Selfcess

A friend of mine recently posted this on facebook. What do you think? Can you see this? I definitely see a society obsessed with finding cures and also not learning much about the cause! But it seems that this little observational post implies we should learn about the cause. Study the cause. Pinpoint the cause and maybe erradicate it. It also gives the impression that the average person doesn't know exactly what the cause is, doesn't practice the cause consciously and isn't easily capable of stopping it. I think this is less and less the case every day. WIth vast libraries worth of knowledge just clicks away, a lot of us know what the cause of all the ills in this world is. But we allow, and in a lot of ways, ENCOURAGE the cause. While curing the symptoms, we faithfully transmit the disease. The cause is selfishness and greed. And, while I just stated that it's easy to eliminate in one's self, I feel that the elimination of it on a global scale is something that would require some study. Or at least some education. I don't think it would work unless everybody was on board, and, systmatically and diabolically, there have been so many divisive entities created in our society that it seems even if aliens or zombies or a super Ebola virus was destroying mankind, we would be fighting about what to do about it down to the last human being.

Imagine a pack of a dozen hyenas coming upon a fresh water buffalo carcass. They COULD politely divide it evenly amongst themselves. Or each one could selfishly dive into it and gorge as quickly as possible fighting off the other 11 in order to get the maximum amount. The hyenas don't know that two of the 12 are receiving almost none of the nourishment from the carcass because they are weaker. They don't know that for a week there will be no food until another animal meets the pack and it will require the strength and cooperation of all 12 to kill the animal for the furtherance of the pack. By then the two weaker hyenas are too weak to help. The remaining 10 are sluggish from a week without food. They can't make the kill and the tribe dies. But they don't care at all right now! Right now they want as much of this meat as they can get and they will FIGHT their own pack members to eat a bigger meal.

Some say those animals deserve what they get. They should share equally. Some say that it's instinctual to selfishly dive into the food and they're not intelligent enough to think ahead. Many believe that this is a little bit like what our planet and our species, humans, are going through right now. If it were, I'd be more forgiving of our species. But it's not. Not even a little bit. What we have as a species right now is comparable to one of the hyenas pulling an AK 47 on the rest of his pack, killing a few so they don't swarm him and disarm him, and keeping some alive by giving them a minimal amount of food, (enough to keep them functional but not thriving), so that they can serve him the food and maybe even go out and get him some more.

As time goes by the pack notices a nagging lethargy amongst the members. In everyone but the Alpha leader, (who has the AK 47). They do some observation and find that the Alpha leader sometimes has the leisure to snack on green, leafy plants while they are off hunting for his supper. They decide they need more of that in their diets and, low and behold, it works! They are happy for a while, but then one of the pack complains that sometimes when the Alpha leader is necessarily thinning the herd with the AK 47, he gets carried away and mounts a few of the younger, more attractive females and contributes to the overpopulation. And all this without the young females' consent. They ask for an apology and a little more meat for the young females. And they get it. And they're happy. For a while. But for some reason they can't quite put their fingers, (or their paws), on this pack just doesn't seem to be as successful and as happy as they think it could be. They're still not happy and sometimes they still go hungry.

Eventually the Alpha male dies and either a new Alpha male fights his way to the top or the pack is given the freedom and privelege to choose their captor. Either way the pattern goes on until it's just done as a rule. The pack even starts to believe that this is the way things have always been.

What the pack doesn't realize, or maybe are just too domesticated and gutless to do anything about, is that the Alpha leader will do anything, A NY THING to divert attention away from the real cause of the pack's problems: the greedy Alpha leader with the AK 47. And although he thins the pack now and then, if they all worked together, they have the numbers and the strength to take him down and then there'd be so much extra food for every pack member that they would never be hungry.

I'm certain I don't need to but I will mention a few of the things that have appeared in the news in my thoughts lately that have lead to this post. Kim Jung Eon reminding the world of his inexplicable and embarrassing existence; the comfort women agreement between Korea and Japan, but not every single other country that has engaged in war; the ever-growing imprisonment of Americans (almost half on drug charges), the biggest offenders of all, banks, still not being held accountable by anyone but the Finns and now maybe the Swiss; Donald Trump reminding the world of his inexplicable and embarrassing existence; business pillage and plunder; Syria; Hemp; Tesla; and I'll stop myself before I go too far into the "conspiracy theories." But every day I read something on facebook or somewhere in my surfing that makes me wonder just how much knowledge we still DON'T know. "Has Big Pharma surpassed the number of people killed by Pablo Escobar?" "Are drugs still bad and medicine good?" "How can a company from one country legally go into another country and remove resources?" Nestle stealing water from all over the world. Debeers mining diamonds. Oil. Natural gas. We all KNOW the people of the countries where the resources are receive little to no benefits from them. How is this legal? Is this what is meant by the "global economy?"

Here's something to ponder: Your kid comes home from school one day. Eight-year-old. He/she has a bag full of candies. You ask where he/she got them. The kid describes an experiment the social studies teacher did in class in which a huge jar full of candies was passed from student to student. Every student was allowed to take as many candies as he/she wanted and if there were still any left after the last student had a chance, the candies would be doubled and the jar passed around again. Of course this is the same scenario as the hyenas, the difference being even an 8-year-old can reason that there are unlimited candies available if everyone would just use human intellect, which is superior to hyena's, and take an even share allowing half or more to remain after everyone has taken some. Then repeat. But your kid didn't trust any of the other kids so he/she just took the whole jar.

Would you be disappointed? Angry? Would you do anything? Or would you say the all too common, and I believe encouraged to be MORE common, thing: "Well good for you! If you didn't do it, somebody else would have."

In many minds, even cultures, (and NOT the more primitive, rather the more modern ones), what this kid did is considered "success." We hear all the time about "successful" people. This invariably means people who have lots of dough. Why is this "success?" This is almost always "selfcess."

I saw a post about Steve Jobs' last words. Though it's pretty clear that these were NOT his last words, (God was mentioned and he was a Buddhist and did not believe in God), I think they are pretty powerful words. His ACTUAL final words may be even MORE powerful. He said, "Wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!"

I wonder what that meant...

I'm going with, "Oh wow! Maybe we CAN live in harmony without hoarding too much wealth and assets and causing other people to suffer!"

Wouldn't it be nice if a person didn't have to find this out right at death's door?