And worse, someone's been feeding this ghastly thing, by keeping humanity well-saturated with alluring, intoxicating lies.
"Don't worry, you'll get to the top too someday. Sure you will."
The TopTM, where everyone lives in a castle, and where diamonds and precious stones are as pebbles on a beach.
Right.
That fabled place does exist, if you've freighter-loads of money, the right surname, or both. The lie in which we've been bathed is that if you don't have these things and you want to get near the top in this lifetime the way to do it is to accumulate the former via everyone else, every person you see. "All for me and none for thee" is the refrain of the go-getter. Eat it all before it eats you. Just focus on teh profitz and forget everything else and you'll get there too. Someday. Sure you will. Suck 'em all dry, the whole damn world, and devil take the hindmost.
Never mind the future, never mind the past. Never relent. Eyes on the prize.
I think that for us, an organism/society made up of billions of freely thinking beings, our greed is nothing but a ravaging parasite. One which far too many people openly espouse as a symbiote. A boon. But they are wrong. So tragically wrong. It facilitates growth, sure. Growth which is unsustainable and deadly. It could indeed kill us, lead our species into extinction, but I don't think it's incurable. I think we can yet be on our way to health. Taking on dramatically new things has always been our gig, and we relish a challenge. Which this task will most certainly be.
Our mightiest challenge yet.
Some of our deepest and most basic self finds greed all too familiar, and we've done terrible things in its thrall.
More below the fold.
Our species' rise has been very nasty. The free-for-all bloodsport of the natural world has seen active and doubly ruthless players in homo sapiens.
It's a thought that can be hard to confront.
We have shown little restraint or remorse towards other inhabitants of our pale blue home. Our voracity leaves nothing exempt. Not our living neighbors, not the very hills and waters around us. Not other human beings. Especially if they're sitting on something valuable, or if they themselves were deemed "valuable".
It was only a few generations ago that we, humans, owned, bought and sold other humans as an institutional practice. A major part of our economy. Abominable. Greed gone blood-borne, if you will. A veritable ocean of blood flowed forth, on American soil, in reaction to the overfuckinglate epiphany that such disgusting and grotesquely greedy practices were to be forever abandoned.
Today, we are a long way from forgetting our past. Greed still pervades almost every aspect of our society. This thing is a lasting scourge upon us, a lethal parasite. Our species' long-term survival depends on either being rid of it or severely checking its growth.
I think we can do this. I think we already possess the necessary tools, and haven't yet fully figured out how to use them, also for all our faults we are as resilient as they come.
Hate follows greed closely, being a frequent outgrowth from jealousy, greed's insidious twin. Here and now, today, I feel we are doing a fair job of being rid of hate. Even while the greed-pushers currently maintain the ruse of attain safety and plenty through avarice and amorality, it seems to me the ones similarly pushing hate and mistrust anyone and everyone who happens to be different are rapidly losing their power. They cling to it still, with desperately white knuckles, as tightly as they can. But they are weakening. Even ten years ago they were far far stronger.
Love is winning.
I think one day it will conquer greed. You see, love kills greed. A lot of people don't know that, it's not out yet.* That secret is hidden in plain sight. Real love can excise that parasite from the greediest of people. Like a man much wiser than me said: "All you need is love."
He was right.
Our very first great pleasure in life, even before our first taste of food, is the feel of physical contact with another human being. The melding of warmth and breath and mind.
Love. In its purest form.
That is our destiny. But how we get there from here I don't know.
I think future historians, if they are around at all, will speculate and argue about the exact details of the day when the scourge of greed finally lifted. I feel quite certain that in the long run it will be either one or the other: they (we) will do something about greed, or they (we) will not be around.
Call it a simple hunch from a life-long Star Trek and John Lennon fan, but I think we can do it.
*h/t George Carlin RIP
crossposted at The Hammershop