Wake Up Mankind Part 1 - if We Want to Change the World, We Must Improve Our Thinking


by Lew Spratt - Date: 2007-03-20 - Word Count: 1567 Share This!

Wake up, mankind! Part One.Do you dare to live? Do you deserve to? Can you become truly alive and aware? Do you want to?

If told the meaning of life, would you recognise it and accept the responsibility of sharing it?

Can you handle these truths? You are going to die! Chances are, with the way you are living, that your death will have no relevance just as your life has none, you will die without ever really having been alive.

The matrix is real; we just refer to it as the industrial culture!

Why is it that in 2007 with the massive amount of information available to the average person, when the vast majority of people can read, including you, that our mental achievements cannot match the outstanding thinkers of thousands of years ago?

We still have our occasional bright minds, but throughout history they represent such a miniscule percentage of the general population. But what excuse do the rest of us have for being so dull? The following appears to provide the explanation.

However, there can be no compulsion to read this article or to act upon it.

Accordingly it would be unhelpful to make it the subject of examinations and assessments. Instead it is offered merely as a stimulus to action both within and outside of the parameters of a greater understanding of which it is but a small part.

So if you do attempt to act upon it, do so for the sake of all things not for any personal advantage. To do so could be a joy and a revelation, to leave it alone - no blame.

What examinations there are will not depend on how you act in response to this article, only on your ability to understand your own doubts and certainties.

I have been told that society is not ready for millions and millions of bright minds and therefore must continue to engage them below their ability. I disagree, and I believe we are in desperate need of them. I believe we are, each one capable of exhibiting traits akin to genius.

In one single night in 1832, Evariste Galois, a young French mathematician wrote an intellectual testament so full of amazing new ideas that these few pages, written in feverish haste, have inspired generations of mathematicians. He was facing certain death, he had a hopeless duel to fight the next morning, and this enabled him to break through the self-critical doubts and other obstacles that stood in the path of his exceptional ideas. This great danger provided the catalyst to productive imagination.

Humanity in the beginning of the third millennium is threatened no less. We face the challenge of life and death. The possible extinction of our species or at least the end of our current ways of life is no longer a remote possibility but scientific prediction.

Whatever your continent or colour you face the probability of catastrophic developments. Our race faces imminent social and ecological disasters of unprecedented proportions. Each and every one of us has contributed to the creation of these disasters and almost no one is guilty of doing so deliberately. Everyday sees an increase in overpopulation, increase in pollution and a corresponding reduction in the capacity of our ecosystem to survive the damage. It wasn't at all hard for mankind to bring our otherwise self-healing ecosystem to the brink of disaster; in fact we did it with consummate ease. One would assume that if mankind focussed its efforts on assisting the planet to recover that the task should be significantly less difficult in that we would be working with the natural order rather than against it.

If we want to change the world, we must change our thinking! Get your priorities right? Then live your life according to those priorities.

You are a sentient being, you are capable of independent thought and are held responsible for your actions and omissions. Your life is a means to an end and you are an end in your own right!

What does this mean?

Most things are not desired for what they are but for something else. People strive for a "good" job, not solely because they like the work but for what the job provides in exchange for their effort. Money is the most common. However, money is rarely sought for its own sake, but what you can buy with it, and then things get really confusing. You buy food not for its own sake but to eat it, you save money earned to buy a car to replace the perfectly good car you already have. The same applies to most consumer goods.

All of these things are merely means to various ends, yet you as a human being are an end in your own right. Because everything you do and everything else that you get or have can be used at your discretion to pursue your perceived goals. Accordingly you are the ends to all of your possible means.

So we have the end, what are the means to that end? Any means that you can consider devolves from a prior means until we work our way back to the first means i.e. one that is not won by other means. Therefore if it is the first means then it is ultimately the means to all possible ends, therefore then it is the ultimate means and if it is not won by any other means, then we must already possess it. Quite obviously the first means is life.

If life is the first means and the ultimate end therefore it must be the most valuable thing we own or will ever own. So how do we quantify this most valuable possession?

And why do we want to? By quantifying our lives we can then measure our values against it in much the same way as we currently compare items by price.

Just as currencies can differ in value, so do the units of measure that make up our lives. Many of us would gladly give up time spent in a prison sentence, in a slave camp, or in a dentist chair much more readily than time spent with loved ones or on a wondrous vacation. How do we define the difference? The difference is relatively easy to determine, by differentiating between what we desire to do and what we have little choice in doing, i.e. freedom makes the difference. What is time that is not restricted by cost? location? And other peoples' directives? That is something we loosely refer to as leisure time. This does not necessarily mean the absence of work. Quite the opposite, leisure can include work where the work is enjoyed and is undertaken for its own sake. How many people undertake different types of work outside of their normal jobs? Working in the community, activities such as gardening are pleasurable to a great many people because they provide satisfaction of human needs.

Firstly we have always measured our lives, we have used the measure of time to break our lives into more tangible components. Seconds, minutes, hours etc through to eons, we measure time.

Calculate how long you think you will live, work out the number of days you have left, what you will you be doing in those days? Take out the number of days working in a job you hate, the number of hours travelling, sleeping, being ill and incapacitated, the number of hours watching the idiot box because you don't have the time, energy or other resources to do anything else. How much time do you have left? This is your life, those hours left are the hours that remain for your use as you choose? When your life is over, that's it, there is no more, you will have used your quota, had your chance. How will you play the game of life? Here are the rules!

You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life." There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work." Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here." Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. You will forget all this.Winners leave the world a better place for time here.

Let us hope that the actions of billions of educated caring humans can address the problems we face sooner rather than later.


Related Tags: intellect, personal growth, awakening, humanity, discovery, lew spratt, golden age technology

Lew Spratt an Australian Social Physicist with a background in banking and finance, community and industry development, social welfare and technology. Now seeking to engage modern Information and Communication Technology to support and assist older people and people with disabilities. http://www.goldenagenet.tk

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