Warning from the Universe.

 

Warning from the Universe.

It was 1967. We rented a one-bedroom apartment by the Holy Cross Hospital for the four of us. Newcomers can’t afford much. Next, I went for a walk to look for a place to buy groceries. I passed by a Safeway but couldn’t figure out what they do. Looked inside and concluded that it must be a wholesaler’s place. How could there be a space this size for people to grocery shop? Two blocks away there was a small corner grocery store and to my surprise, the owner could speak Hebrew. It saved me. We had food and shelter if we could get a job that would pay before our money ran out.

There were private little food stores every few blocks, many laundromats, bakeries, and even little shops selling and fixing TVs. Unemployment wasn’t a problem. Little private businesses filled the city, paid taxes, and provided employment even for the most unskilled folks.

Two years later, we had a used car. It was a Chevy ll ($900) 1965, and we took care of it better than people today look after $50,000 vehicles. I was now a regular at the local gas station with a two-bay garage where the local guys hung out most days. There were gas stations and garages almost at every corner. Little mom-and-pop restaurants filled the rest of the space.

I loved how capitalism worked. Half of the people were self-employed and street competition kept prices low, leaving little room for small business owners to boast about their work. The others were wage workers. They mostly made lower income than those in private business but had fewer things to be concerned about. Someone else took care of pensions, health care, keeping up with inflation, and all the rest. Unions were just as concerned about the well-being of the business as the owners. We hadn’t yet grown to believe that workers were a resource to be exploited and considered employees to be our most valuable resource. When I quit one job, the big boss came out with me to convince me to stay, even though I was the vice president of the union. We all worked together.

The years went by. Slowly the lives of the workers became just a bit harder every year, as the wealth of those who “made it” ballooned out of proportion. In Europe, the cradle of our colonial civilization, the emphasis was to look after their national population, while in America, the winner took it all. No one cared about the people who were not born in the affluent part of the world. We let them in slowly, just to keep the wages of unskilled workers low.

The period between 1967 and the early two thousand is significant in one way. Humanity did advance in some respects but was overproducing to satisfy the industrial sector. Marketing ensured that we would borrow, buy, and exploit the planet without consideration of what was coming. Now the results are in. Garbage is killing nature, air, water, and all. Some of us are trying to fix the problem while others are making it worse. Both sides are not doing anything unless it gives them political points.

I believe in a universal mind that silently oversees what humans do and uses natural forces to make corrections while letting us make our own decisions. We don’t expect a rock called Earth flying in space to have a mind and take action, but it does. When we hurt it, it fights back, using us to punish ourselves.

Our scientists are all interested in what we can see and not at all in anything else. The smartest people from the past had other ideas. They believed in a universal mind that doesn’t register an image based on light and human vision. We are just now starting to investigate the possibility that invisible “things” can exist and be intelligent or able to act. Some of us even noticed that most of the universe is not an empty vacuum as we imagined, but something that has gravity which we can measure. They call it dark matter, amongst other names. It co-exists with us, but it is older and more knowledgeable than us. It has the power to mark us as a failed experiment.

We possibly took the wrong road soon after 1967 and the force is watching what we will do. Science is great, but shouldn’t replace God.

If I were that force, which I am not, I would set up to be ready for the human experiment failing but ready to assist if they change. The planet can slowly become more hostile yet able to recover from the right action from humans.

Most people never read the Book of Jonah in the Old Testament. He reluctantly warned the city of Nineveh that God would destroy them, but they repented and were saved. Could the story of Jonah in the Old Testament have a message for our generation if we are willing to learn?

If you think it is, develop your capacity for love, compassion, empathy, and higher consciousness. Give up the chase for money, power, fame, and self-importance. Take care of our world.