The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

I finally know how to fix the world’s intractable problems. I saw the answer in a dream this morning. It is the vision I have been preparing for and waiting for my whole life.

HELP: Walter Simon

I knew when I took elaborate steps to escape the situation I was stuck in back in Birmingham that it was necessary to change not only my economic circumstances but my way of thinking. After months of getting as close to nature as possible in a camper van and then more months of hanging out in a more creative situation on the Gulf Coast, many mornings I have been disappointed that my dreams were not more positive. Because of my religious upbringing and my evolution in earth’s competitive environment, I have more often that not woken up depressed thinking we are doomed.

The fact is, if we keep going down the path we are on politically, we are doomed. We are heating up the planet at an alarming rate, and we are still arguing about it incessantly — instead of getting busy doing something about it. We literally don’t have much time.

Understand that what I am about to tell you is a break through in my thinking. I have never been one to trust in the answers from science fiction any more than those from preachers, who are convinced a sky god will come back to earth just in time. We don’t need a god. We need a more advanced species from another part of the universe, a benevolent species.

Unfortunately it is going to take intervention from an alien species. The human species on planet earth is too befuddled by ancient religious myths and even a tainted DNA, evolved over millennia from competitive living situations going back to hunter gathering tribes on the African savanna. While we have altruism programmed into us as well as competition, the competitive gene is too powerful. This is why we have competitive capitalism and fight tooth and nail against any socialist instinct to help our fellow man.

Surely there is a more highly evolved species out there in the universe who can help us save ourselves and our planet. If so, won’t you please come now and save us? We don’t have much time.

What I saw in this dream were incredible advances in medical science, far more advanced than those pioneered in the 20th century in a competitive capitalist economy. Many of those advances did seem amazing, from new ways of operating to new drugs to cure and treat disease. But what I saw was different from every depiction in science fiction. The answers that could save us are not like the Borg on “Star Trek.” They are not like what Johnny Depp’s character in “Transcendence” concocted. Nor are they like what Matt Damon’s character fought in “Elysium.” All those ideas are way too based on competitive capitalism for their inspiration.

We ought to by now be more advanced than that, but our past holds us back. We should be able to take any sick human being and perform an operation to fix the defects in our DNA and cure all of our diseases. We should be able to figure out how to run an economy where everybody has enough to eat and the freedom to pursue our most outrageous creative pursuits. Yet we can’t. Why not?

Because we can’t even have an intelligent conversation about the possibilities in public because of our tainted politics. Republicans in the U.S. are more guilty than the Democrats, but the Democrats are not helping themselves or us either because they are trying to practice politics like the Republicans to get themselves elected and remain in power.

This has to stop.

We are too busy trying to figure out how to wage war to stop the radical, religious extremists on the other side of the world from obliterating us on this side of the world, which makes us forget that it is just one world. Our precious resources and time are being spent in all the wrong ways.

What if we just figured out how to feed everybody and cure their sickness? Would that not alleviate much of the need for war?

There are seeds of our salvation here on earth. As poor as they are, the people of Cuba have figured out how to address the health problems of that country’s citizens and educate the population to some extent, far better than we have in Alabama. What if we opened up more to these ideas and helped them advance even more with the resources of the rich United States?

We can’t because of our own broken politics.

Since humans seem incapable of concentrating on these things, apparently we need help from “out there” somewhere. Please come soon. We don’t have much time.