The title of this essay may seem comical to you. It would take about 250 million pages to write about everything, and more than likely 97.5% of it would be completely wrong. The remaining portion that might be right would be written as if someone with the IQ of a basketball wrote it in a manner that would be too difficult to decipher.
We have to be very humble when we make an attempt at explaining the nature of reality, the nature of God, and the nature of the mechanics of the universe. This is the case because it’s very likely that everything we write and teach could be wrong. I seriously doubt that the human brain is designed to fathom things of that depth and complexity.
We can make really great stories about such things, though. We can make up stories about everything. And some of those stories could really make sense. Many things in the stories that we make up as human beings can’t be proven, but we can have good reason to believe that they’re true.
Much of such knowledge is not useful in daily life. It won’t help you light a fire if you are in the wilderness. It won’t tell you what berries are poisonous. The knowledge that I’m speaking of is a type of exercise, such as lifting weights. When you are lifting weights it seems as if there’s a purpose to it. It seems as if there’s a purpose for lifting heavier and heavier weights. But all you are doing is making your muscles stronger for the purpose of lifting heavier and heavier weights.
It’s the same thing with certain types of knowledge. We keep making our minds stronger and stronger for the purpose of thinking of more complicated things. Perhaps there is value to this. Thought has led us to some fantastic science and technology.We figured out how to put men inside of a metal ship and launch them up in space. We figured out the Internet, and we figured out how to do surgery.
All that progress must be worth something valuable. Maybe it is, but I think it would be arrogant of me to judge whether or not such progress is good or bad. If I said it was bad, I’d be a hypocrite because I’m still plugged in to the grid. I use technology constantly. I use the energy that we’ve created to use cell phone technology and to use printers. I shop in supermarkets and I wear clothing that was made by someone else far away. My clothing is probably made out of synthetic material, and my glasses are made out of plastic.
It’s easy for me to sit here and pick on technology because there’s water coming in from underneath the street through the pipes and into my shower. If I lived completely off the grid then I’d probably be in a better position to criticize mankind‘s so-called technological progress.
But I don’t. So I have to be very careful about what I’m going to say. Instead of me picking on progress, I’m going to ask myself to look at the things about progress that I don’t think work very well. I’d love to see them improve somehow over the course of the next few hundred generations.
I won’t be around to see many of those things happen. I like the idea that all of us are pondering how people can use their intellect to create things that are compassionate and helpful to relieve the pain and suffering of all creatures. Can we use our technology to make sure that people are fed? Can we use it to make sure the children are loved and not abused or neglected? Can we use technology to clean out the oceans and to prevent them from becoming filthy buckets again?
What if there was a way to create technology that links directly to the voice of the divine creator? What if technology made it possible to prove the connection between all things? What if through technology we found a way to open up everyone’s consciousness whether they wanted that to happen or not? What if the weapons of war were consciousness openers? (For example, if you shot some sort of electronic ray into a village that would prick the consciences of people about to kill each other and cause them to cease their atrocities.)
What if technology was such that we weren’t able to use materials that didn’t cause destruction to the planet? It would be wonderful if we didn’t create weapons that caused temptation for mankind to fashion metals into weapons, bombs and tanks we would later use to destroy each other.
Here’s a thought. Perhaps some sort of machine could be created to help a person with terrible heartbreak and poor character. Such a person could step into a booth-like machine and be implanted with all the knowledge they needed to be extremely happy with themselves and free from anxiety.
It appears that half of mankind has always been awake and conscious and needs nothing more than nature and a campfire to stay connected. The other half of humanity seems to naturally succumb to all of their cravings. Their desires burn so deep and destroy their happiness. Their cravings cause deep sadness, sorrow, fear, and anxiety.
Chain reactions of events that happen in society are such that individuals can’t resist temptation and can’t be undistracted. This is quite clear and we shouldn’t be in denial about the situation.
I’ve always said that the most dangerous creatures on earth are the males of the human species from ages 17 to 49. I’ve joked in some of the other things I’ve written that in order to prevent all of the destruction in the world that women should be in charge. In a fictional story that I wrote, women assumed power because a virus wiped out most of the men in the world. This virus permanently weakened men’s bodies so that women (who were unaffected by the virus) became five times stronger.
In this women-based world, men over 17 went into special isolation camps. These men concentrated on painting, drawing, creating, and talking about their emotions. They were not allowed to have weapons of any kind that would be considered contraband. If the men behaved they got to have conjugal visits by beautiful women to perpetuate the species.
All men were released after passing the final test at age 49. At that point it was safe to put them back into the female community. All wars would end. Bridges would never fall. Politicians would never be corrupt. There wouldn’t be murder, mayhem or chaos. Any such things that remained were very few and far between—rare exceptions to the rule.
Of course my story is silly and such a thing will never happen. It might make for an interesting concept for a movie, though—I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s been done before. But the reason I decided to interject my summary of that story is because when I think about a lot of the problems in the world I often think about who caused them.
I feel bad for my team. The male team is a complete disaster. We need some injections of some type of non-cancer-causing hormone just to stabilize our violent mood. We need to replace our desperate need to be defensive and fighting creatures with better things. Maybe we can come up with a drug that squashes the tendency for egotistical feelings of entitlement to unearned respect and admiration common in males. Maybe we can come up with a drug that caused disrespectful males to give respect and honor to those who merit it.
It’s quite possible or even likely that if children were not abused or neglected then there wouldn’t be overly aggressive males in the world. I’m counting on humanity to figure this out, even if it takes 1,000 more generations. Someone has to make it clear that we need to have a better playbook on how to raise children. Unquestionably, we’re not doing as good a job as we could be.
In the modern world we probably resist meditation because we didn’t grow up with it as a way of life in the way that other cultures did. Meditation and self-discovery is a central focus in the way of life in such cultures. Once you reach a certain point in your practice of being present and staying focused, you can develop a little bit of an attachment to the way it makes you feel.
I can see why we wouldn’t want to lose the positive sensation of being focused and clear. I want to express it. I don’t look back at my life and contemplate how I was confused or clouded, although at certain points I was. This was probably because my attention was on the wrong things for too long. My tension for most of my life was because of my obsession with creating success.
Success is only a small ingredient in one’s happiness. It’s easy to say that if you have a certain degree of it. But if you took away most of that success it would be very troubling to most people. I suppose that modern western thinking has planted psychologically unhealthy things in our subconscious minds since we were children. That makes it difficult to completely let go of things that we judge to be important.
Certain things have given us comfort since childhood. We love supermarkets, even though many products that they sell are extremely unhealthy. And we enjoy today’s entertainment, even though it perpetuates unhealthy mindsets.
I don’t really know how I can ever desensitize myself to violence after growing up with the kinds of movies I watched for many years. And I don’t know how I can get to the point of simply enjoying sunsets and staring at the ocean and not be preoccupied by projects like writing. I still need the activity. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with all of that, provided that I don’t neglect any of my true duties. And provided that I don’t allow my thoughts to become obsessions and take hold of me.