The fact that we're related, from the same blood, is unimportant, anecdotal at best. As if we dig deep enough, if we look far enough, long enough, we'll always find we're all related on this planet. From any random mustard seed to all high horses, from the most uninteresting or ignorant lifeforms to some remote omniscient luminary, we are, at a fundamental level, all the same, as we were always landlocked together on this wet dirt ball of a planet. The fact that we couldn't escape Earth just made us stronger together, as it brought us closer to one another, unable to just leave it all behind. That was until would be escapists arrived with shining plans for the future. Beware the next planet salesman, as he might sell you a ride or a car too, probably on subscription.
If, not so long ago, you'd have asked me where to look for in the future, I'd have told you our common destiny was in the stars. As astral surfing in the starry night was to me the most far reaching and impenetrable barrier offered to us. It's not. So selfish and ignorant of me. A spacewalk, while impressive, is nothing more than child's play. What's for us the most difficult thing to do, the most out of reach frontier we face, is just being able to endure one's own mind, alone in the dark, often feeling unwanted, detestable or awkward. So the most important trick I've benefited from in my adult life was the simplest of all: to believe I was never alone, to believe in the masterful force of the Universe over my own. Some call this faith.
Well, yes it is, until it's not. Because faith salesmen are as plentiful as they ever were, and they are bad, much worse than subscription car salesmen, unless they work you together, unless they are the same person. Because the faith game, as they play it, is just a lie. The biggest lie of all. Placing one self in the way between the vastness and the needing, peddling and preaching to the disenfranchised, is a most wasteful and abject thing to do, plain and simple. The truth is: if you ever need a God, you just make one up, privately, keeping it to yourself, and be done with it. That's the trick: to never believe in things being said to you. Instead, look into them liars, as you discard their nonsensical verbal inflation. Just look into their vacant eyes, and witness the void, the emptiness, and the insignificance. Don't be them, unless you're looking to experience uselessness, shame and loneliness at the grandest scale. Because you already know better, because the time for preaching is long gone already.
What the world most urgently need is people creating and sharing genuinely helpful circumstances for less fortunate random folks. People turning problems into opportunities and solutions, as modestly and gracefully as their heart leads them to. Never for closed loop profit schemes, or in the name of some godly messianic figure, nor as a sign of submissiveness toward anyone or anything, but as a long term investment in the living, right here on Earth.
Many people already do so. That's how the open source communities, worker cooperatives, some not for profit organizations, as well as volunteering initiatives and various public policies got to flourish, just to name a few selfless oriented ventures. We just need more selflessness around us, as I believe selfless people are more than a few step ahead of most on the evolutionary scale. Or more aptly, we need to adjust our own values to align with theirs. We need to equate selflessness with strong character, and value strong characters over brute force, as the real strong person in any situation will most probably not be the forceful one, but those thinking about others before themselves. More often than not, forcefulness plays a part in any solution, just not the main part. Maybe you'd agree with such a view toward these subjects, or maybe this is unrelated to your sensibilities. In any case, affluent people and corporations transferring wealth to private foundations in exchange for tax breaks represent the direct opposite of selflessness. Charity only exists to relieve the affluent and the wealthy from bad rap, and in most case, is just smokescreen. Nice try.
Whatever you do, just keeping some awareness and respect toward selfless people and enterprises is probably absolutely fine in itself. No one's asking anyone to qualify for sainthood in any way, as it's not required for living a decent enough life. When I say decent enough, I mean keeping a positive outlook on things, I mean being able to receive what's given to you with humility, in total acceptance. That way, you'll always feel the need to give something back, and contribute, and maybe bring easiness into your own life, by the way of what you share with other people. Because easiness we most often need.
Because living is complicated by lots of hardship. Just think about how reality, as some people and groups of people are imposing it over the shoulders of the many, can be body and soul crushing. Let me ask you: can you envision the wars started over false premises, the technological cost cutting solutions poisoning our bodies, or the scientific mercenaries totally submitted to their industries? Do you see the destructive reign of power and money over all living things? When the mouthpiece in charge of communication and marketing tells us the problem is not the avalanche of pollutants in the water and in the air, when the science guy says some illnesses can't have environmental causes because it doesn't fit the established narrative, when edibles saturated with poisonous additives are constantly promoted and made widely available in convenience stores and groceries, when farming industries submit crops and cattle to permanent chemical control as a way to obfuscate illnesses and marginally grow yields, when the industrial propaganda apparatus sells us foods and drinks without X or Y additive so to mask much worse, when organic labels are sold to who can afford them and becomes just another flavour available, do you trust in anything, do you choose to believe in what's being said to you, or are you only tolerating what you see as inevitable, as it's all appearing as so much bigger than your own self? Can you still believe in anything?
I may share with you some fantasies that I, from personal experience, believe to be true, and which are probably as false as anything else. Then, in the end, after you choose to believe in this or in that, you may comfort yourself into thinking you've made some better choice. Following that train of thoughts, when confronted to new beliefs, I'm always asking myself the following question: what's the potential for such a belief to be proven harmful in the future? Choosing to answer that question may bring lots of pain, as it is basically just asking for trouble. But I find it necessary, because it educates me, it helps me see through some of the fog of life. Let's pick a few beliefs just to illustrate, starting with a big one: how can I believe in God? To answer that one, I had to be clear with what God is in the first place, as the idea of the Divine nature is most often inherited from millennium of ignorance and deceptive manipulation. I asked myself: how could believing in the idea of God become harmful (to me or anyone) in the future? My answer was that as long as I kept it a private matter, it was all good. I can now say it was a choice that brought a net positive into my life. But I'm also conscious it was a hack, because introducing faith into my life became a crutch that helped me fence paralyzing depression, anxiety and despair, as believing in something abstractly much bigger than oneself will do that.
On the other end, how could I believe that palm fat is good for human health and not bring harm in the future? I mean, the only benefit from ingesting rock solid fat matter taken from wood parts might be short term economic. Arriving to such a statement demanded hours upon hours of readings of all sorts, which was absolutely worth the trouble because I got to learn about monoculture, Indonesia's economy and the processed food industry at large. What's your excuse for poisoning your body with avoidable palm fat infused sugary treats on a daily basis? Or more aptly: why would one still be feeding milking cows with palm fat, which keeps butter solid at room temperature? Belief in the idea of God, belief in benefiting from palm fats, these are only two examples. Just to illustrate that at the end of the day, what you choose to believe in has some importance. And that you are the creator of your own reality. Yourself, that's the only thing you have some control over. Why not be wise and respectful in regard to your own self? A belief is a choice, a vote, a switch you turn on or off for an extended period of time, without never looking back, unless new information arises. Believing and choosing, that's a risky business, as it should always be handled with care, while it soon becomes absolutely essential. Because not choosing is to make a choice, and choosing to not believe is also a belief in itself. As in: damn if you do, damn if you don't. Go deal with that.