Myths, Answers, and Life

Myths:

- "We need money to live";

- "The economy is an indicator of the nation's/country's health";

- "Those people are homeless, and their desperation often makes them dangerous. Don't give them too much, or they will try to take more";

- "Members of our families are people we can always trust, no matter what";

- "Organizing, and demanding fair wages/and planting a forest/and passing new legislation/and abolishing police systems of power abuse/and abolishing private and/or public prisons, etc., is unrealistic. Let's focus on something we can -actually- do";

- "The world is doomed anyway. What's the point?"

- "The only person who you can truly rely on is yourself"

Every one of the sentences I typed up above has some degree of truth to it, but the overall message is the same: defeatism, nihilism, and giving up on a cause, an approach to improving life, existence, and the world that is inherently more ethical than what we currently experience and empower in our average, everyday lives.

Answers:

- Money is a resource only when people hold faith in it. If they don't accept it, whether universally or in individual transactions, it literally has no value (unless it's paper money, and then, if it's dry, I guess I can use it to light a campfire...)

- The economy doesn't reliably correlate, let alone cause or bring about, the health o fa country, let alone its living and breathing people.

- Homeless -- and poor -- and socially ostracized people of other groups and forms, backgrounds and natures and professions (or who lack professions, too!) -- are about maybe as dangerous as anyone else...they're humans. The people you shop alongside at Kroger can easily pull a gun on you and kill you, too; they don't actually need a motivation. Sure, be cautious...but do not demonize; that narrative exists to further weaken those who are homeless, poor, and the like so that they can't attest to and push back against a parasitic and murderous culture and social system that very genuinely does slaughter them.

- Families are made of people, too. They can also kill their other members, and family abuse is often. very real problem among minority groups that are economically or socially disadvantaged. Being in a family can help with that, and/or, it can make that worse. It's genuinely another group of people...sometimes working together, sometimes, frankly, not...and sometimes acting like a community of chimpanzees with one presiding over the other in terms of ill-begotten authority.

- Organizing and demanding change is literally why we don't live entrenched in empires, monarchies, and dictatorships in some pockets of the world; it's so far one of -the- few common themes that humanity has drawn from to stave off the ills of yet-larger oppression and yet worse conflicts. The myth that such change never occurs is most often parroted by those in charge as dictators and faux-leaders, ie those who fancy themselves elite 'masters' over other's rights to live...and once again, the more the idea is repeated, them ore democracy -- and more importantly, general life and well-being of millions -- erodes. We must demand, and enact and bring about, change; our 'leaders' will not e the ones to make it for us. I've yet to meet one in any position of government or economic authority who cared about anyone who they didn't already know very well, and hold a lot of power over.

- This is the only world that we have that we will live on for the obviously foreseeable future; it is THE POINT. Mars is not an option; if we can't so much as revitalize an abandoned parking lot into a woods, because "It costs too much to do so...!" then, no, life on Mars will not ever have a single chance of happening. Let's not be collectively absurdist and ruin this one planet that we have in pursuit of another that is currently uninhabitable...and similarly, let's not toss away our lives in pursuit of a potentially non-existent bliss after life. We do not know what comes after; we do not know if it will bring us peace. We are wiser doing what we need to do to bring everyone we can what we can in the way of peace - and compassion, and healing, and love, and life, steadfast and enriched - here and now.

- We can't fully trust ourselves. We've let ourselves down before; we'll do it again, and again, and again...and so be it. But, in spite of that terrible reality, a better uplifting reality comes right after it, if we're willing to seize and empower it: it doesn't matter if humans fail ourselves many times over if we do ultimately enrich the world as a whole. So far, we've never been closer to being able to do that; currently, we're having trouble seeing that through.

Life:

We need to make the world a better place in order to survive and to help it, ourselves, and the rest of life, heal. Anyone with decent awareness and without stubbornness clouding their rational judgement can acknowledge that; if we fail, there won't be another full '7 generations' of the future of humankind.

Life over wealth.

Life over national identity.

Life over opinions, and over the fictitious 'right' to them and acting on them however anyone wants to act on them.

Life over individual prosperity, and especially over prosperity that helps the one at the expense of the many.

Life over self.

A tree bears fruit when it is able because It knows all too well that its children's children are that much less likely to survive, or even grow at all, if it and other trees don't keep the pollinators alive as well...and the same with the predators that die to form the soil that becomes the tree that feeds the pollinators that pollinate new fruits and on, and on, and on the mutually-loving, giving, nurturing pattern goes.

Nurture, empower, safeguard, treasure, and never give up on life. It is the source of all we have, the opportunity for all we can ever achieve, and all that we are.

We cannot give up on ourselves.

We must not give up on each other.