Puzzled

We have a severe problem. A puzzle to solve. You see, everything was just fine before, when we all ate what grew on trees and drank what flowed in streams. You know, we got by alright, trading what we harvested or made for things that other people harvested or made. But now, look at all the things made! They want computers and cars and all sorts of stuff. And, well, people will make whatever anyone could possibly dream of. They sky is really the limit. All that is required is a lot of money, and someone will think of a way to create it...eventually. Flying cars, nitrogen widgets, whatever. That's the whole problem!

We need people to stop wanting all these things. It truly causes a large amount of effort on our part. As one puzzle is solved, we move on to the next one, and the next, just solving one puzzle after another until we have jet packs and restorative nano bots and really good coffee filters. I truly fear there is no end to this cycle, as I ponder this other puzzle before me...the one of disintegrating all the others...of telling the world we don't really all need, hm, let's say cars with navigation systems...

All those thousands of people out there solved this great big puzzle. They made it impossible to get lost by creating a device that yells at us every time we need to make a turn...screaming over any conversation we might be having...as if the puzzle that was solved is so much more important than the puzzle being solved by the riding conversationalists. But remember that there was a time when humans remembered how to get places. It could be done, and the brain power required was not that prohibitive. Now, instead of being able to delight in the puzzle that always allowed us that welcome distraction of finding out how to get where we're going, we have a substitute distraction of trying to find some way to coexist peacefully while a computerized voice interrupts us every few minutes (after the novelty of trying different voices fades away into that dull, complacent dependency...eventually drooling over ourselves, trying to remember which way was right and which way was left).

Isn't it ironic that, in a time on unprecedented abundance, we also have unprecedented want? I forget the definition of irony, having delighted in a lifetime of lax education and intellectual laziness required to succeed in our times. Maybe now is an appropriate time to snub intellect and civilization altogether, pointing to our great prosperity as evidence that such things are not required in the modern world, much less education. Education?! You are living in the dark ages, my friend. We don't need no education. What we need is a facade of education that relies on commercial-style appeals to human weakness...like smiling children holding books! Yes, LOTS OF SMILING CHILDREN HOLDING BOOKS is excellent promotional material. This way, children will think that books will bring them happiness and affection...just the act of reading a book, whatever book, and completely regardless of any comprehension. And, while they hold books that remind them that they are perfect whatever they do, their parents will think their kids are actually learning something. All the while, generations come to believe that everybody is okay no matter what they do or say, and that all we need for a successful society is to encourage the laziness of ourselves and others through low expectations. All the while, as cartoon characters advocate weakness to pleasure, vanity, and laziness, we plant profitable seeds in these young minds...seeds that ease the commercial mandate of persuasion necessary to turn a "citizen" into a "consumer."

They are the loving, tolerant, politically correct, compassionate, friendly, well-intentioned, harmless tools that require a hefty expense for 18 years, but subsequent decades of low hanging fruit for the esteemed corporate partners. But it gets better, as these precious cogs assure each other with every breath that all that glitters is indeed gold...and that it is gold worth every puzzle ever assembled and all that will be...and that this is to continue until the last person on earth has died without needing to lift one finger in search of a map...until all suffer nothing but the arduous puzzle of identifying every slightest whim to relieve, then to have it satisfied instantly for the duration of his 100 years plugged into his pleasure machine.

It is his throne, where he rules a universe of his own mindless altruist minions. It is a population he, himself, has cleverly learned to control in every way, carving them out in the way that relieves his slightest dissatisfaction, like scratching a subtle itch, first with the property of one population, then with the freedom of another, until they claw over each other's backs to delight his will, all to impress one another with the tokens he tosses them...all to become this laughing, proud, delirious master themselves. Surely no puzzle could be more honorable, more desirous that this one, as I resume my tiny part toward this universal goal...one small contributor to the balancing of life down to a flat line of perpetual self-gratification that is to define our species. Back to the puzzle.