Recovered from Writeindependent.org, originally posted on July 13, 2012
We are taught about this game from the time we enter preschool: that you have to learn certain subjects (math and English are presumably the most important), that you have to be ahead of your peers (presumably to have the best chances to enter college), that you will want to earn a lot of money (presumably so that you are attractive to the girls if you’re male, and so that you can be independent if you’re female) and that money is the source of all things: happiness, security, material things that we are sold on TV.
Then to “win” this game, the best and the brightest (because the dullards dropped out at some point and realized it was a pointless game anyway, and maybe they really were the smartest ones anyway…) went on to Harvard, or Yale, or what have you. And they became the “leaders” in every way, because their money bought influence, and with this influence, they changed the rules of the game itself, so that they could get more money and more influence.
Do you see where I’m going here? The same people who supposedly “won” the game of life that they were taught since preschool was the game are the ones who are actually destroying the fabric of our society. First, they created weapons to assure their dominance, they funded this weaponry and the soldiers to blow things up and made sure that the taxes paid for it all, then they undermined our economic system by deregulating it and making it complicated and untraceable and impossible to fix. These “brilliant” minds of finance and war built themselves the ultimate paradox: a place unfit for life as we know it.
So how do we unravel this thing? I actually think human beings are quite resilient. I think that the minds who “won” this game of how to become fabulously wealthy can turn around and become the creative geniuses who get us out of this mess.
And if they don’t do it, we dullards will. Because we will be the creative genii.
Who are these genii (plural for genius)?
They:
- Question authority
- Use critical thinking
- Live “outside the box” in non-traditional paradigms
- Lead with their passion
- When people say “it can’t be done” they don’t listen and they do it anyway
- Find monopoly incredibly boring
- Don’t watch much TV
- Exercise their artistry, whatever that may be
- Live deeply, finding resonant ideas and synchronicities and listening to them
- Are considerate of others because they know we are all in this together
- Make a conscious effort to tread softly on the planet that is the source of all life.
Show me a “leader” of industry, a traditional wealthy individual, and I can almost guarantee they don’t do the most important of these. We know for a fact that their course is unsustainable. So how smart was this paradigm we foisted upon our children, or our parents foisted upon us? And should we continue to be complicit in this system, or find a better way?