HUMANITY WILL SURVIVE, BUT WILL CIVILIZATION?

While we can all debate details of what is to come regarding "us" vs. "them" in terms of terrorism before the election, the bigger question is whether we will get a handle on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in a world environment where division rather than unity reigns. More than ever multi-national corporations seek public funds to produce more and more 'product'. Products (weapons) that have some of the highest net rates of return to businesses around the world and become deadlier and dealier as the technology of weaponry moves forward by leaps and bounds.

As the world's largest producer and seller of weapons (by a long shot) including weapons of mass destruction there is a karma wrapped up in all of that. Unless we strive to devote more resources to figuring out how we ended up in this endless spiral of weapons development and proliferation moving toward less rather than more security we may well face the elimination of the thin veneer we call 'civilization' and end up in another 'dark age'.

Unless we come to some level of accepting diversity without fearing those who are unlike us (us meaning people everywhere in all nations); unless we figure out a way to stop this thought process of wanting to impose our ideas or way of life on another; unless we figure out why we always think we (and I mean people everywhere again) "know" we are right when the course of human history his been one generation after another disproving the prior's truths; unless we start to make progress in these areas we will have a very high probability of revisiting the same levels of horror that rocked the world in the 20th century world wars but on entirely new scales.

When you take it to your personal level, your immediately family, your closest friends...is any of this worth watching them vaporized or dying a slow death from anthrax or smallpox. Is that really worth it to anyone in the world? People need to stop, look and listen TO THEIR HEART, TO THEIR GUT.

We need to stop listening to all the dogma. Enough of religious wars...my God how many times have the Koran, Book of Morman, the Bible been rewritten and written again by PEOPLE with agendas and personal motives. If we don't stop and listen to our hearts, view the world through our own personal lives as we have experienced them we will perish under the weight of all the generations of dogma that is imprinted on all of us. Every person is born into the world a blank slate with an inner compass, each of us equal.

It is time for everyone to stop blindly listening to 'the facts' in some book, 'the facts' according to some CEO, religious leader or politician. Look around you, look at the people important to you in your life.

Unless large numbers of people say enough is enough....people demand our leaders put their own lives on the line if they are to lead their people into war(s) then we will continue to go like sheep to slaughter for reasons that simply don't make sense anymore.

Should any of us 'trust' individuals who are motivated by salaries in the 'millions' who run our businesses, religious institutions and governments? Does any individual contribute so much to the world that they deserve compensation of millions and millions more per year? Even if they did is that the type of person we want running 'the show'?

I don't know about you but in my gut I know the world is not moving the right direction, I know in my gut America is not moving the right direction. If nothing else a day designated as a National Strike where everything just comes to a halt....where we 'stop' so we can look and listen and my God think about where we are going.

We were not born to just make sure the GDP keeps going up...although living in this country it pretty much reduces down to that. If something makes the GDP go up it is 'good', if it makes the GDP go 'down' it is bad. Maybe that economic 'religion' is something we should all examine as well. Is it possible the 'church towers' of our economic religion were the World Trade Center towers...were they an omen...perhaps a reminder that left unchecked it (our way of life based on unbridled capitalism) could come crashing down in dust unless we 'stop, look, listen and think' about where in the hell we are going?

I realize this thing is going all over the map but I do wonder are there other people out there like me who feel like this is the time, this is the place...where at least some of us say enough is enough....that humanity is ready for a new direction....a direction where we no longer accept 'religious wars', where we no longer just accept the 'way things are', where we no longer take an attitude of "I'm Righter than you"...

So far we have not discovered anything even close to the complexity of the planet earth and all of its diversity of life. What, just what if, Earth is the only place in the universe with the diversity of life we have....OMG....such a responsibility. So incredibly priceless this planet...worth saving at any cost. .. To me it is worth saving at any cost and the first step in saving it is to give up on ideas that I'm better, I'm right....rather to embrace a questioning of all things....and to stop being a robot controlled by mass media, mass culture...etc.

Are there other people out there feeling the same sense of this is the time to stand up and be counted to go in a new direction?