Limitless

 

 Ever since the dawn of man, it would seem that some group or another attempts to constitute themselves as some type of aristocracy, imposing their views and wishes on others. From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe... in every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to control and dominate the populace.
Today, we hear these people who see themselves as modern Pharaohs claiming you must accept whatever social station you have been assigned, you must accept a lower standard of living, lower wages, less healthful foods, less education, more dominance and interference in your personal life, less services, less maintenance, less infrastructure, less peace, etc.
Yes, you must accept massive austerity on a grand scale. All hopes must be abandoned, all aspirations must be nipped in the bud. Regardless of  what type of misrepresentation the would be Pharaohs and their sycophant supporters are selling the truth is rather obvious. You must have less so they, themselves can have more.

I'm here to tell you this is all lies.
Do not believe it. Do not accept it.

We are nothing without our aspiration. When we launched the Voyager into points unknown in space, we included representations of the things man aspired to....Bach's music, representations of mathematical equations, literature, art, and the earth's natural beauty.
We did not send visual representations of warfare.
Nor poverty. 
No shots of social injustice, starving children, people living in open sewers.
We did not send pictures of  toxic pollution or bloated CEOs and shareholders draining the life blood from a child laborer in some forsaken 3rd world toilet.
We did not show dishonest rotters scheming ways to cheat people out of their homes and possessions.

Why not?  After all, this is the stuff we see daily in our media. We are confronted and bombarded with this daily.
In the U.S. more than half of every dollar received by government is spent on warfare.
One might think this was important to mankind.
Yet it is not.
We are what we aspire to.
When we were born we knew nothing.
We were dependent and ignorant (some want us to return to that condition).
But we rose above that state. At least many of us have.
We wanted to learn, we wanted do whatever needed to be done to achieve our goals.

Austerity for the many, abundance for the few is not the path to a desirable future.

I'm a musician, I did not become a musician without effort nor without investment of resources.
I aspired to become what I am today.
I aspire to become what I will be tomorrow.
When someone said "no, you can't do that" I ignored them.

What thing of any value was ever created as a result of austerity and abandonment of aspiration?
There is nothing we can not do.
There is nothing we can not achieve.
NOTHING.
If we want to end starvation we must first aspire to ending starvation.
If we want peace in this world, we must first aspire to creating peace in this world.
We must never ever believe the person who says "no, you can't do that".
They lie.
If we aspire to creating social justice, we can have social justice.
If we aspire to lead a kind gentle life we can do that too.
We are what we aspire to, we must never surrender these aspirations.
There is no doubt, one who refuses to aspire to an amicable future ensures there will not be one.



I recall John F. Kennedy proclaiming man would walk on the moon.
At that time, this was a rather preposterous notion. We hadn't invented seat belts yet.
Primitive computers took up multiple floors in buildings.
Yet in less than a decade man indeed walked on the moon.

If today's naysayers had been there, Buzz Aldrin would be an unknown obscure crop duster.
No giant step for mankind would have been taken.
It took great aspiration, great investment of resources.
Not Austerity...not at all.