How to Change the World - The Gods' Confusion.
By: Martin Sharratt
Tags: The Gods Confusion, Evolution, How To Change The World, Philosophy, Revolution

As a first step towards understanding the disease and its symptoms, I would like to offer two passages of writing for your contemplation; they record the beginning of the enlightenment I mentioned in the first chapter;

‘A home is an essential, basic necessity of life, yet we are not free to build a home for our selves and families when and where we please, like other species are. The homes we do live in are often ‘owned’ by other members of our species, or by institutions such as banks, and they are taken away if we can’t afford to pay the ‘rent’ or make the ‘mortgage payments’ necessary to buy them — and at a ludicrous price, which, for most, entails a lifetime of work.

We like to think of ourselves as the most civilised creature on the planet, yet how civilised is it to be without a home, or to live in homes that are under the constant threat of being withdrawn? It seems fairly obvious; to mess around with an animal’s home will severely stress the animal, and I don’t suppose humankind are any different.

Also, we are the only creature on the planet that isn’t free to feed from what the Earth offers, and what would be the effect on any species should you remove their right to have free access to food? And how civilised is it to die of hunger?

When other species are faced with famine, they migrate to areas where there is food, but humans cannot, because their migration is restricted by borders. We aren’t free to travel wherever we please, on our divided world, like birds, when they fly south in winter in search of warmer climes.

We must work to propel dysfunctional societies, and if we don’t, we face homelessness and starvation, and many work to increase the enormous wealth of the chosen few, while they struggle to make ends meet.

Humankind are forced to work through the fear of losing their homes and food. If an animal were forced to work in this way it would be considered animal cruelty, and if the practice were to continue from one generation to the next; a strategy that would harm the animal’s evolution.′

And;

‘All species, apart from our own, teach their young everything they know about the world from the day they are born. They teach them everything they have learnt, and what their parents have taught them from their life’s experiences. All other species teach their young of the joys and dangers of living in their environment, so their species may survive and flourish within it, both as infants, and when they have grown. An orang-utan mother, for example, keeps her young with her for the first nine years of their life to teach them these facts.

Other species know, even if it is subconsciously, that it is of the utmost importance to educate their young with the truth. Not only so their young may survive and flourish, but also, because it is essential their species evolve in a natural, wise way, and in harmony with the planet upon which they live. Yet, we find it necessary to hide the truth from our young, and even tell them lies to make the world appear a better place than it actually is.

As the young of our species grow, they realise the real world is nothing like the one they once believed existed. Once the fairy-tale world of youth has collapsed, our children become aware of wars that have passed, of those that take place, and the possibility that our entire species, all others, and even the planet itself may be annihilated by a nuclear war, or rendered uninhabitable as a result of a dramatic change in the Earth’s climate; the consequence of humankind’s so-called advance.

Our children grow to know of those who starve to death, as they eat. They will discover there are children whose lips are too dry to tell their mothers they love them before they die of thirst, which may be the same moment an aeroplane leaves Australia, carrying a cargo of Australian mineral water destined for consumption in Europe, which could be the same time an aeroplane takes off from Britain, flying a load of British mineral water to Australia.

We make children’s books and toys with happy, kind faces painted on aeroplanes, which has the effect of making the aeroplane look as though it has a mind of its own, and would never dream of letting such things happen, when it could easily save the lives of those people by flying food and water to them. Neither does the aeroplane’s joyful, painted face suggest it would drop bombs from the sky to murder innocent people.

As our children grow, they will learn their homes and food are necessities of life that are held as ransom, to make them work, and should they slacken their pace or stop working, for some reason, their homes and food will be taken away from them.

There is an immense disappointment waiting for our children when the facade of childhood collapses, to reveal the true ways of the world. After the initial shock has passed, young adults often complain bitterly about the state the world is in, but they give up, eventually, and conform to society. They don’t have much choice, especially when they have their own children to take care of and are therefore vulnerable, like any species is when it has young.

They will even end up lying to their own children, because they know the truth is far too terrible to reveal to them. They know that if they were to tell the truth, it would terrify their children and leave them filled with disappointment, fear and anguish, and what kind of world would it be if we told our children the truth, right from the beginning? Perhaps they would wish we would change the world into a better place, and wonder why we don’t.

Of course; we do tell our children the truth, eventually, but only when they are considered strong enough to bear the burden of fear and anguish that accompanies it. Before that time, we lure them into a false sense of security, by creating an illusion of a fair, kind, peaceful, magical, loving world, so they may feel safe and secure and fall asleep untroubled, wrapped up nice and warm in a soft blanket of censorship and lies.

We tell our children what we think we must, to lift them up, before they fall, for the first and last time into the real world. The magic of the world collapses for children at roughly the same rate as others are being born. We tell them we wouldn’t sell them for all the tea in China, even though they will find out there are children being sold every day, for the tiniest fraction of the country’s tea sales.

When the time comes, we tell them neither a dead bird nor coal has beauty, and cloud factories are just power stations, generating electricity, and they can’t sit on clouds, because they would just fall through. We advise them to be wary of Postman Pat and Bob the Builder, without telling them why, and eventually confess that there is no Father Christmas, who brings gifts to good children, and no Easter Bunny or Superman or Fairies or Goblins or Dragons or Unicorns or Angels who will comfort them, should they ever cry alone.

One day we admit we have been telling them a pack of lies, and reveal the true horror of the world. One day we must tell them the truth, so they may survive within the real world, or better still, we hope they will discover it for themselves, and with the influence of television and the Internet, that may happen sooner than we would like.

Maybe the days of naïvety and innocence are drawing to an end, at the same rate the words are losing their meaning.

We grow from one world view and into another, so perhaps it’s no surprise that schizophrenia has become a disease within the minds of our kind.

Perhaps we are the only species on the planet that mess up their young so badly.

Of course, there are children who cannot escape the truth, since they are born into a warzone or some other horror, and maybe these children grow up to be the sanest adults of all, because they are raised with the truth, right from the beginning.

Perhaps our only option is to make the truth better, so we may use it to raise our young too. Maybe, if we could achieve this, we may evolve as healthily as all other species on Earth.’

Although there are many factors that affect our evolution in a negative, harmful way, the purpose of these excerpts is to reveal the root of the disease in its most simplistic form; our flawed evolution is the result of being driven to work through fear, and being forced to lie to our young since the truth is too distressing to reveal to them.

Since the symptoms of the disease are those who are disturbed by these factors — which may be the majority of humankind — and who may behave in a way that harms members of our kind as a consequence of being disturbed, we evolve within an unhealthy vicious circle, and our evolution will continue to advance in this manner until the disease is cured and symptoms vanish as a result.

The disease will not vanish, or its severity improve, if we simply begin to raise our children with the truth as it stands today, since to do so would distress our young. Therefore; our only option is to make the truth better, so we may use it to raise our young, as all other species use the truth to raise theirs.

In a simplistic sense; the disease and its symptoms will vanish when the world is the paradise it should be, for all who live and will live. We may begin to evolve in the same healthy, natural manner as all other creatures on Earth when we are able to raise our young by telling them facts about our existence, rather than lies to cover a terrible truth, and when we are driven to work through desire, rather than fear.

Since the disease and its symptoms are interlinked, the threads leading to a deeper understanding of the disease may be difficult to find. Yet, find them we must, if we are to unravel the mess we have created as we have blundered our way through time, which has led to a scenario that affects the very evolution of our kind, and the fate of our planet and all its life.

I wrote the first draft of this book at the time of a terrorist attack in Paris, in November 2015, in which over a hundred people died and almost four hundred were injured. An article in the Guardian adds gravity to this chapter;

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/16/talk-children-paris-attacks

So, let’s continue by considering the cause of the disease, and its cure, so we may contemplate how to create a world fit to describe to the most sensitive child, without the revelation causing distress, but rather joy; to them and everyone the world is described to. A world that would be a joy to design and build; a paradise, rather than an uncertain monstrosity teetering on the brink of destruction.