Valuing something more precious that cold, hard cash…..

Put quite a bit of thought into what to write about this week….the obvious topic would be the machinations of the political scene in the United States….had tears in my eyes last Wednesday watching what was unfolding at the U.S. Capitol….indeed, one of the saddest scenes I have seen in my lifetime. And my only hope that it will strike fear and terror in the hearts of my conservative friends who will now realize that it is not the liberals or the socialists who need be feared – they are not the ones who are after your freedom and liberty.

Anyway, I think what happened in Washington this past week points to something else that has been assiduously eating away at our planet for a considerable period in our history. And it has been the gradual but relentless dumbing down of our world to the point that there is a lack of greatness nearly everywhere, but it is most evident in our politics. There simply are no great leaders on the planet today – no one to lift us up and out of the muck of creation.

I’m not really sure what has caused this to happen….but where are the people like Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Indira Ghandi, Chairman Mao…..people who really changed the world. Where are the great people in our world? I think that they might still be out there, but the problem is we are so awash in everything these days – there’s just so much of everything – and the world of information is so splintered and fractured that we’re all running in different directions and seeing reality from many, many different perspectives.

Perhaps folks like Elon Musk and Bill Gates are our great people, and, in some senses, I suppose they are. They have radically advanced the planet technologically and I suppose that’s a good thing. Technology is highly valued in our world – almost to the point of excluding everything else of possible value. Indeed, we are far more concerned with having a better cell phone than feeding the billions of people who starve.

But, of course, there is something closely tied to the advancement of technology, that is even more highly valued than the technology itself – and that is money – cold, hard cash. And the fact that pretty well everything on the planet revolves around our incessant pursuit of wealth is perhaps the most fundamental flaw in humanity’s ecosystem…and, yet, there seems no way out of this conundrum….surely there is nothing we can value more than money. It is really the fundamental need on the planet. You need it to eat. You need it to live.

But what if, somehow, we could figure out some way to value life – all life – more than anything else. What if each and every tiny piece of life could somehow be more important than the money it’s worth? What is we had some type of socio-economic system that valued life and held it as the most precious commodity on planet earth. And where is the great mind who can conceive of such a thing? Who could develop some way to live that would treat all life with fairness and justice and equity?

I am fundamentally an evolutionist. I believe we are indeed evolving and I’ve always believed that this was intellectually as well as physically. But lately I’m wondering if this is true….my old friend, Sam, was a devolutionist. He thought we reached the pinnacle of human intellectual evolution with the ancient Greeks and it’s been downhill since then. And, in some senses, it’s a difficult argument to defeat. Look back into the distant past to see some historical figures who seem to have achieved some level of greatness. It is more difficult to find them in the here and now. I pointed this out earlier.

Anyway, I am clearly not the great mind to solve the problems of humanity. But I keep hoping that one will come along to lead us on the next stage of our journey through the cosmos. Hoping for some stuff like warp drive, teletransportation, time travel as well….maybe Elon Musk and Bill Gates will get there yet. But let’s give the latest version of the latest cell phone a rest. It’s not where we should be going, people. Value life – not money. Be well and stay safe…..