For the Benefit of the Ascended Beings

This post is for the benefit of any visitors from more advanced cultures in the galaxy who may be unfamiliar with some of our ancient customs here on Earth.

You may well be wondering what this major crisis is in the human way of life that has taken place.
You will be wondering, no doubt, why a few years ago the planet was full of the buzz of factories producing vast amounts of goods. We produced lots of things then seemingly destroyed them very quickly.

Now a lot of these factories are empty and the people who worked in them do so no longer. A lot of people indeed, are now sitting at home doing nothing. Lots of people are now not able to get hold of lots of material goods any more. We've stopped producing them and no one is getting them. Humanity generally seems to be producing a lot less and consuming a lot less.
But those still doing things are doing a lot MORE work, to get LESS.

And you are maybe wondering why. Have we run out of raw materials? Have our transport systems failed? Have we run out of energy to power our infrastructure and now have to ration it? And if the failure is in one of these things, why are people sitting around doing nothing, as opposed to fixing it?

Well, it is complicated, I'll admit. But the thing is, there's nothing wrong with the infrastructure. Or the transport systems. Or our supply of energy. We could all of us just get up and go press the buttons, drive the lorries, work the infrastructure and just like before, fuel and raw materials would go in one end, and goods would come out.

However, we humans have a thing called money. We use it as a way of working out resource allocation and who gets what when the goods come out the other end, basically.
Only, over the years this system has kind of lost all touch with reality. This is because we have these temples who monitor transactions overall. And every year they take a kind of tribute from the rest of us to carry out this function. So every year they own more and more of the world. We call these temples 'banks'.
In recent years, the system of allocating goods to people after they've put in their bit has posed a problem. Because we are able to create so much and build so much, as you can see. But people don't actually get enough tokens to buy all the stuff that is produced. So the temples have given them more tokens, but then we pay more back to the temples. But it got to a point when we couldn't keep paying the temples and buy more stuff. The temples weren't going to let us have it for free. So now we just don't make the stuff because not enough people have tokens to buy it with. Of course this then means that far less people get tokens to buy stuff with, so that's even less stuff being produced.

The long and the short of it is, there really is nothing at all to stop us producing everything we were doing before and consuming the way we were before, because as you aliens point out, there are just as many of us, and we have the same raw materials and energy sources as before. And I agree with you wise beings from wherever you are, it wouldn't take much of our energy and resources to make the infrastructure a whole lot better and make it equally good across the whole of our little planet.

You're right, the only problem is, that we aren't allowed to touch the production and distribution process without the say so of these temples. The temples hold the power. They won't let anyone else go in there and allocate tasks. We have to follow their finance system.
Long term, the only solution is to get rid of the temples and have the system administered without temples taxing the rest of the planet. That way there will never be these bizarre stoppages. As long as the raw materials go in and the energy goes in and everybody pitches in to do a share of the tasks, goods will come out the other end and everyone will go home at the end of the day prosperous. Productivity would be entirely dependant on putting the raw materials in and nothing more. You're right. There's no reason at all why the whole lot of us shouldn't live like kings. It is entirely this peculiar system of tokens.



The problem is, we can't do anything about these temples. The reason is, because we have these people called politicians. We kind of vote FOR them, but what we can't do is vote not to have them at all. They tell us what to do. And they have a complicated selection process which basically means we only get to choose from the ones a little clique offers to us. Basically, out of a country of fifty six million, they run a highly complex selection process which lasts for years to give us a choice between Mr Red and Mr Blue. So we think we have a choice. But of course, we have no choice in who gets to BE Mr Red and Mr Blue in the first place.

And whichever of these puppets we vote for, gets to make a whole lot of choices. They and the temples work together. The temples give them resources and they also take tokens from us too, just like the temples. With those tokens they pay for lots of men with riot shields and weapons and they tell the rest of us what we can and can't do, basically. There's not much point in arguing with these people sensibly, because if you start pointing out that due to the agreements between Mr Red (or Mr Blue) and the temples, people are getting raped and murdered in Darfur, they'll divert attention by banning smoking or something.

Nothing can be changed unless these politicians say so. But since ultimately, they rely on the temples for their power, not us, since the temples provide them with truncheons to hit us with and prisons to lock us up in and since the temples can threaten to close down factories and make people have less tokens if we don't vote for Mr Red or Mr Blue, between them, they have it sewn up so abolishing the temples isn't something that can possibly happen.

And yes, you're right, one has to get rid of them all at the same time. But people are frightened of standing up to them as individuals. Because they might get hurt. Or they might put big markers on computer screens to make it so that person could never get tokens again. Everyone is thinking the same thing and thinks it's just them.
Of course, they're worried now that people might start talking and might just say 'enough is enough' and refuse en masse to play ball.
And they know that they couldn't just machine gun everyone down.

What are the temples going to do?

Well, they don't really know what to do. But human society has a blind way of dealing with these situations, a solution that kind of sorts things out. It's a bit of a crazy one from the point of view of advanced beings like yourself, but fortunately events cropped up a few years back which mean the solution is kind of unfolding as we speak.

It won't be long before everybody is busy doing things, materials are being consumed at a huge rate, though not in a way that people actually get goods out of this vast increase in production, and no one has time to blame the temples or the politicians. We'll trust them all blindly. Or so they hope. It's the only throw they've got.

You see it's the ET paradox, isn't it my Ascended Being friends?



The paradox being that statistically you should exist, but all the evidence is that you don't. Because if civilisations vastly in advance of ours existed anywhere remotely near this rock, or had ever existed remotely near this rock, we'd have spotted it.
And some of our more pessimistic philosophers say it's because intelligence may well be an evolutionary blind alley. That an intelligent species can only go so far before it outsmarts itself.
Because an intelligent species can only evolve intelligence and make itself master of its world by carving out an unassailable niche at the top of the food chain. By definition, such a species has in it the instincts of a nasty, brutal, selfish predator.
And when it learns to split the atom, it is walking on its own grave.

So Ascended Beings, if you exist, you passed this point, though some variant of it must have come to you too. The point where you were on the brink of extincting yourselves. Because that's where we the genus Homo are now. Within a matter of years we'll either be no more, or it will be a very fine new life we are leading.

Shall I tell you what our fault has become, Ascended Beings? We walk on by. We've got so used to turning and looking away rather than risk our own necks. And that's the danger. A gang of youths can mug a teenage girl on the bus whilst four times their number sit in silence pretending not to see. But if only one had taken the lead and stood up?

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength