An American priest. Is the “Human experiment” done, Lord?

An American priest.
Is the “Human experiment” done, Lord?

I have an American friend who used to be a priest. He quit after many years, convinced that he was not doing any good. He tried everything but could not make people care for each other. They were only doing whatever they could for themselves and not realizing that Christians can only win if they learn to “love one another.” One day my friend walked out and never came back. He lives now on his own in a modest home and says good words to those who suffer around him. Sometimes he even hugs dirty homeless people.


I was very depressed the other day. The equivalent of the old German Nazi party won a majority government in Brazil. The German Chancellor, who did so much good, announced retirement, and a white supremacist killed a number of old people in a place of worship, (again.) this time in Pittsburg. This together with a petulant President next door acting childishly towards us and everyone else, caused me to be depressed. I asked my friend why is God doing this. Here is his reply.

You ask, "What is God doing?"  You are not, of course, the first to ask this.  Yeshua said, "Why have you forsaken me?"  Yeshua did not deserve to die.  His death was a great injustice (to say the least), as were the deaths of the Kennedys and Dr. King.  The Jews and gays in Nazi Germany must have asked the same thing, as did the Cathars, and the early Christians.  The history of humanity is the history of great good and great evil trading places in the consciousness of the masses.  But Yeshua said, "My kingdom is not of this world" ... and he meant it.  I don't know, but it seems to me that heaven on this earth was never promised.  The wheat is being separated from the chaff.  And the weeds will be allowed to grow until separated at the harvest, lest by pulling weeds the wheat is pulled up also:
Matthew 13:24-30
The Parable of the Weeds
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First, collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
The harvest is upon us.  The pulling has begun.  Evil has begotten evil.  Injustice has begotten injustice.  The falcon cannot hear the falconer.  The center cannot hold.  The very meaning of injustice is an assault upon the innocent - such as those who died in the synagogue.  The grieving is done by those left behind who feel the loss of goodness in their lives.  Yet, life is short for all, and one-day others will grieve for them after they, too, pass beyond the wickedness of this world.  The good in this world misses the good in this world. The Devil never has the last laugh, although the opposite may appear temporarily true.  Today's laughing is tomorrow's weeping and gnashing of teeth.  The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.
I think that we should not let these evil acts get us down.  There are many good people who inspire us still.  And I am amazed, sometimes, by the sweetness and commitment of so many in this younger generation. 
Again, I am listening to the music of 1968 (one of my favorite years for music).  I am taken back to two assassinations of two good, compassionate men who fought for peace and justice.  I am taken back to an attack by police on peaceful hippies just a few miles from my childhood home.  I am reminded of riots all over the world as young people rejected the abuses of the Establishment.  For a while after those turbulent times, there appeared to be a degree of peace as the forces of evil quietly built up their arsenals and technology and the good people went on vacation.  Now we are returning to a house in shambles, infested by rats.  But could we have ever stopped the evil?
But all of this, Avner, is nothing new.  And so we thank God for our blessings, continue to add our voices to the other voices of sanity and love, and trust in God that ultimately goodness does prevail.
I've gone on an on.  Sorry about that.  I will say good-bye now.

Peace! Shalom!

As you can see, my friend didn’t quit his faith, only his method of spreading the faith. Next time I will ask him a new question. Is it necessary for God to let people destroy the world to separate the wheat from the weeds and have the good people in heaven? After all, we can make something close to heaven on this earth, as many people here in the Pass have done. I hate going away even for a short time.

I am sorry my friend that we can’t be a stronger influence on your people. We don’t all need to die for the wheat and weeds to be separated. We still have time to change our ways. Just let Americans be more like Canadians. Heaven is here, look over the 49th. Just look directly north, friend, and remember the Hebrew slaves who followed Mosses North.

Are you thrilled by fear? Here is a scary Halloween prophecy, Read on.

Are you thrilled by fear? Here is a scary Halloween prophecy, Read on.
A “caravan” of 7000 unarmed poor families, mostly from the central South American country of Honduras is walking towards the southern border of the USA. The most powerful army of the world is going to be deployed to “protect” US sovereignty and stop this “invasion.” Will they follow the example of their Israeli friends around Gaza and shoot?
An Israeli wrote: We were ordered to get in line into shooting position. Between “them” and us, were two fences and we were on top of a dirt berm with them (Palestinians) climbing the slope towards us. The “terrorists” looked just like people in the Jerusalem market, and they were shouting and running. I scanned through my Tavor scope locating a target and squeezed the trigger. The human body jerked and started sliding down arms stretched towards me. I saw the face for the first time. It was a girl with black braided hair about thirteen. Her fingers clawed at the dirt making little trenches all the way down until she disappeared from my scope. I remembered an old movie where a Nazi soldier was shooting my ancestors in Germany. The tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t look through the scope again. I was battle-hardened now; I made my first kill.
Africa and South America have a lot in common. Both look triangular on the map, have archeological evidence of very advanced pre-historical civilizations, possess great amounts of natural resources and are populated by people with darker skins. Both are warm and have large areas that are very fertile, able to produce grains for food and grasses that support huge herds of cattle. Another triangular shape on the world map is India. Similar in most ways. Those are the places that were most exploited by Colonialism. If they were left unmolested there would not have been a Caravan of thousands walking to the USA today nor would there have been an armada of rickety boats floating, hipped with migrants towards Europe. I could easily prove the point, but it would take a couple of books which you don’t have time to read.
South America is rich, and the people may be uneducated, but they are smart. Look at those who have been assimilated into Canadian society. South America is maintained as a source for North America’s wealth. They often tried to gain some form of independence but failed miserably. Where they did, soon they were beaten back by military coups and by corruption from within. Such is the case now in Venezuela. Recently world attention has been highlighted on the plight of El Salvador by the canonization of the assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero.
What you see today is only a slight indication of what there is to come, some in the lifetime of young people who are now old enough to read these words. We know how the world was when I was a child, know the rate it has changed and can calculate how much it will change in another fifty years if all stays the same. It's elementary my dear readers. Barring a major shift in human behavior, by the year 2040 we may see, not a few thousand migrants begging admission to the advanced nations, but tens of millions desperate human beings, some very technologically savvy, fighting frantically to find dry land to live on. You can see on the news what one desperate “terrorist” can do, multiply it by many millions.
We may be able to slow the tide a bit with the new short and medium-range nuclear missiles that Trump just ordered, but not for long. Who will be the soldiers ordered to fire those weapons? All soldiers know that the crews who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki died of insanity.
Today you see political parties building their election platforms on cutting taxes and fighting the hated carbon tax. What a joke that is, a dangerous fib based on the ignorance of TV educated voters. People who are devoting most of their time to study scores of professional sports teams and ratings of popular Reality Shows don’t have time to study world events and elude themselves that if taxes were reduced they could “travel” more or rent storage space for accumulating more junk.
The truth is much different. In order to stem our damaging atmospheric pollution and bring it to manageable levels, we must have a much higher Carbon Tax and not give the money back to the voters. That money is only a small portion of what is needed for paying the price of just rebuilding what is being currently destroyed by the changing climate. Taxes can’t go down while we borrow money to keep our standard of living where most human work is performed by energy extracted from the earth. We must bring back the level of taxation that was normal before Reagan, Mulroney, Fletcher, and the rest of the Right wingers who falsely believed in the hoax of trickle-down economics. Those were the years we refer to now when we say “make America great again.” I remember it and so do all the people who are my age. We had problems but nothing in comparison with what is coming.
The train is going towards the cliff, and it ain’t slowing down………………….

https___www.goodfreephotos.com_albums_holidays_halloween_crow-standing-on-branch-in-front-of-full-moon-scar1 y-halloween-scene[1]
 A Simple Raven's HALOWEEN prediction.

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

The phone rang, and it was a recording. The voice told me that I am invited to a rally where our “future” Premier Jason Kenney will host the Premier of Ontario to discuss a united front to stop the job-killing hated Carbon tax. Yeah, I whispered, we badly need jobs.  Every day I see people losing their jobs here and everywhere else, and places like the Crowsnest Pass are shrinking. The cities gain more homeless and others who need Social Assistance. The Carbon Tax is hated by the Koch brothers and the other oil sands owners but will not solve the lack of jobs issues.

I go back in memory, a privilege that is reserved for old people like me. The year was 1970, and I went to the supermarket. The manager stopped for a chat. Our cashiers, he said, are second to none and they are highly paid. You must be pretty smart to know every item in the store, prices, codes and know what is on sale. He went on to describe some more positions, and I came out with a new appreciation for the people who serve me at the store. It was a short time later that barcodes and scanners were introduced. A worker pushed my cart to the parking lot and placed my groceries carefully in the trunk of my car. I stopped at the Gas Station, where a familiar person filled my gas, checked the oil and cleaned my windshield and then I went to the bank.  The bank had four tellers and a supervisor. I came home and checked my mailbox where the Postman left the mail and took the milk that the milkman left in the milkshute to the fridge. Now I watched the news. Every station and each newspaper had reporters in every part of the world.

Later that night I paid an attendant at the hospital parking when I was visiting a friend and stopped at A&W where a young woman brought my order to my car window. The girl took my cash and cleared my tray away. There were no self-serve places. On the way home I passed by a few family grocery stores, laundry mats, and family restaurants. Every second or third corner had a garage with a gas station and the familiar barbershop Barber’s pole red, white and blue twirling. I looked around with satisfaction and confidence. It was easy to start a little business and jobs were everywhere. People worked in manufacturing, others in government jobs and thousands were busily fixing things instead of selling new “made abroad” items that will be thrown away in short order.

There was competition everywhere driving the economy forward. The little family owned businesses competed with each other on providing better service and downtown offered competition between the big stores, Hudsson Bay, Woodwards, Woolco, Woodwards, Kmart, Eatons, Simpsons Sears, and other names I have forgotten. It was Capitalism that we were proud of.

There were a lot of jobs around that were not very productive. I remember people doing personal business on work time, and we all complained about it. The small business owners very often were bitter over the fact that others in big unionized outfits got away with working ideal shifts and not doing much. Adjustments had to be made, and they were. Life is meant to be a struggle, and nothing remains the same for long.

The big crunch came somewhere in the eighties. It was gradual and hard to follow. The obvious fact was that we shifted emphasis from providing jobs and a reasonable standard of living for the majority, and highlighted a need to make everything more efficient. Slowly the little businesses disappeared and were replaced by big corporations. Made in Canada or the USA items became hard to find, and big stores were closing down to be replaced by chain big box stores from other places. Automation took over most of the working class better-paying jobs leaving people with average ability barely able to make ends meet.

Some of us went to upgrade skills, but there were so many who lacked the ability and often fell back on already strained safety nets called social security. We began to have surplus people. Combine this with changes in agriculture, loss of fisheries and newly developed building and manufacturing methods, and we were in trouble. Predatory Capitalism was born.

 

Instead of figuring out solutions we took the easy way out and moved production to places with lower labor costs. No-one was willing to admit that our efficiencies outstripped our needs and that the few people who made it to the top of the food chain no longer needed the billions of people who didn’t. No-one was dealing with the fact that the price we may end up paying for all the advances may be the end of the world as we know it.

Now I see Mr. Doug Ford on a stage proclaiming. My friends, we will beat the job-killing Carbon Tax and get Justin Trudeau's hands out of our pockets. Help is on the way. His one step of pulling Ontario out of the Cap And Trade agreement already costs Ontarians three billion dollars. Now he wants to help me save less than $6 on my energy bill per month to create jobs?

If Mr. Ford wants to help Alberta, I have a better suggestion. Why does he not use his influence down east, get together with the new premier of Quebec, and allow an Energy East pipeline to supply Alberta oil to the rest of Canada. An energy independent Canada could export excess refined in New Brunswick oil to Europe, and we could all be happy.

Above all, we would not purchase oil from terrible places and not create pollution transporting the oil halfway around the world. Come on Mr. Kenney, show your skill and get your friend Doug to help us where we need help. There are lots of jobs in building a pipeline, aren’t there?

The only Constant is Change.

The only Constant is Change.

One of the people I admire for his hard work, volunteer spirit, personal achievements, family relationships and display of smarts is a friend named John. You can trust John and take a good example from him. He is always ready to help others and leads by a good example. John was born to a poor miners family and was brought up to have self-respect, work hard and give his best in every situation. He is a great believer that change is good. Perhaps that is his biggest strength. While most people expand a large amount of energy on resisting change, John says with a smile, why are people scared of change, Avner?

People do resist change, and when a change occurs, they split into two or more camps. Those who want the change, often because they see some benefit from it, and those who had things just the way they wanted them or lost something due to the change. Often people worked hard towards something, and even if the change is good, they suffer the loss of face. My friend, Bob the philosopher, has a favorite saying, “change is the only constant.”

I remember a scene from my childhood. A family of newcomers lived with their kids and grandma in an old house. Their street wasn’t paved, and of course, there were no sidewalks. We lived in a tropical environment where it rained a lot, and the whole place was full of mud. The old grandma, concerned about the kids, used to walk around the neighborhood with a hand-sewn canvas basket and collect pebbles. Buying a load of gravel was not an option yet. She would go every day, collect the rocks and dump them in front of their home until she had a nice pad in front of the whole house. When we kids walked on it, she would watch and tell us to be careful since the “babies” needed a dry place to play. Some of the boys used to run and sort of skid on the gravel while old grandma chased after them with a stick shouting for us to go away. I used to laugh with the rest of the boys, till one day, I saw the tears streaming down her dusty, wrinkled face. It was not a joke, she really suffered. When I noticed her crooked back and arthritic deformed hands I actually walked away with shame.

The town was growing, and the roads were being paved. Soon came the day when a crew showed up to pour a sidewalk. Most of the neighbors waited a long time for that day, and people were even predicting that it won't be long before we get a street light. Construction was happening all over town, and the kids were excited about the colorful pipes that were piled by the school with the promise that there will be a swing set and a slide. The world was changing, and as far as we kids knew, it was changing for the good. A little tractor showed up with a scraper blade in front and was working hard blowing smoke and dust smoothing the ground for the sidewalk when a commotion broke out. I went to look.

The old grandma was sprawled in front of the blade of the tractor, and a police siren was coming closer. A girl, about ten carrying two metal buckets and a dustpan got between the adults and went to the old woman and said. Grandma, can we have your rocks for the new slide, please? It is muddy. For the next hour, there was a line of people carrying buckets full of rocks. A change happened in the right way.

We used to teach a course at my workplace about resisting change. Everyone should take it. I personally resist change and support change depending on the situation.

Globally: I want all the people who are hurt by Climate change to sue and get their money back from all the other people who are causing it by refusing to look at the facts.

Nationally: I want to see Canada become fully independent by being completely self-sufficient even if things will cost more for a duration.

Provincially: I don’t want Alberta to go back to the days when our lives fully depended on oil, and we had no chance of surviving without it. Many countries have no oil, and most of our other resources, and are doing very well.

Locally: So many of us are complaining that the government doesn’t have a new pipeline built yet. I want to see if those people will show us how to get the Coleman Downtown beautification project done so we can start on the next town upgrade.

I am writing this to my friend John and to all the people who support change and believe that one can’t stand in the way of progress. Change is good and unavoidable. This world was created to always change, and it has the capacity to change back if it’s gone too far, but not without a lot of people being hurt.

Every artist knows that at some point the piece of art is finished and shouldn’t change anymore. It is one of the biggest challenges to know when is this point occurring.

A change is usually needed in response to a need or perhaps it became available due to a new discovery. Some will want a change, and new opportunities, while others will protect the old ways which work well for them. After considering the need for change, it is time to figure out how to properly effect change. My friend John and others like him, must not wonder why people are scared of change and consider carefully the “why” and the “how.”

We should never take the easy way and inflict change on others. If we do, we may lose more than we gain.

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The road to happiness is straight ahead.

The road to happiness is straight ahead.
I believe that a human is created in the image of God. What is God is a harder question to answer. My good friend who has native blood in his veins said that God is the creator. In that case, let's assume that human is also a creator. Perhaps I can create one miracle. Feeling the responsibility of being a creator upon my shoulders, I went asking people what they see as the most important change we should make to this world. Some answered fast while others took time to think about it, but the same answer came forth. If people had one wish, they would ask for PEACE. Humans are scared most of the other humans. Why?
There are a number of good reasons big and small. Most obvious is the fact that people need a space on earth and need to eat. Breathing and drinking water are also important, but it used to be guaranteed, which it is no more. Next comes the need to be safe from other humans who will kill you to take what you have, followed closely by enterprising folks who will use you and discard you. That is a problem for us all but more pronounced for the 52% humans who are females.
There is a war between the various races of humans. A war between the rich and the poor, between national groups, religious groups, those who feel entitled to more than others, people who have other sexual attractions, various moral codes and of course the gender war. The biggest reason of all is who will control the world.
People fight for control at all levels, and we can see it even in the behavior of toddlers. In history, the conflict was between rulers who managed to build empires and use their populations as great armies, and slowly it shifted to economic control dictated by those who have the most money and want to rule the world at any cost.
A lot of the super-rich people are innocent of this charge. People who worked hard in some given field and are living according to their means are not the problem and often contribute greatly to philanthropic causes. Often their initiative is advancing peace. Others resort to cheating the rules while others abuse whole populations, and even cause wars. You can count in the weapon manufacturers, who must have wars and those who use energy as currency to gain and keep power. It is hard to sift out who is in which camp, so all get blamed.
The small percentage of rich people who have something to do with wars have bought into the Neo-Liberal or Extreme Right theory and are now using their considerable resources in politics, while the unaware masses are buying in simply by following well-crafted marketing campaigns. The ideas are simple. Lower taxes (mostly for corporations), reduce government regulations and keep out people who may water down profits. Big anti-immigration sentiment has been artificially created. Next comes demands to increase regulations on those who hinder business ventures, ( environmental reasons for example,) increase taxes on the lower economic classes or reducing their government services, and often place restrictions on organizing labor, minimum wage opposition and alike.
 “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

The people around the world are trying peaceful demonstrations, getting arrested beaten and sometimes killed. Many more suffer financial ruin and ridicule even by the most powerful person in the world. The situation is not improving since a great number of political leaders, as well as many media outlets, are subject to pressure from big money.
Since the argument in favor of a few taking the resources of the many, is so weak, they are pressured to use an old technique called lying. Nothing is new under the sun.
“There is nothing in the record of the past two years when both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party which can lead any person to believe that those promises will be fulfilled in the future. They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.”
― John F. Kennedy
This is a quote from 1962. Many of us remember the campaign that led the US and not so great, Great Britain to wage war on Iraq. Repeated lies, followed by millions killed and, sorry, sorry, we made a mistake.
I purchased a greeting card. It wishes “Health peace and prosperity” to the recipient. Being made in the image of the creator I want to give health but it is already given. Most ailments are healed by themselves. I wish to give prosperity, but I live in a very prosperous province of a prosperous country. With many years of plenty behind us, every person here should be prosperous if the wealth would have been shared. I want to give peace, but peace is not possible when so many people are continuously abused for reasons they can not change. What I can do, with my power to create is to convince people to use the power they already have and strive for equality.
Two forces fight to subjugate most humans. Communism, which is now defeated and Alt-Right Fascism. Peace will be possible when we get together and insist that both will be securely neutralized by “we the people.”
Women accept pay to be tortured on pornographic movies or to marry into wealth. Kids are starving or trafficked for sex and labor. People from countries where disaster or war strike are forced to beg for their lives and often perish. The solution is out of the hands of the creator since people have free will which they must exercise.
Peace, the most coveted commodity, is possible if most of us instead of complaining will demand that our leaders will create conditions that will allow it. Be not afraid.

Garbage can save the world.

 

Garbage can save the world.

Some people don’t want to know about problems in the world. A guy just told me that he disconnected the satellite and no longer watches any news. Good idea if you don’t care about how you may be the reason that we have such stressful news. Please consider the possibility that if you and I and many others do our share, the world could be a better place.

There are big problems that face us now and must be dealt with. Some people are working on it but not nearly enough. Instead of fighting for more gun controls people should fight against nuclear weapons. We can’t survive a nuclear war. Therefore, nuclear disarmament is a must. We also can’t rebuild a civilization if ours will be destroyed by a catastrophic Climate Change. We barely manage to deal with the changes that are already happening. Again, many millions of people are actively trying to make a change, but there are many others who block their efforts with economic arguments. It is hard to tell people to change what is obviously working, especially if the solution requires immediate sacrifice mostly for future benefits. Yet we all like to have insurance just in case. Let me tell you, my friends, insurance won't help.

Overall I see our society advancing to its betterment by leaps and bounds, at least where people have a say about their future. The more democratic countries have better living conditions, longer life expectancy, more educated populations and better healthcare in all but one. Those are also the countries where a large majority speak up against looming dangers like Nuclear arms and destructive pollution. Our main problem is the problem of the rich. Rich is what half of the world calls us. We have too much, use too much and have to spend a significant amount of our resources on defending our wealth. We are the throw-away societies.

The UN commissions all kinds of studies that prove how much food is wasted, how it could be used and how hunger can be defeated. I don’t wish to give numbers and waste a lot of writing space on footnotes but I can say the following. We are able to produce all the food the world needs without any of us giving up whatever we need. Even at current rate of production hunger can be eliminated if we only don’t throw away 45% of all the food that we produce. My family and I throw away food and so probably we all do. That is a problem, but not the main problem.

The main issue is that the waste here is a business decision. Food production is an industry governed by predatory Capitalism. Not the good kind of Capitalism that uses competition to drive people towards working harder and smarter, but the kind that goes after the jugular for world domination. The kind of Capitalism that is displayed openly now by the US demanding a new NAFTA deal. But, that is not the focus of this column.

Throw away society was coined, I believe, in a Time Magazine in 1945 before we even began the age of plastics. Look at where we are now. Just consider the amount of material and labor that is in packaging. Now consider the life expectancy of products. All of what we buy is manufactured with an end of life expectancy and new products to replace it, (not repair) are made. My grandparents bought shoes from a shoemaker and had them repaired. How often do you buy shoes this days?

Now let's consider the single-use products that we make so cheap to save on labor for cleaning and reusing them. The kind of throwaway products that seem harmless if we don’t consider the energy pollution required to produce them and the issues facing their disposal. You probably saw the video with the many miles of garbage accumulated in the oceans.

Another extremely wasteful industry is the fashion industry and please include home fashions in the equation. While a large portion of humanity are lucky to have the clothes or utensils necessary for life, we replace next to new items on a seasonal basis. Most of my friends remodel their homes every five years and in some cases it is not the only home they have.

Consider what you see in a public washroom. Notice how many people use by far more soap, paper towels and heated water than what is needed. Now turn your mind's eye to our favorite subject oil and gas. We need both to survive but how much do we really need.

If we reduce our 4.5 tonnes of garbage per year, the 25% of food thrown out and reduce turn over of our wearable fashions; we can make a great impact. If we use energy wisely we may see reduced fires in BC and California, less floods all over the world and a return of the weather from some years ago. This and reduced wars in the middle east, reduced military built up all over and perhaps more jobs.

Strangely enough, the throwaway culture taught us to throw away people mostly in favor of making more money and buying more so we have more to throw away. Our family relationships weakened, less intergenerational interdependence and definitely no empathy whatsoever for others who must have a way to make a living, just like we do. Predatory Capitalism is all about me or mine. Within the family, the community, country, race, all that we consider and expect others to consider is personal gain. It wasn’t always like that as some of us older folks clearly still remember.

When I was young, parents and kids helped each other, business owners cared about their employees and people didn’t mind paying a little more so all will be fed. This could return if we change our mindset. I cared more about my dog than a Corporation cares about laying off a thousand employees to increase the shareholder's dividends.

Humans and Partners.,

Humans and Partners.

 

When I was a child, on a farm by Armageddon in Israel, we had a horse and a mule to provide farm horsepower and transportation. The horse was a tall white female named Cloud, and the mule was dark, stubborn and had big ears. The older kids said that he was gay since mules don’t have any colts. He shouted in defiance but worked harder than anyone on the farm. When Cloud the mare died, from a snake bite, I cried bitterly; she was my friend. I still remember her fondly. The mule disappeared after we got a tractor to do his work and no-one ever apologized to him for calling him names because of the way he was born.

This experience taught me about working with nonhumans. Each of the animals had a personality, physical characteristics, and intelligence. Our survival was tied to those animals, and it was a “give and take” relationship. If the mule didn’t want to go somewhere, you had to find another way, since you couldn’t change his mind. I remember my mom feeding watermelon to Cloud, and the mule started braying in defiance and kicking up the straw. I hurried to get him some watermelon and petted him saying sorry, Mom just forgot. I thought I saw tears in his big black eyes. In my early life, humans and animals coexisted interdependently, and nobody had a problem with it.

Move more than sixty years forward, and humans are once more becoming dependent on a partnership with another entity that has a mind of its own. It is not furry and doesn’t have biological functions as we do, but it seems to have a personality, an ability to demand of us what it needs and treat it with respect. Our relationship with it may be more intimate even than the partnership we had with the farm animals.

I am alive today thanks to a couple of machines and a wonderful Canadian Healthcare system. One hundred percent dependency. If there is even the slightest glitch with my most sophisticated Pacemaker, or if I got tasered by the police, I will probably die in seconds.

Most people have a psychological dependency now on computers and cell phones which are a small Artificial Intelligence device. Apparently, folks check it even at the most intimate moments and can’t envision life without it. The “device” became an extension of our brain connecting billions of people through the internet and providing information that is vital to our survival. The only problem is that we communicate very slowly with devices.

Elon Musk, a business magnate and investor the founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; and co-founder of PayPal (Wikipedia) known mostly because of the Tesla cars, believes that in a short while we will be able to communicate with Artificial Intelligence directly from our brain. There will be an interaction between a device and a biological brain, namely ourselves. Combine this with our already existing ability to create Virtual Reality and humans may be able to create whatever reality they want or will they?

When we team our own brain with a machine who is going to be in control? Working with the farm animals we were in control since we were smarter. With the computer, we lose our main advantage. To enjoy what the “A I” offers we must hand over control like we do when we use opiates. Opiates don’t have a mind, but our phone has a brain. Will the computer use the human brain, or will the biological thinking device remain in the driver seat.

A long-lost book that didn’t make it into the Bible, The Gospel of Thomas stated.

(7) Jesus says:

 “Blessed is the lion that a person will eat and the lion will become human.
 And cursed is the person whom a lion will eat and the lion will become human.” (Gospel of Thomas)

 

For two thousand years people couldn’t interpret this saying, but now we can. Just insert “computer” where it says “lion.”

We, humans, are smart and innovative, but we always need to harness the help of someone else, a none human entity. The problem is, who will control what we call our life.

When I was a child, we used animals, we even loved them, but there was no question about who was in charge. Over my lifetime we worked hard to develop machines and technology. Now we are on the verge of merging with our creation. My physical body already did.

I am elated thinking that this may be the fulfillment of God’s promise that “His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Humans may be able to have any reality that they want. On the other hand, I am scared. I say to my self, again and again, be not afraid, but I am.

When I loved the white mare Cloud, she returned my love. When I chose to be fair to the black mule, he had tears of either pain or joy, but he had feelings. Those were creatures like me created by the invisible hand.

Now we are talking about joining with our own creation which we can’t infuse with emotions. The human creators assume that their own emotions will just use the superior intelligence and abilities of the Artificial Intelligence they have created. Cursed is the human that the Lion ate and it became human.

When I was riding in a cart towed by a stubborn mule if he didn’t want to go through a big paddle, I just followed him around the mudhole. If he was going to tip the cart, I forced him to go the other way. It was a partnership, and we both benefited. Now, if my brain will merge with a computer brain, I don’t know what may happen. Will the “A I” play a game with me instead of the other way around?

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