I spent a lot of time looking out the window of a tall building last night just staring at the mass of humanity moving beneath me.  To be exact, I was able to see the Manila Zoo while, at the same time, watching a busy intersection.  Observing how undisciplined Filipino drivers were with respect to keeping the intersection open when the flow of traffic was not moving, not to mention the lack of obeying of the lights and the continuous honking their horns, I began wondering if the animals were living in the Manila Zoo or had escaped years ago and learned to drive.  The point is that I can’t imagine that we are meant, as humans, to live in a perfect world.  I believe that the world economy (not just the local consumer economy) depends on the stupidity I see everyday.  I spend so much time ranting and raving about this stupidity I observe that I forget to think about what would happen if everyone started listening to me, or someone smarter than me with all of the solutions.  Would the systems around the world eventually break down? 

I’m living in the heart of a growing call center industry, not to mention a growing region of the world where development and progress is taking place in leaps and bounds.  The 1^st world investors and their 3^rd world facilitators are making money at an astounding rate.  What would happen if all of the progress suddenly stopped?  What would happen if the families stopped having “litters” of 9 kids?  This doesn’t just go for the Philippines, but other 3^rd world areas such as India as well.  Could our current system survive if there was no longer a 3^rd world?  I look to Europe, the spokes model for the 1^st world and their heavily socialized tax systems.  Their birth rates are declining as everyone is highly paid and highly educated.  But their dirty little secret, as is the case with most 1^st world areas, is that their economies depend on the 3^rd world and our ability to produce a huge quantity of their wares at bargain basement prices.  In other words, if everyone in Paris has the luxury of a 35 hour work week and so much time for the Arts, who do you think is picking up the slack and does all of the sewing or steel milling?

It reminds me of what I saw in the Matrix movie, where they said that the first model they tried was to make everything “ideal”.  The result was that the Matrix broke down as the human perception couldn’t deal with everything working out exactly as they planned.  I believe that the same is true with the non-movie world.  We will come to the point that most of the problems of humanity are solved.  There will be no pollution, starvation, disease, and discrimination.  You will be able to change your appearance through genetic manipulation.  Everyone and everything will be “perfect”.  Without new challenges, life will become excessively boring.  Being bored is something I don’t think we will be able to genetically overcome.  Unless we are able to colonize other planets, it will be at that point that, somewhere, somehow, the “big red button” will be pushed out of pure frustration with the lack of progress by a “born businessman” drove to insanity (and a fascination with the apocalypse) due to the aforementioned boredom.  We will vanish…our remains to be discovered by future alien archeologists, 10 million years into the future.  People wonder “where is God”?  The problems that He delivers for us to overcome are the only things that allow us to survive as a species.  Obviously if He didn’t love us, He would have made us perfect.

March 19th, 2005

Due to (surprisingly) popular demand:  How you can contribute to my website.