The dirty little secret of politics is that it is not possible to get anything serious done without a preponderance of social capital. The dirty little secret of science is that nobody knows why, if, and especially not how we are here. The dirty little secret of finance is that nobody knows what happens next. So how do all these things work together? The knowing is the only thing that can get us to escape the cycle of destruction.
I often worry about reality, wondering openly if it–we–actually exist, or if this is something else entirely. As I’m wondering I am watching Romney and Obama duke it out about how they intend to spend our taxes and somehow lower this deficit. Sometime this October I’ll explain what the deficit is and why we really shouldn’t be all that worried. I’ll follow that with a conversation about a little known act by the government that allowed banks to put us in this mess in the first place. Still, the reason why this is all happening is because we don’t know what else to do. Many of us turn to God, in whatever form we recognize, for our moral compass. What such a compass does is tell you what to do with your life. Not all of us use religion. Many of us use wealth as a compass. The only goal is to accumulate more wealth until we die. It isn’t even about the money, it is about having more of X than the person next to you. Money is X, the way to keep score in this game.
What if we knew why we were here? Some of us wouldn’t care and would continue these baseless lives. I believe that more of us would put ourselves to the task and we would be able to accomplish anything. The problem is, in this existence, the sole unifying factor seems to be war. We rally together to kill, but for little else. It seems we need an outside force to come in in order to get us moving.