Our Thinking Is So Old Hat

Albert Einstein is reported to have said, "The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."


Recently the Pakistani -American citizen who tried to kill indiscriminately many people in Times Square pleaded guilty to all counts brought against him. Apparently he enjoyed, even took delight, in doing so and became impatient with the judge who wanted to be sure that he understood each and every count brought against him.

On the surface this might appear to be good news; that this guy wasn't going to put up a defense, and that his case might be adjudicated quickly and that he was likely to be put away in prison for a long time, if not for life.

Case closed.

Or is it, and should it be?

What's wrong with this picture? Why is it somehow troubling to some of us; taking responsibility personally, why is it troubling to me, when it should be satisfying?

Perhaps it's because I believe that we, our species, have to begin to think outside the box which has limited our perception to an old paradigm, an assumption which still informs us, at our peril, that our enemies are soldiers, military leaders and heads of nation states which have visions of conquering other nation states, and taking over their territory; which has meant taking possession of the conquered states' valuable-to-the-conqueror resources.

Whence came these resources? They are the previously considered detritus of earlier species created and left behind by Nature, which is not limited by any time constraint, nor influenced by any of its creatures.

Nature just is. Nature is not immoral but clearly is amoral. Why, because Nature and Nature's processes just are what they are. When we look for someone or something to blame we look for something created by Nature, usually someone of our own species. In so doing we condemn ourselves because we are also creatures of Nature.

Sorry to have to tell you that.

Ironically it's through the death and destruction of Nature's own creatures that these resources are deposits created by their deaths long ago. Oil comes first to mind.

Now we hear that in Afghanistan there are deposits of other remnants which Nature had created over millenia, and which might be the targets of those who covet the idea that they could, with support of the right influence and power of our government and military leaders, claim them by some, any means, arm twisting diplomacy, look the other way pay offs, as in corruption, or military force.

Until and unless we wake up to the abomination of the threat posed by the greed at any cost of the Neocons, members of our own species, we will remain helpless in our ignorance to see and understand that we are turning a blind eye to what is destroying us from within.

The horrendous irony is that it's only the brains of the species called by itself "homo sapien"(knowing men), and "homo sapien, sapien"(knowing men who know they know) which invented the technology that depends on the inherit energy deposits which resulted from the deaths and ultimate extinction of a vast number of species, like our own, in accordance with what our species has correctly come to understand as The Law of Nature.

So it seems that we are using the remains of previous species to cause the deaths and the ultimate extinction of ourselves.

Tragically, it serves us right.

Leanderthal (A temporarily surviving specimen of a species widely thought to have gone extinct long ago)