PULL vs RIDE

We are born alone with nothing and leave the world the same way.  It is possible that there is an afterlife, but nothing scientific to prove it. No one has come back like Columbus to report on a New World out there. The tales of light and tunnels, and meeting dead relatives are not scientific evidence.  Which leaves us with “This is not a dress rehearsal” it is our one and only life.  Do we spend it the way we want or do we subordinate our seeking of pleasure (the prime directive of homo sapiens) to some civilization-constructed set of rules, obligations, moral standards, and the concept of altruism; the needs of others or the collective are more important than my own? Are we individuals or are we members of a hive like bees and ants?  Do we accept the biological imperative of the species, increase and multiply, and when you no longer can, you are expendable? Lots of questions...

Religion and politics might be for people who can’t think for themselves.  The number of folks who not only can’t think but can’t DO is rising geometrically.  The huge number of unemployment and food stamp recipients and the “entitlement” programs sprouting like mushrooms attest to this. Not long ago, self-reliance was core to the American character.  Now, it is reliance on the government, so we can go back to watching “Dancing with the Stars,” or “Monday Night Football.”  On the other hand, those who are not paying attention to the direction of our country and only caring about what’s in it for them, may well be following the previously mentioned prime directive…it’s all about their pursuit of pleasure and an apparent easy life.  The people who work for a living are being outnumbered by people who VOTE for a living.  Maybe they are right, at least in the short term, and caring about the American way of life, is just another form of altruism and hive behavior. 

Perhaps we members of the older generation and the one before us, who made our world safe for this one by fighting and dying in the last justifiable war…WW2, and who invented everything that young people take for granted today, can learn from the young and spend our lives neither worrying about the economy, nor knowing anything about how our government works.  We can “turn on, tune in, and drop out” as Tim Leary suggested.  If things go to Hell, we’ll be OK with our Social Security, Medicare, and AARP. It’s the next generation, the one that hasn’t invented anything I can think of but Facebook and Twitter, that will have to do without those things they have grown entitled to. Let them attempt to support the government programs and agendas they care about so much with income from the best jobs they can get considering they did not graduate from high school, or at least did not learn anything there. Thank you, Teacher's Union.

In a last ditch effort to not have to do anything for themselves like “get anything out of their education” or show up at a job, or think twice about their lifestyle choices so they don’t get type-2 diabetes, they may well demand that their fearless leaders pass one more tax on the wealthy just to be FAIR.  A tax on the net worth of the previous generation in addition to the confiscatory 55% Estate (death) Tax will put gas in the engine for a little while, but after that runs out, the country we know today will look like all those other 1^st world countries that are now 3^rd world in comparison to us…England, Spain, Italy (Rome), all of which Ruled the World and fell to nothing much. The people will look away momentarily from their flat-screen surround-sound 3D TVs and ask themselves…”What happened?”    In the meantime, don’t look for me to pull the wagon any more, I have jumped into the back and am busy watching “Dancing with the Stars.” Now where’s my remote?