A Great Reckoning

Human beings are heading for a great reckoning. See this article at Information Clearing House. Life is not based on money--that is a purely human construct, thoroughly arbitrary, and completely deluded. Unfortunately, the pursuit of it--money, profit, and the power it erroneously represents--has endangered us all. As MLK Jr. once said about an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, this principle holds true in the natural world as well in the sense that pollution and stupidity anywhere is a threat to life everywhere.

Of all places to find such wisdom is in the movie "Blood Diamond" though I am not sure what it is that resonates so deeply. Perhaps it is as much DiCaprio's performance as it is the subject of the film. But a great many things were encompassed by this film that juxtaposes humankind's place within the natural world with that of an artificial world constructed by humans. The movie Koyaanisqatsi is also just such a juxtaposition.

However, these are but threads of the greater fabric of human history. Karen Armstrong's "The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions" provides an excellent view of the bigger picture in terms of our development as human beings and how well or poorly we have done since the Axial Age. The record is currently dismal. But as the Chinese and East Indians know that all things are cyclical, these things are expected. What I hope is that we are farther along now than we were then so that it won't take us as long to come to the same conclusions as they did.

Unfortunately, our technology today is far more annihilative, not only in terms of our weapons, but in terms of the way we alter the natural processes of our planet through technological, chemical, and genetic means. So we had better come to some wisdom pretty damn fast and wake up from the delusion that humans decide everything. They don't. The planet was here long before we got here and it will be here long after we are gone. The only decision we have to make is how long we'd like live here and how we'd like to do it.

This earth is a paradise and we have turned it into hell. The way out is to dust off the teachings of the great sages and get lucid on what they taught. Ultimately, it begins with non-violence and the Golden Rule and then stretches out to a sacred transcendence that is all encompassing. We all need love, friendship, and mutual aid. The sooner we understand this and start living this way, the sooner we can regain our lost humanity.