Most excellent piece! Enough is always enough, and enough is everywhere! As Billie Holiday said, "God bless the child that"s got his own". And look at you- you got your own, and are sharing it freely with the world! Stay tuned. I think we just might be reaching cruising altitude, where the seatbelt signs can be turned off and we can move freely about the cabin...
What a brain, what a soul you have! I have long maintained that humans are just another virus that eventually feeds on itself. Greed makes sure of that!
Taking your postulation to a micro point, I live in a large hi-rise with rules written out on every floor as to how to recycle. No pizza boxes. No plastic bags. NO FOOD. And yet it appears that few residents read the sign, let alone obey it. If it isn't possible to communicate sanitary practices for the place where one lives, how much attention do you think is being paid to the billionaire class? We're fucked.
The billionaire is only somebody who takes more than their share and who seeks only accumulation rather than growth. In biology, this is known as “cancer.” --Brilliant.
I've been thinking about this idea in the context of "Pluribus" (I've seen a handful of episodes. I don't think this comment is a spoiler of any kind...). It's intriguing but I think it would take about 1000 years to iterate in the direction of a kind of universal community you describe, fighting cancer the whole way. Those people are real jerks.
Yeah, Pluribus is an example of a culture working together towards some (in the case of the show, unspecified) goal. What makes it so frightening for Rhea Seahorn's character is loss is self (ego). Do we preserve what makes us *us* without that? I suspect not, and so it's easy to understand her terror. I love that show.
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
Jesus, Matthew 19:24
You hit the nail on the head here, Michael. We _could_ be living on a so-called “post-scarcity”planet, if we wanted it to be that way. All of the developments of the past couple hundred years allow for it. It’s people, not lack of resources or technology, that gets in the way.
I don’t think it’ll happen, short of an evolutionary leap of human consciousness that is rooted in the realization that there’s actually only one thing, one meta-entity, it is the fundamental field of absolute awareness, and everything is it. It’s the philosophical underpinning to Jesus’ emphasis on treating the perceived “other” as the “self.”
From Thomas:
22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom."
They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?"
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”
Most excellent piece! Enough is always enough, and enough is everywhere! As Billie Holiday said, "God bless the child that"s got his own". And look at you- you got your own, and are sharing it freely with the world! Stay tuned. I think we just might be reaching cruising altitude, where the seatbelt signs can be turned off and we can move freely about the cabin...
If human society is analogous to the human body, who represents boogers?
Never mind. I just figured it out.
"Ghetto heaven" 🥲
Thanks for this. Reminds me I’m due for a rewatch of The Good Place.
Don’t know who said it first, but poverty and hunger are policy choices.
It's time. Cull the herd of hoarders.
Heavenly Creatures is my favorite movie. No one I ever mention it to has heard of it.
You lost me at “heaven”.
What a brain, what a soul you have! I have long maintained that humans are just another virus that eventually feeds on itself. Greed makes sure of that!
Taking your postulation to a micro point, I live in a large hi-rise with rules written out on every floor as to how to recycle. No pizza boxes. No plastic bags. NO FOOD. And yet it appears that few residents read the sign, let alone obey it. If it isn't possible to communicate sanitary practices for the place where one lives, how much attention do you think is being paid to the billionaire class? We're fucked.
The billionaire is only somebody who takes more than their share and who seeks only accumulation rather than growth. In biology, this is known as “cancer.” --Brilliant.
You answered your own query, bud. Love over fear. It's that simple. :)
Deep, thoughtful post and Notes. Wish you had titled your essay, “Where the Hell is Heaven!?” 🤣👏👏
Wow! Love this
I've been thinking about this idea in the context of "Pluribus" (I've seen a handful of episodes. I don't think this comment is a spoiler of any kind...). It's intriguing but I think it would take about 1000 years to iterate in the direction of a kind of universal community you describe, fighting cancer the whole way. Those people are real jerks.
Yeah, Pluribus is an example of a culture working together towards some (in the case of the show, unspecified) goal. What makes it so frightening for Rhea Seahorn's character is loss is self (ego). Do we preserve what makes us *us* without that? I suspect not, and so it's easy to understand her terror. I love that show.
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
Jesus, Matthew 19:24
You hit the nail on the head here, Michael. We _could_ be living on a so-called “post-scarcity”planet, if we wanted it to be that way. All of the developments of the past couple hundred years allow for it. It’s people, not lack of resources or technology, that gets in the way.
I don’t think it’ll happen, short of an evolutionary leap of human consciousness that is rooted in the realization that there’s actually only one thing, one meta-entity, it is the fundamental field of absolute awareness, and everything is it. It’s the philosophical underpinning to Jesus’ emphasis on treating the perceived “other” as the “self.”
From Thomas:
22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom."
They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?"
Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”
Excellent.