It has always fascinated me that John, the author of The Revelation, had such unhappy news about the end times. It must have been a nightmare for him to see what he reports, a vision of horrors he could not possibly relate to his own experiences. Imagine seeing flying machines and war on the scale now familiar to us. He did very well to describe what he saw at all. I think I’d have been insanely depressed and end my own life rather than write a book about it.

So, I believe that people from all periods of history are “touched” by other realities, other times. I do not deny even the power of telepathic communication among some, nor the skill of a fortune-teller. They may not always get it right, that is, the reality which they have seen is not always the reality which comes to pass. Nevertheless, it happens. I’ve seen it happen, and it is an intangible which fascinates, confuses, and convinces me that there is more to the cosmos than the tangible things we tend to measure.

I’m old enough to see enough decades of man’s life to consider where we’ve been, where we are, and maybe where we are going. Although my elders have said many times, “this world is going to hell in a hand basket!”, I can see how that may be true, although I once believed that my elders were just resistant to change and didn’t understand the present.

If we consider the time of man on this earth and how man has prospered as a life-form, we see that things have changed rapidly around him without any fundamental changes in his instincts. The instincts that ensured his success against the environment, against his enemies (first predators, then other men) are now at work in him to destroy the gains he made.

How did we often avoid starving to death? We learned to gather more than we need for the present. Store up for the future. Hoard, if possible, and steal if necessary. Greed is a daemon in our hard-wired behavior. Long recognized as a destructive force, greed has been countered with social rules to keep it contained. Everyone knows of examples where the rules are broken and greed runs rampant with disastrous results for individuals or nations.

There are many examples of instincts vs. rules developed to change/control/augment those instincts. Reproduction is another good example. It is my belief that since hard-wired instincts take a VERY long time to develop through natural selection. Organisms that use hard-wired or DNA-based behavior are very efficient, but are slow adapting. Ants and bees exhibit social behavior but is very specialized and is not modified by learning.

Humans and some other life forms have built-in DNA based behavior, but seem to have long ago left that method behind in favor of larger brains for experience-based control of behavior. It’s tough on us when the two conflict.

There is a virtual life form that is “manned” by actual humans, but does not share human values. It is an invention of man, and has recently won new status in our society. This is the corporation. Businesses have existed a long time and were first mere extensions of the owner. When businesses started becoming so large they had more than one owner, management got much more complicated. It is no secret that the corporation has one primary goal: to make as much profit for the shareholders as possible. The only other rules the the corporation may have may only exist if they support the primary profit goal. If they do not, the banker/stock market acts as a kind of corporate world policeman.

The corporation, now, has become so powerful it has entered the political arena to make sure it’s primary goals are not thwarted or restricted. It has secured a Supreme Court decision that corporations are to enjoy the same rights and privileges as organic life forms, human citizens. It can now contribute as much money as it wants to the election campaigns of those running for public office. Since the scale of wealth is so vastly different between human citizens and corporate citizens, the playing field is now extremely tilted in favor of the corporation. Tens of millions to a large corporation is similar to $100 to me, for example. No matter how “politically active” I am or if I donate all I can afford to my favorite candidate, I cannot overcome the advantage of the corporation.

Not only that, but these new virtual organisms often work in packs to accomplish their work. Witness the campaigns recently that play on cultural values and fear to influence human citizens to vote against their own best interest and vote in favor of policies that benefit large corporations and their princes. For example, compare the fervor of the campaign to save Wall Street and the big banks to the contention surrounding campaigns that would actually benefit human citizens such as health care, the dissolution of existing safety nets, the downsizing of federal and state governments, the suggestions that public education be eliminated, the roadblocks placed ahead of infrastructure development and new technologies, on and on.

Back to John, author of The Revelation. If your job was to tell John about these virtual organisms and how they work, how they have only venal profit-taking as a motive and are willing to destroy anything in their path to accomplish that goal, how would you describe this creature in a way that John could understand?  Is a monster such a bad analogy?

Corporations are  monsters that can help us do the things we need to do on this planet, but they are so big and powerful, we must have strong regulations and bind that monster to a well defined field of endeavor. The only other organization large enough to do this for us is our government. Is this news to the corporation? No, of course not. The corporations are joined together, now, to either neutralize the government, or to take it over entirely. Both are happening simultaneously.

We began harnessing energy sources for our use. Even agriculture — in-place farming — harnessed the sun to grow more than could be otherwise be gained by hunting and gathering. Making of tools, the use of beasts as an energy source, and the capturing of wind-power to move boats are all familiar events in human history.

None of these events, however, hold a candle to the changes brought about by man’s discovery of fossil fuels to supply energy. The use of fossil fuels doesn’t go back in history much beyond a thousand years, and intensive use in a much shorter time. The blink of an eye, historically. However, the addition of these sources of energy have caused the greatest changes in man’s history. Petroleum and it’s by-products have been the most dramatic forces of change.

Most humans having access to petroleum have enjoyed extraordinary wealth compared to previous eras. As I sit here writing, I look around at my environment and wonder what it would be like without that precious fuel. No heat, no electricity to power my 42″ high-definition television flawlessly delivering a football game while I compose on my laptop computer. The carpeting, the paint, my clothing, almost everything I own is in some way dependent upon petroleum or coal in its manufacture or delivery.

Regrettably, there isn’t an endless supply. You know, if I was on a voyage and had a cookie jar full of my oatmeal-raisin cookies, but I realized that I  could not get more or make more during the voyage, I would limit my consumption to make them last as long as possible. However, if everyone on the ship had access to the same cookie jar, and I knew that limiting my own consumption would not make the cookies last longer unless everybody on the ship also limited their consumption, I’d be tempted to take all the cookies I could eat. Greed, right? Survival instinct.

This ship needs a captain and a couple of strong boatswains. Remember who’s in charge of all the communication channels? Remember who finances virtually all political campaigns? Remember who DOES NOT want regulations and impediments to their profit making? It’s the gigantic ogre on our ship! He’s going to make sure that everybody on board will agree with him that conserving the cookies for the long haul is a bad idea.

Now, add another complication to our problem. The planet is host to 7 billion humans, and each of them wants one of our cookies. Not only that, but our reproduction instinct is only somewhat curbed by the invention of birth control. There are strong cultural forces working to actually bolster the reproduction instinct rather than curb it. The Roman Catholic church, for example, continues to encourage runaway population growth.

Don’t forget our ogre. He wants continued growth in the number of consumers to which he can sell his wares. All the while, he consumes resources like there’s no tomorrow. He doesn’t want population control. You can read the worries of countries like Japan who have an ever declining birthrate. Ogre worries and speaks of economic doom because of  the poor population expansion record.

Yeah, not really that incredible, is it?

Sorry if I bummed you out, but if there is any chance that a future generation will avoid disaster, people will have to take charge of the government that was originally supposed to protect us instead of the ogre. Right now, in the western world, it serves the ogre first, very little help to human citizens.

Look at the Muslim world. They are tired of the governments either in place because of the west, or supported by the west, or “play ball” with the west in order to please the ogre. Their citizens have been abused by their governments, and they are overturning these governments. I don’t think they will be served any better by any theocracy they may install, but that is their choice to make.

What will this look like in a few years? I’m not sure, but it will be increasingly difficult to the ogre (who mostly lives in the west) to make his wishes come true in the middle east. They have the remaining big pockets of petroleum, and wish to sell it to ogre, but not necessarily at prices he sets. He has been known to “stir up some sh*t” in that part of the world just to keep things off balance and easier to control.

I think as demand continues to grow for shrinking resources we will see the west in competition with China, who has roots in Iran (hence ogre’s complaints and saber-rattling in that direction). You can read about that in The Revelation, too.

Good luck to you all. Stay safe, stay sane, and don’t think you are Atlas — you’re not.