You think too small

            Every few weeks a new article comes out in certain press streams – on the Right, it’s more venom about how the Left is ruining the country and wants to turn our sacred Democracy into a godless Socialist state. From the Left it’s usually a clarion call against human trafficking or an angry, wailing rant about how Big Business and various cartels are destroying the blessed Environment.

            How ridiculous, the whole sordid comedy. Most people have such tiny brains – they think too small.

            What far too many people don’t really understand is that the problems we face as a group, a nation or even a species are insignificant – not at all important in the grand scheme of things. We’re so used to seeing things from the perspective of tiny individuals with short life spans and even shorter attention spans, that the largest percentage of people find it nearly impossible to comprehend the distances and time to travel within the solar system, let alone trying to reach our nearest stellar neighbors. How are they going to deal with actual aliens when we actually meet them? What are they going to do when they are finally shown that the fleeting concerns, loves, hates and fears of the human race don’t even register within the galactic community? We’re just not very important. What happens to the planet isn’t important – on the galactic scale.

            No one is going to come down from the stars and save us from ourselves. Even the Second Coming the evangelicals harp on about is basically an invasion, a winding up of the ugly mess we’ve made for ourselves. If we want to continue as a race, we need to understand that we have to work to save ourselves. The good news is, it’s really not as hard as all that – we just need to let the best and brightest problem-solvers do what they do best and support them as they do it. (If anyone is actually reading this, I’ve probably offended and lost over three-quarters of my audience by now. Here’s where I lose most of the rest of you…) Now, when I say the best and the brightest, I of course mean billionaire entrepreneurs. They are literally our best hope for survival.

            I told you early in this website to buckle up – if you haven’t done so, now’s the time when you get thrown around the cabin. I warned you. Here comes the ugliness.

            Everything that is wrong with your life, your world and your head is on you. Oh, you may have been aided and abetted by outside forces from time to time, but most of the damage to you comes from you. Don’t think so? How about these:

            1. You don’t understand how finances work – so you remain poor. It is NOT the government’s fault, it is NOT the fault of big corporations, and it is NOT just your ‘bad luck’. There’s no such thing as luck, get over it. Big corporations don’t want to keep you poor, they want to keep you buying their stuff. If you’re poor, they can’t do that. Wake up. And the government’s only real concern is maintaining the ‘status quo’. They don’t have the time or manpower to keep you down. The only one who’s holding you down is you.

            2. You are not important. No one is. Think about this: if you died today, who would attend the funeral? How many of those would even remember your name in ten years? Here’s the truth: unless you are a direct descendant of a royal family (still in power, by the way), you were not born special, and no one gives a damn about you outside your immediate family. I don’t care what your annual income is, or what degrees you’ve got, or who you ‘know’ – none of that makes you important. And pride? Please… the only thing your pride is good for is getting you killed. Dump it. The one thing that makes you important is what you do and have done for other people. Period. Live in service to others and you become important – no other way.

            3. You are invisible – just a face in the crowd. The only people who are really worth a damn – the only people to know – are those who are solving problems for other people. The bigger the problem they solve, the more important they become, and by extension, the richer they become. So, logically, billionaire entrepreneurs are the most important people, not because they have lots ‘o money, but because they’re solving bigger problems than anyone else. You want to be rich and important? Forget the flashy clothes and fancy cars – solve big problems.

            Minor historical note: I have a kind of love/hate relationship with Elon Musk. All of the stuff he’s doing now – space flight, electric cars, boring tunnels to relieve traffic problems, I was dreaming up back in the 80s and 90s. So, good on you, Musk – go, go, Go! And at the same time – curse you, Elon, you beat me to the punch. (My fault – insanity is a bitch.)

            4. The very small percentage of your personal problems that are NOT imaginary, aren’t all that tough to solve. A vanishingly small percentage of the population (a great deal less than 1%, so – probably not you) actually have mental or physical problems that we still can’t overcome with modern medicine. Don’t get me wrong – if you have serious mental or physical issues, there’s lots of help available – get some. But – trauma because you were picked on in grade school? Never pretty enough to be chosen Prom Queen? Big deal. The rest of us have gone through the same shit, Cinderella. Get a life and stop whining. Even insanity can be lived with – I functioned semi-normally for twenty years while suffering crippling delusions. Try that on for size, I dare ya. Oddly enough, there is increasing proof that certain kinds of mania (psychopathy, for one) may actually increase your chances of becoming rich and powerful. So, hike up your panties and get to work.

            So, what’s the take-away, here? Simply put – you’re not an important person unless you’re helping a lot of people by solving big problems. But before you can even get to that point, you have to try to fix your own life. Take a good, hard look at the things you do and think, and figure out which ones help you and which ones don’t. Get rid of the things in your life that don’t help you – this is going to be a very painful step, fair warning. Then get in there and build up the things that help you. Add a few more as they present themselves. Get educated – no, I don’t mean school. By law, you have to stay in school until you turn 18, after that you get to decide if further formal education is going to help you do what you want. If not, don’t bother. Instead, read everything you can get your hands on in your favorite subject. Then find a way to do it. Find other people who can help you do it. Informed action is where the magic happens.

            In future, I will try to get more specific about steps you should take to turn your life into a success story. For now, I’ve kind of beaten this thread to death. If anyone is still reading this drivel, my hat is off to you – you are either smart enough to begin real changes, or severely masochistic. Sit down with a nice, warm cup of tea and try to stop the shaking. Until next time.

pax et ama

TGC