Ancient Instincts

Billionaires are ants. They don’t know why they build what they do: it’s all instinctual. Trying to get to Mars is the stupidest goal I’ve ever heard. We’re all ant-like to one degree or another. It seems like there is a tipping point with money where too much fiscal power equates to a lack of self control.

When someone acts unconsciously, it’s because they don’t love something about themselves. Lacking enough of that core human value, they chase abstract goals like lab rats in the scientific experiment they themselves created. What a vicious cycle. There’s no freedom in that.

Artifacts of a Life that Has Passed

We have pyramids and State Parks to remind us of our mortality. We don’t know how Stonehenge was built, and the lack of that knowledge speaks to the discontinuity of the human experience. Relics remain, but our distant relatives are strangers to us. It’s going to take a massive shift in consciousness to change these unrelenting facts of our existence. Until we care more about the good of our community than the power we can obtain, this will not change.

I don’t respect someone who is not there for their family, myself included. If you have half a dozen kids and don’t spend time with them, nothing else matters. You are fundamentally not acting like a good person in my estimation. We have worshipped greatness at a cost that can never be bought. Money can’t pay for the common good.

Puddles over Pyramids

When the rains come, they leave behind puddles that reflect the sky. This has been true since the beginning of the human adventure. Puddles only last for a few days, but their occurrence persists longer than anything we have ever built. They also contain the thing most essential to human life, to all life: water. When we decide to care more about people than power we will worship puddles.

I’m not free from this pattern. I’ve simply had a few flashes of vision that have allowed me to see myself as an unconscious ant carrying out a mission I don’t understand. Those brief moments of insight tell me that we are following the wrong people for the wrong reasons.