mind, sense of being, the parents may have all the access they want and vice versa.  The parents are corrupt, and as such, must not be a significant influence in the child’s development.  The parents are corrupt from what is, from what has come before, from their experience in what is, and from their struggle to succeed in what is.  The parents are corrupt because they are merely spinning around on the wheel.  Their experience and insight is useless in the fresh utopian framework.  These participating parents must also make yet another sacrifice.  Both individuals will have the functionality of their reproductive systems rendered inactive.  They may still enjoy the pleasures of love-making, but their reproductive efforts are finished.  Why you ask, would I impose such a sacrifice?  Because this utopian framework is not going to add to what is one of the primary problems we face as a species – overpopulation and limited resources. 

Why would any potential parents be interested in participating in the population of this utopian construct given the two above sacrifices?  Because their child is going to be given access to cutting edge education.  Their child is going to be treated as the focus of this upstart community and therefore will have the access to the best food, healthcare, and opportunities for self-development ever recorded in human history.   These little beings will be the only focus of the community with undivided attention, not a peripheral project, object, or means to perpetuate what currently is.  Their child is not a seed to be groomed for perpetuating the profit motive; rather their child will be groomed for innovation, creation, a new birth and hope in the human experiment and resulting direction.   The next post will focus on education.

Generation Skip — Site Location

The first step in creating this utopian construct is finding a location site for the birth of Generation Skip.   Before I get into this topic, I want to point out that Generation Skip isn’t the name of this utopian construct, rather, this term merely signifies a break from the wheel or treadmill that generation upon generation has been subjected to for far too long.  Selecting a location site for this utopian foundation should not be underestimated.  If we look back in time, it is clear that the geological features surrounding a culture had huge implications and impacts on the beings that dwelled there.  The features, the resources, the fauna, the temperatures, the seasons, all impacted the development of the culture.  The surrounding land and water features, climate, plants and animals, seeped into their very being. 

The location site could be anywhere in the world but we must ensure that the following minimum criteria is achieved.  First, the site must be relatively isolated from the current human world.  Second, the location must be well protected by the existing society outside the perimeter which would act as a sort of guardian, nanny, or distant mother.  Third, the site must have fertile land and resources which can enable the culture to become self-sufficient over time.  Fourth, the location should be surrounded by abundant and bountiful nature, beauty — unspoiled.  We could put these sprouts in the middle of a desert or an arctic icescape, which would be interesting, but why not pick a site with fresh rivers, forests, mountains, ocean, and or fertile plains?  Why not place them among the noble wild beasts, the Orca, the bear, the eagle, the hawk, the wolf, or the tiger, the crocodile, the python, and the leopard?  Such unspoiled places do still exist.

We mustn’t get hung up on one site, for I envision many utopian constructs developing all over the world in a wide variety of geographic landscapes and fauna.  We want variety, differentiation, experimentation, and variation.  We do not want one singular solution, but we do want environments and locations that meet the basic criteria outlined above.  And we most certainly want open frameworks that free these upstart human utopias from the wheel.   What is that?  Did you say “utopias” as opposed to just utopia?  Yes, I did.  Do you foresee potential conflicts, disagreements, war, between these various experimental utopias?  Do you foresee potential conflicts, disagreements, war, between these various utopian constructs and the status quo societies – us?  I will be interested to see how these new upstart cultures deal with such tension between themselves and with the cultures that surround them at large after they have been enlightened to man’s history.   

I have offered some images in this post and I would love to have a vote if we had to choose just one site, but I am afraid we don’t have enough visitors to make it interesting.  As such, I enjoy contemplating multiple utopian site locations as well as multiple utopian solutions and visions sprouting up from these virgin, unspoiled, free territories.  The potential, the imagination, is wide open, limitless, and open to be defined.  The next post will briefly discuss the temporary infrastructure to support these new upstart communities.

Generation Skip — Prologue

I often grow tired of observing and then criticizing the current human direction.  Therefore, I decided to take a break and offer my thoughts on how the human species could attempt to take control of its own destiny and set a potentially more fruitful course than the direction we have currently chartered.  I will say that like Socrates, I realize I know nothing and therefore these utopian visions are merely offered up to you as a form of contemplation or an impetus for us to discuss and debate the content, the ideas, or whatever comes to mind.  Of course Socrates would use the dialectic to explore such a concept and would not approve of this essay type format so it is my hope that some form of dialectic occurs in the comment sections.  I apologize if the length of these posts exceeds the more marketable short post format, but I need to expand my thoughts on this topic.  I am less interested in attracting a large crowd than I am in attracting a few that may understand and appreciate the awful predicament in which we currently find ourselves. 

Generation Skip will involve several posts and attempts to throw a wrench in the powerful cogs that have led us to what I have defined as “Gridlock” (see previous post).  In essence, this group of posts will communicate with broad strokes an outline or framework for a utopian solution to Gridlock.  Creating a utopian outline within the context of what currently exists as “human reality” is a very difficult and multifaceted project which can take many forms.  Previous and much more intelligent thinkers have already provided a variety of utopian visions or in some cases, comedies or nightmares.  My outline is merely one of an infinite number of potential frameworks for a utopian structure which is why I will in fact leave the ultimate goals and visions up to those beings living in Generation Skip to define on their own.  I am merely trying to remove and free these beings from what I perceive to be the primary mechanisms that have led us to Gridlock.  My goal is to free them from the heavy freight train-like momentum which has led us into a state of Gridlock.   

The problems which I have observed in our current human world have all been touched upon in previous posts contained in this blog, but I want to briefly recap the big issues here and now.  I think after outlining these key problems that my intention and logic for creating Generation Skip will make more sense and appear less comical and more logical. 

First, I believe we have lost our way and allowed ourselves to be almost entirely consumed by and with economics.  In fact, I fear that economics has become the primary focus of our energies, goals, visions, and spirit.  Economics has always been a piece of civilization, but I believe it has become by a large margin (excuse the pun) the biggest piece of the pie.  I fear that it over-rides, dominates, and suppresses all of our other potentially wonderful human traits, abilities, and creations.  I fear that it holds hostage science, technology, medicine, education, law, politics, engineering, religion, spiritual endeavors, art, and other wonderful fields.  All of these fields are held to constraints by funding, profits, money, and capital resources.  None of these fields are short of human beings with great brains and talents.  I am taking the above claim as a given and will not take time and space to prove these points.  If you disagree, then by all means state your opinion and corresponding argument.

Economics, and in particular, capitalism, is based on one very important assumption – the human being is not motivated to create, innovate, or act effectively or efficiently without the incentive to make money, turn in a profit, and become wealthy.  In the most primal aspect of this primary assumption, the human being is placed in the realm of training and motivating a young puppy.  Many assume that a puppy will not act “appropriately” or learn to heal, sit, lie down, shake hands, or rollover unless you offer or reward the puppy with a treat.  The treat in economics or capitalism is money or accumulated wealth.

I have more hope, confidence in and respect for the human being and its potential than do capitalists and economists.  All I have to do is look at children.  Do children learn to walk, talk, read and write in exchange for money?  Does a child hug his mom because he is expecting a buck in return?  Does a child laugh and cry, play and fight, dream or imagine only because he or she wants to make some dough?  Do children play team sports and work together for common goals based on the assumption that they will make coin?  Does a child become interested in a musical instrument or singing in hopes of becoming rich?  There are so many intangibles that motivate or cause children to do what they do, and money and profit isn’t one of them.  It is only when these children reach a certain age that they begin to become concerned with earning money and entering the “real world”. 

I want to make a few broader points here.  If you observe the natural world around us, not a single animate species is motivated by or acts for the exchange of money.  The same principle applies to all that is inanimate – momentum, gravity, chaos, order, creation, destruction, all occur without earning a penny.  The human being is THE ONLY thing in the entire universe (as far as we know) that is addicted to or functions on the concept of money.  We must realize that everything we have created, infrastructure, airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, technology, satellites, space shuttles, antibiotics, were all not created by economics, capitalism, profits, and money.  All these things that we enjoy were created by man’s brain, hands, and cooperation.  All these things and perhaps more could have existed independent of economics, capitalism, profit, and money.  In fact, if you contemplate the structure of skyscrappers, which are impressive, one has to realize that their shape and structure was developed with one purpose in mind — economy.  How many people can we stuff into one structure while using the least amount of land as possible.  Look to the past to see more beautiful structures and architecture.  Money creates nothing – money is a piece of meaningless paper.  If you are interested in this concept or argument that money, debt, and financial institutions are a myth and have caused great harm in our direction and assumptions about value, I urge you to read my first post on this blog entitled “The Human World without Money, Debt, and Financial Institutions”.  It is shorter than this rant. 

Economics, capitalism, money, profit, these things accentuate, emphasize, or reward certain human traits or behaviors. The words I would use to describe the traits or behavior or outcomes driven by these concepts include greed, shrewdness, swindling, inflation, recession, depression, market collapse, ponzi scheme, ripping off, miser, exploiting, cheating, selfish, hoarding, excessive, desensitized, cold, ruthless, criminal, deceptive, and the list goes on.  I have worked in business for over a decade at some relatively high levels and have seen firsthand corruption, petty politics, exploitation, and massive layoffs where people are escorted to their cars as though they had committed a fucking crime.  I have had some pretty good internal insight as to how the large powerful capitalistic corporation functions and makes money for the entity, those at the top of the entity, and those involved with banks and Wall Street.  It isn’t rocket science.  Just within the last two decades we have seen the rich getting richer and the middle class disappearing, companies making huge profits by exploiting cheaper labor abroad while laying off and killing jobs in the home country.  We have seen suspect wars that could be linked to the need for oil which is a key piece to our capitalistic society.  We have seen horrible examples of greed including Enron, Bernie Madoff, the housing derivative scam, the bailouts, and the continuing bullshit that occurs on Wall Street where investment bankers and traders use smoke and mirrors to make themselves and those in the know huge amounts of money from speculation and short selling.  We have seen our government become hostage to lobby firms which are simply the guns of huge and powerful capitalistic entities.  None of the above would have come about if there was no such thing as money, loans, debt, and financial institutions. 

My second major concern or problem that needs to be solved is quite simply our massive and increasing population – currently at seven billion.  I don’t care about the pros and cons and facts and figures spewed out by environmentalists or far right capitalists.  All you have to do is open your eyes, ears, and nostrils to know for certain that our huge numbers combined with a capitalistic highly industrialized product driven society is degrading our planet and destroying or negatively impacting huge numbers of animate creatures and polluting the most precious resources on planet earth – air, water, and land.  People, we are on a flying ocean rock alone in a giant chaotic universe that doesn’t care whether we exist or not.  So, why don’t we take it easy on the number of beings we bring into our world?  I’ll tell you why not.  Economics, capitalism, profits, money, demands that we keep bringing more and more beings on-line.  If we actually began to significantly reduce our population, how in the hell would companies be able to show upward trending sales and profit graphs and therefore where would the fuel come to keep the banks, Wall Street, and the investment banks humming along?  It is a horrible wheel we have created for ourselves isn’t it?

Our increasing population combined with our winner take-all mentality leads to fewer and fewer resources and money to properly educate and nurture all of these new little beings coming on to our beautiful planet.  Governments and states are running out of money, schools have more children and fewer teachers, which is leading to a dumbed-down growing populace. To make matters worse, huge pockets and numbers of people are ignorant, extremely poor, sick, suffering, yet it is within these very pockets that relatively more innocent little beings are brought on-line.  This has to stop.  It is not only cruel but it is also not sustainable when we attempt to appease their suffering by simply throwing money and welfare at them to buy food.  Such short-term action may make us feel better, but it is not the solution.  And it further strains our already empty public coffers.  It is a fact that poverty breeds more poverty.

Generation Skip will attempt to free a group of beings from the above wheel in manner that hopes for further adoption without bringing down and destroying the status quo in an abrubt catastrophe.  A sudden switch over to a utopian model for all human beings is not possible given our status quo.  The framework and methods used to do so will seem rather strange and perhaps harsh, but compared to other potential utopian frameworks or visions the harshness and sacrifice required is rather mild.  One of the fundamental principles of Generation Skip is that sacrifice over individual rights must occur for the culture to get up and running.  The tension between individual rights and a unified whole is the conundrum we face as American’s and as a human species.  Both sides of this spectrum are desirable and important, but if the balance falls too far to one side or the other, we lose a great deal of value, power, and potential as a civilization and as a species.

Generation Skip — (draft preserved for comment section)

This is a follow-up post from “Gridlock”.  Generation Skip is a radical concept that most likely won’t appeal to many folks in our current society.  I am not sure it even appeals to me.  But, desperate times call for desperate measures.  Generation Skip is an idea that acts as a stop-gap to our current insane treadmill – bringing more children on-line within a society that has a multitude of unsolved problems which become further exasperated by more and more human beings coming on-line.  For example, poverty is a horrible unsolved problem, yet often within these poverty pockets more children are brought on-line in greater numbers than more fortunate pockets of society.  One doesn’t even need to point to poverty.  The average family in one of the richest countries in the world makes just enough money to squeak out a living.  Is it desirable to bring children into this hand to mouth environment?  Generation Skip sidesteps the cogs and in essence begins the process of a new human reality within the context of reality – that reality being all that exists outside of the human domain, the inhuman reality from which we came and are ultimately subject to.

Generation Skip is steeped in short-term sacrifice for long-term gains and rewards. 

_____________________________________________________________________

I am putting this post on hold as well as intended follow up posts related to Generation Skip.  I would trash the post but I want to preserve the comments and I believe they provide more food for thought and contemplation.  After reading through the comments and composing my own comments in response, I really wasn’t comfortable with post below the above line.  I find it easy to observe and critize the status quo, but developing a vision or more detailed utopian-like solution to pull us out of Grid Lock is beyond my comprehension at this point.  It may in fact remain beyond my comprehension and I may not return to the idea of Generation Skip.  I do like the above picture:)

Gridlock

We built the automobile to increase our freedom of mobility.  We built the freeway to enable our automobiles to travel fast and free.  I find it strange that we often find ourselves in traffic jams.   Does this not defeat the very intention of the two inventions in the first place?  And oh my, how expensive these inventions are indeed.

When you contemplate many of man’s creations, which appear so ingenious upon birth, they seem to lead to dead ends or more appropriately defined– gridlock.

Take religion.  Religion is a beautiful concept with many good intentions, but what human invention has led to more misery, ignorance, censorship, persecution, bigotry, and bloodshed than religion? 

Take industrialization.  Industrialization has led to great comfort, widgets, and trinkets, but at the same time it also led to slave labor, child labor, commoditization of the human being, and environmental destruction. 

Take Politics.  Politics was developed to represent and care for the people yet corruption and incompetence has led to bloody revolutions, civil wars, and enormous public debts. 

Take science.  Science enlightened us to many realms yet it also equipped us with the means to destroy ourselves on a massive scale both in terms of weapons and environmental degradation. 

Take law.  Law was conceived to provide order and fairness yet one can hardly take a shit without worrying about the sewage (LMAO).

Take economics.  Economics was invented to serve us, yet we and all of the above inventions serve it. Except for the very few who have grown disproportionately rich or inherited great wealth, we can’t control economics otherwise we wouldn’t experience recessions, depressions, market crashes and collapses, large-scale unemployment and underemployment.    

There seems to be only one way to solve this gridlock conundrum.  Everyone needs to simply get out of their cars and leave them behind.  We need to walk together and begin the long and gradual process of tearing it all down so we can begin anew. 

Next post will put forward one idea of many to come that deals with breaking through this gridlock.  The post will be called “Generation Skip”.