How do we want to live our lives?

 

How do we want to live our lives?

I didn’t ask to spend my retirement years in crisis. The people of earth didn’t either. A hundred-year pandemic, looming threat of the globe warming, a possible deadly conflict between world powers, or possible internal fight in an empire situated on our doorstep, but we have it all.

All of us chose how to live our lives and try to make the best of it. Sadly, we are not born equal. Some are handed everything by the virtue of being born. You can be a white son or daughter of a rich family born with a perfectly healthy body and believe that God favoured you in some way. You will spend your life in leisure competing with a few others as lucky as yourself in isolation from the filthy masses. They are not as worthy as you. You can also expect that most people will try to behead you if they can. In time, they probably will.

Another option is to live life doing the minimum and trying to escape the misery of being poor and viewed as a useless human being. Often you may find yourself intoxicated and resentful of what life handed you. In your mind will be a story of being cheated by life. You will be defending your hurt ego unsuccessfully. About half of humanity is born disadvantaged with very little prospect of getting ahead without fighting.

Most people are not privileged or useless for society. They possess the ability to function and contribute, able to produce what they need, procreate, and shape the world to allow them to exist. They compete with each other in every possible way for a place closer to the top. Those who are not concerned with the plight of others have a material advantage. Others slow down to help the needy, which often is viewed as a weakness.

Human society has been experimenting with options of how to organize itself for optimum success since pre-history. Originally people followed nature and organized what we call “the law of the jungle.” Those who could enslave others did. Women suffered most. Sarah “gave” Abraham her Egyptian slave girl to impregnate. The father of Islamic people, “Ismael” was born.

As humans became oriented to logic and thinking, philosophies of governing advanced. After thousands of years of evolution, we witnessed the birth of Christianity, which introduced what today we call the political left. Under that theory, human society is accepting responsibility for all its members.

A person who is believed to be the son of the creator started a movement based on being considerate and fair. He preached helping the poor and disadvantaged until it hurts, advocated community, emphasized the importance of beliefs, and talked about nonmaterial spirituality being more important than all material things.

As history progressed casts and classes became less rigid and the common people on the “left” (of the British parliament) realized that they were human as much as the privileged few. Slaves rebelled, peasants rose, a middle class was born, and some excelled in learning. Some of the privileged joined them, and democracy handed them some power through governments. The most populous Christian religion, Catholics, even promoted the notion that a woman, the mother of the Saviour, is a powerful spiritual entity.

Now, modernized society witnessed signs of a new order where the filthy masses no longer were the property of the privileged but a power to be reckoned with. At the beginning of the twentieth century, many people knew that privilege and entitlement were not ordained by God, yet those who had power and privilege disputed the idea.

While the “left” aspired to Christian ideals of equality and compassion achieved by change and reform, the “right” also built a case for being on God’s side. Northern European Protestantism believed strongly in pre-destiny. What could be a better sign that God favours people than their wealth and success here on earth? The far-right movement unabashedly maintained racial superiority, patriarchy, and hate of weakness of any sort. They wanted freedom of the market to rule, small government, no tax on accumulated wealth, and little regulations hindering an individual’s ability to profit or even wage wars.

The two theories were both tried and failed. Fascism disappeared for a time with the fall of Nazi Germany and Communism all but disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union. Both still exist and work hard towards world domination. The Right gets power by financing elections, and their candidates are selling the assets and resources of democracies to what used to be the communists. BC sold its coastal real estate and Alberta sold oil sands to China. (Lookup International Democratic Union.)

The human animals will only survive into the future by co-operation. The Christian message of doing it by “love” is competing with the authoritarian idea of forcing people to work. Selfish goals can only be gained by force. People are not willing to give up much for a few to gain from it.

Now the “right” and “left” are pretty even around the world, holding each other by the throat. Democracy is widespread, forcing both to campaign for votes and mass support. In China, authoritarianism is making the economy function well, while in the West people are divided, unable to decipher which is real and which is fake news. Lying is no longer considered a sin.

The “left” is enjoying the support of the intellectual class and removed itself from the religious base no longer popular. Now there is talk about going back to the original Christian teachings without interpretations.

 

Mankind tried all the ways we can envision. We became selfish groups fighting for power and wealth. We see the ugly end on the horizon. Will we accept the teaching of love and work together to obtain a heaven on earth? Only God knows.