J'Accuse (redux)

     What is this universe but a very elaborate and interesting machine with no purpose were it not for the life which results from its machinations, and especially the sentient life which can then observe this machine as it does what it does?

     This is lost on people today. This cooperative species that has managed to create a competitive society in which very few people are truly happy, and in which problems persist that seem to have no end; warfare, deprivation, and disease. It sits in amazement at technological advancement and to no avail tries to finagle a solution from the machinations of the machines it has built. Sure, things like renewable energy can alleviate quite a range of maladies, but realistically cannot achieve the requirements of a highly-industrialized production system. The petro-dollar and how this society is organized go hand-in-hand and though it's commendable people seek cleaner, friendlier alternatives to this, the fact will remain: If not fundamentally reorganized as a humanity, this society will just have to learn to live with these maladies - these problems, which by the way have the feature of generating death.

     Why, is the wonder of a life-generating universe lost on people today? It is precisely because fulfilling requirements as a member of a wealth-driven competitive society leaves no time or energy to contemplate the nature of this reality. And, of course, so many centuries have been spent perfecting this present system little to no attention has been paid to researching and determining what alternatives there might be. The most significant step in this direction was taken by Karl Marx who, though his observations are astutely correct, could not in addition come up with an alternative. His solution was just another form of the system in place. In practice one bully is exchanged for another. It does not rid humanity of bullies altogether. This then hampers any thought to alternatives as the myth has arisen there are only two methods to organize an economy and these are polar opposites; capitalism or communism.

     This is much like a religion. The two poles in religions are good and evil. The declared poles of economics? Capitalism, and communism. Wall Street and the so-called financial industry are akin to the great seats of religious power. The financiers, bankers and brokers resemble bishops, cardinals and abbots. The utterings of the economic experts are too involved for the average person to understand, so they are accepted on faith not unlike the tepassed off as nets of other religions are accepted - belief without proof. Great, and highly-trained technicians work mysteries in a realm far above the commoners' heads. As with religion, the organization of the enterprise of human activity into this economic system is deemed untouchable - an unalterable fact of highly-evolved human intelligence. This, though precious little effort has been made to determine if there are not alternatives which could perform the function as tools to organize human effort, harnessing it to produce prosperity - prosperity for humanity rather than wealth for individuals.

     It would then of course follow that examining this set of problems (which seem to relentlessly plague humankind) in terms of just how much of this is brought on by the doctrinal beliefs in, and intransigence to change this present method of organizing human enterprise and activity may reveal this method actually generates these problems as a by-product. Has a power structure created a system offering wealth to a few at the expense of all the rest? If so, how can this economic process be passed off as a tool to facilitate

humankind? Doesn't humankind have the right, rather the duty, to alter and modify any such system until it is harnessed to work for humankind as a whole, and not a small percentage of people? Aren't people taking advantage of this system at the expense of their fellow human beings in violation of the second imperative of life, species preservation, and so can be adjudged as mentally ill?

     In fact, psychiatric science recently revamped its standards and definitions for mental illness so that people who exhibit sociopathic behavior now are seen as normal since it takes this sort of sociopathic behavior to create success in capitalism, which of course is measured in wealth, not prosperity. Didn't they just take a mental illness, the need to acquire wealth, and turn it into an acceptable mental condition? Wouldn't at last declaring this condition; the need to possess more than anyone else, to be what it is; a perversion of evolved human intelligence, be a professional duty these people shirk in order to justify their own incomes acquired from this process, making them complicit in it and negating them from the right to call themselves scientists?

     Even this health care discussion: When has anyone heard anyone discuss anything to do with health care? Isn't the discussion about paying insurance companies, and forcing people to buy from insurance companies as a requisite to being "eligible" for health care? Just being humans who have contributed in however a small way to the collective achievement of realizing the evolutionary step of developing science is not enough of a qualification for "eligibility" to what they helped to create? There's a further step? One needs enough money? Doesn't this process disqualify medical doctors from claiming they have anything to do at all with science, as they have allowed themselves to become shills for the insurance corporations? Isn't it difficult to allow any of these people to assert they have integrity when they have been so fundamentally compromised?

     If untold trillions were not being spent on a military apparatus for participation in violence predicated on where oil is located and the furthering of petro-dollar addiction, there would be enough money generated by enterprise as humans to actually pay for this feature of advanced civilization all have worked so hard to achieve - medical care. Just being able to say that unequivocally without fear of contradiction by any rational, objective person who doesn't have skin in the game slams the door on this as a debatable subject. The question is, when are people going to at last rise up and throw off the yoke of these wealthy people who have at last taken them over? Are they going to endlessly throw out heartfelt, well-considered speculative diatribes declaiming the symptoms of this greater problem - the symptoms of warfare, deprivation, disease, economic injustice, and social inequality?

     Isn't it time to take another look at fundamental truths to see if some of these aren't really truths at all, rather, just dogma served up by the wealthy to keep everyone else generating the effort to keep they the wealthy in their exalted places? Think about it. If this is true, then it doesn't matter how much effort is put in, how well-meaning charitable efforts may be, or what kind of technology is developed, this predation on humans by humans will persist, as it is ingrained into the system adopted to organize human effort. Human attempts to fix it then amount to being the stone of Sisyphus. It should be replaced, not repaired.