Our Ultimate Goal

What is our ultimate goal? Not as individuals, or as regions, or even as a country, but as a species. Granted, our ultimate goal will have everything to do with our individual, regional and national choices, but before we can start, I believe we have to know what we're all working towards.

Down the line, two hundred, three hundred years from now, what are we hoping for? Lets hold off on the larger species question for now and just focus on America. I think if you were to ask any random person, the generic answer would be that hopefully the future is a better place than the present. While I happen to agree, I'm trying to frame what this "better" future looks like. Currently we have a grave imbalance between the rich and the poor. Our middle class is evaporating and more and more of the wealth is being concentrated at the top. Is our end goal as a nation to have 99.9% of the wealth in the hands of .1% of the population, while the rest of the country lives close to or below the poverty line? Trickle down indeed. Or is our goal for every American to be a millionaire? A lear jet in every garage so to speak. Do we want every American to be healthy, educated, wealthy, productive, mentally and emotionally fulfilled? I would assume that the average American would want all these things, and in turn want them for their fellow American. Obviously within the political arena there are vastly different opinions on how to get to this "utopia", and I'm of the opinion that some politicians are actively trying to undermine the "American Dream".

I ask again, what is our goal? What are we working towards? How much money, and possessions, status, how much is enough? If everyone is rich, does that mean that no one is? Is having a rich and a poor class necessary for America to remain "American"? You see if we all had more money that we knew what to do with, if all were free from disease, had unlimited access to education, some would call this utopia, others would label it as socialism. Yet, I think it would be hard to find someone, anyone that would say that unlimited money, health and education are a bad thing, just don't call it socialism because you know how we feel about that.

So can we all agree that a future where poverty, ignorance and disease for a majority of Americans is a bad thing, and we would all like to see ourselves and our fellow man healthy, wealthy and wise? If we can all agree on this, then let's extend this to the rest of humanity. Let's first apply this thinking to the Middle East. Remove religious differences from this argument for just a moment, and try to focus on what the Middle East, or Africa for that matter, would look like if every single person had stability, education, health care, job prospects, etc. Beyond that, what would the entire world look like if we all enjoyed this type of lifestyle? World peace and prosperity.

Above all, I believe that is humanity's ultimate goal, for every single man, woman and child, regardless of where they were born, to have access to a high level of shelter, education, opportunity, resources and stability. To call this a lofty goal is an understatement. In the end though, isn't that really what we are working towards, or at least, what we should be working towards? Unity. Humanity working as one to better humanity as a whole.

So that begs the question; what are we doing to achieve this goal? Are we as individuals doing anything to work towards this? How about as a nation? As a species, have we exhibited that we even deserve such a bright future? It would seem that we are currently making painfully slow progress towards this. All around us are individuals and organizations that either unwittingly or maliciously undermine our precious progress. Why? Because they, as well as many of us, are stuck, for the foreseeable future, in a mindset that tells us to acquire. We chase wealth and status, and in order for wealth and status to mean anything someone has to not have any. Currently, the poor must exist in order for the rich to exist.

So what will it take to change? How do we convince the powers that be, that what's good for the poor, in the end is good for them? How do we work past or differences in religion, geography and culture and see that we are all in this together? What is it going to take and when? Certainly there are naysayers out there that will doubt this is even achievable. They will dive deep into their unending well of cynicism and pull out a label that fits their narrative of why we shouldn't be working towards this. Granted there are those misguided individuals in the religious community who would misinterpret their sacred texts, twisting their words, pitting one against another to fulfill their own apocalyptic desires. It's imperative that we marginalize these people as much as possible. It is imperative that we try to grow up and grow out of our self absorbed lifestyles.

It is my belief that these misguided individuals, a very polite description of them I might add, are a very vocal minority. They, however, are the ones most heard. The moderates remain silent while the extremists from all sides bang the political war drums, whipping up the base and making sure absolutely nothing gets accomplished. What are the ultimate goals of the extremists, and if you had to chose between a liberal or conservative (lets be honest, our only two choices) utopia, which would it be and what would that look like?

I don't think either have the stomach to take the steps necessary to advance humanity as a race, and here is why. Neither are willing to take a stand against the rampaging, destructive effects of religion. I am fully aware that not all religious people are fanatics like a majority of the current crop of GOP presidential candidates. I know that 99.9999~% of Muslims would never commit an act of mass murder. I am aware that there is a growing consensus in the Jewish community that think the further advancement of Israeli settlements into Palestine will undoubtedly bring more conflict and misery to all sides. What I want to state upfront, loud and clear, is that cultures are not the problem, but religion is. I believe that religion actually destroys culture by intertwining so deeply within it, that it becomes almost impossible to relate to anyone else. People erect philosophical, sometimes physical, walls based on their "good" book. They live, eat and breath their religion to the point of intellectual and cultural inbreeding, to the point where even the most obvious of scientific facts are ignored. This is the extreme, I admit, but these people do exist, and on all sides. The only people who have a chance to reach the extremists are the moderates, who remain tragically silent. Their complacency reads as muted approval of the deeds committed by their destructive counterparts. After all, deep down they believe the same thing, so I can see why it's conflicting for them.

Eventually, humanity as a species will have to grow up or die. If that sounds extreme, it's because it is just that dire. For the past sixty or so years, we have had the ability to annihilate ourselves and have come frighteningly close on more than one occasion. I believe we have been rather fortunate thus far, but as more and more players acquire the means of mass destruction on a global scale, one has to wonder how long our luck will hold out. It only takes a handful of people who are bent on fulfilling some religiously motivated apocalyptic vision to have a very, very bad day. We absolutely must grow up.

I believe at one time, religion was a very necessary thing. Before man had the organized civilization we enjoy now, the powers that be needed a way to control the ravenous, blood-thirsty population. Thus the opiate of the masses was born. This time however has long since passed, and just like a useless evolutionary leftover such as your appendix can rupture and kill you, religion has the ability to do the same.

Religion is a crutch that we must move past. We cannot advance as a civilization until we realize that we are responsible for our own fate. We are all alone on this relatively tiny ball of dirt, floating in the void. There is no magical figure coming to save us. We cannot rely on ancient stories told by word of mouth, re-re-re-written as proof that we have anything other than the short time we are given to make the world a better place. By perpetuating the idea that there is a being watching and controlling us takes the onus of ourselves to lead responsible, compassionate, sensible lives, and it's killing us. Slowly but surely we are headed towards the abyss of extinction, and who is driving us there, none other than the fanatics that actually pray for Armageddon. We can no longer afford to let our fear of the unknown petrify us into believing in childish and harmful notions. It is the fear of our own deaths that causes many of us to cling, no matter how illogical, to the idea of life after death. We must face this fear, like adults. We must understand and truly come to grips with the fact that we will die and that's it. Until we start to realize that this time is really all we have, we will continue to live our lives as if they are just a dress rehearsal for the real thing. This notion is foolish and detrimental to not only everyone who believes in it, but even non-believers who's lives are affected by this way of thinking.

Our ultimate goal is in our own hands. No one else. We have huge problems facing us and a long way to go before we can truly call ourselves a decent and tolerant people. In order to ensure that we as a race survive, and are worthy of surviving, we must cast off the vestigial mental appendages or doom ourselves to self-imposed religious annihilation.