#114 BLOG

WHY HUMANITY MAKES MISTAKES WHEN EVERYTHING POINTS ELSEWHERE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

T

he bad idea seemed like a good idea at the time. 

Certain ideas are good for an eternity while other lesser ideas may immediately be proven quite incorrect.

Only a few seconds might pass before the perpetrator of a bad idea is identified when the full scope of the error becomes underscored by God striking down any perceived gains. 

A perfect God would intervene as soon as the gains materialize. In certain situations, God acts so decisively that the bad idea might not even leave the realm of thoughts.

This divine intervention could explain why people make such dreadful mistakes after a profitable run of good luck, since God is a jealous God that wants humanity to share.

Why humanity believes in that good idea that eventually turns bad is complicated and nuanced.

Many people service the casino, while very few customers actually win.

This winning and losing may often only be realized in a Super Bowl type of contest where the human struggle to survive is played out in a type of video game-play simulation.

The human instinct toward dividing civilization into winners and losers is the very reason humanity requires a rule system based on meaningful values. The great game on the green field is played according to a carefully manicured rule book developed over many years of trial and error. Thoughts of deconstructing the organized play into the chaos of gladiator games should be condemned.

How a diverse set of individuals live together in a shared community, with shared services and shared pleasures and shared sorrows, can be witnessed on the great green playing fields of our leisure time. Remove the colourfully expensive team jerseys, and player numerical ordering, and watch the individualized play continue, nonetheless.

People know more about themselves and each other than strictly winning and losing. Certain facts of existence are undeniable. The individual skill set can be proven. And truth can be found in familiarity. You’ve done that before, so you know the truth of the circumstances.

The great national pastime involves, among other ritualistic gatherings, returning to the Super Bowl every year.

The reality of day to day toils becomes deconstructed at these cultural events for a specific pleasurable simulation of society.

Prior to the event, people have their opinions about outcomes, but when the ball is propelled into the air for the first time, all that reasoning dissolves into the excitement of limitless possibilities.

A new society may reject the sentimentalism of contemporary existence for a common sensical measuring of success. Society though is more complicated than keeping a score card.

Unlike in games, or very much so for the winners, the way forward must be rational, as opposed to random arbitrariness that services fewer and fewer people chosen by the ruling class.

The truth is that people are aware of their skills, as much as their limitations, and yet skills can still be acquired before the lapsing calendar brings the annual event around again.

Cultural events become emotive devices that allow people to feel when perhaps life created a numbness that had denied them that opportunity to experience emotion.

The installation of rules turns humanity into a civilization – organized around society in mutually beneficial ways – and turns a play card of randomized individual athletes into an organized sporting event.

The deconstruction of the higher values would plummet everyone down the cliff face into a land of arbitrariness and lawlessness that pits individuals against one another, like two organized teams sharing responsibilities, becoming 22 individuals motivated so entirely by self-interest that they are unable to even form into shape at the line of scrimmage.

This ruthless competition becomes increasingly destructive by continually favouring advantage in a way that suppresses individualism and community sharing.

A society that discourages uniqueness over strength may lose opportunities for much greater alternative outcomes.

People often endure the tensions created between their desired outcomes and possible outcomes within any given community. An individual working within one community is beneficial to the larger entity, and also to themselves. But that same individual may not create benefits, either way, in another community

Similarly to that bad idea, a good idea might disappear in the briefest of instances, because the hoped for outcome is just not a realistic expectation within a particular community. You cannot stop the sun from setting in the West. Better luck elsewhere, my friend.

The great spectacle momentarily suspends all those expectations.