It is said that first came the word, but we did not have ears. It is said the light came next, but we did not have eyes; all we knew was silence and darkness. So we learned to make light and filled the void with our Selves. We took up all the space with our thoughts, our wanting, and our questions. We blocked the light and made a lot of noise, and that seemed good for a time. Until it wasn’t. Now we have grown tired of our container and seek new voids to fill, because conquest is in our nature and humility is not. Unfortunately, we have learned nothing about how small a space we occupy, how truly fragile we are, or just how much we have yet to learn.
We are plowing infertile ground, attempting to harvest old reality from over-plowed soil. It’s not only the soil that is now barren, it is the collective spirit of a people. Our fear has rendered us rigid and non-resilient. We’re not sure exactly what we fear, but that’s really the nature of it – the unknown. We grieve the days when life went according to a known plan, you gave a dollar to the panhandler on the corner and they disappeared from view for at least a day. Maybe they went to the nearest bar, maybe the went to the soup kitchen, but you had done your duty. If the panhandler was no longer in your line of sight, you had made a difference.
Today, if you hand the panhandler a dollar, they may smile indulgently but they do not leave. They wait for the next benefactor, and the next, and the next. They may be there for several days, or weeks until law enforcement runs them off. You aren’t sure that your well-meaning donation has done anything at all, and you still have to look at the beggar. It’s uncomfortable. Moreover, you hear stories about how some beggars are simply con artists who have means but use the street corner as their company office; they’re probably making more money than you are. That’s uncomfortable as well.
We are living in chronic discomfort with no end in sight, and once again, it’s the unknown. Will this ever get better? These bums need to get a job, and stop making us all so uncomfortable. Back in the day, we didn’t have all of this panhandling, at least not to this degree, because people did what they had to do to have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. But now…people are just…lazy.
Again, the discomfort. This has to be someone’s fault. It’s the Democrats. No, it’s the Republicans. It’s the Governor. No, it’s racism…and don’t forget the Russians. We just need to go back to when things were good, when people were happy and didn’t shoot you for looking at them wrong. When kids were polite and everybody stayed in school and got a job and went to church on Sunday. Bring back the good times, and get rid of the people who ruined it for everybody.
The beginning of Birth of A Nation says that everything was fine in the U.S. until the Africans came. Then it all went to hell, so obviously, it’s the fault of the Africans. That would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, because everyone knows the Africans didn’t wake up one morning and decide to descend on America of their own accord. They were kidnapped and hauled over here like sardines in the cargo holds of seagoing vessels, across thousands of miles of open ocean. Those that lived became property of other people, and were used for unpaid manual labor solely for the benefit of their owners. But they knew their place was at the end of a lash, so mama was happy, and if mama was happy, well you know how that goes. Those were the good days, depending on your perspective.
People clamoring for a return to the good days cannot understand that you can’t go home again. The world has changed, the landscape has changed, the economy has changed. Buildings have crumbled, there are potholes in the streets, we’ve gotten older. We cannot press a rewind button and travel back in time, before news was immediately available, before Mr. Google was ready and waiting to find answers to all our questions about banking, about agriculture, about real estate, about lifestyles of the rich and famous. We cannot retrofit our current reality with 19th century norms. Even so, there are some who attempt just that, sand the results are disastrous.
We are socially de-evolving, returning to a time when justification and rationalization were the rule of life, if not law, and could dull the conscience. We can be as heartless as we pleased if that got us closer to what we desired. Ultimately, we desire comfort, and that usually means predictability and being in control of our circumstances. I am far more comfortable when I know what’s going to happen in the future. In a capitalist society, that is daunting, however, and the most reliable method of control in that economic model is to broker labor. If you don’t have to pay for that labor, even better. And that’s how chattel slavery became the preferred get-rich scheme of all time – laborers became saleable property, and their labor yielded a marketable (and profitable) product, so it was a win-win scenario for everyone. Except the enslaved people, but let’s just not speak of that.
We crave material gain but pursuit of it makes us nuts. Absolutely nuts. We are quick to become immoral, insensitive, and bloodthirsty. Don’t stand between people and their money. Murders are committed for illicit acquisition of money, or the theft of money, or the loss of ill-gotten gains. The panhandler on the corner without an 8th grade education is probably able to explain the basics of capitalism as well as any economist, because in its base form it’s all about how I can spend one dollar to make 5 dollars, and everybody knows the easiest way to do that is to broker the labor or do it myself. If I pay someone else the dollar to perform a task for a third person on my behalf, then charge the third party $6 for the job. That covers the first dollar I spent on the worker, and gives me a $5 profit. If I expand that exponentially, my eyes will sparkle with potential profit. For me. Only for me – $5 multiplied by how many 3rd parties I can engage who need the work performed. Of course, in our environment we have 4th and 5th parties who charge licensing fees and taxes and insurance but that’s another story entirely. There’s always another story, but we just want the $5 bill.
We have woven a very tangled web, and like most addicts we are at the point where the thrill of the profit isn’t working the way it once did. In some cases, it’s not working at all and misery looms. We want something more. We need the high of success, the elation of winning. So, let’s go to Mars. Yeah. That’s the fix. And the Moon, too. We can build manufacturing bases and engineer supply chains because that will provide a feeling of competency and control once again. As a value-added benefit, there’ll be no real estate charges or EPA concerns or any of that pesky regulatory stuff. We planted our flag there, so it’s ours free and clear. Let’s get started! It’s a brand new world – a new New World (sound familiar?). Our world is kind of old and dingy now, and it has problems, but Mars is bright and shiny and by the time we’re finished terraforming it’ll be spectacular. This will be the largest designed community ever. People will live and work there, and there will be retail generators and some resorts, and maybe casinos, but without all the crime and those undesirable people. We’ll do it correctly this time, and before you know it, we can leave Earth behind and be intergalactic citizens. A new elite! What’s not to love about this?
The Sound Hole 