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.
Contemplating The Human Direction 