The Great Dictator

It is hard for me to begin this blog. I simply don't know what to say. I don't want to be seen as someone with a gripe...disgruntled...angry. But suppose I am.

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the world as I have seen it, as I have experienced it, and have been trying to make some sense of it. But it is like trying to make sense of a speeding, out of control train, inside of which I am just another passenger attempting to understand how, and why, I find myself here...and why the train is out of contol. I am no longer concerned about the inevitable crash that looms ahead of me. I am more esoteric in my viewpoint. I only want to understand why it is that the train is so obviously out of control and why the people in charge are so ignorant of that simple fact.

There are always people who think they are in control. But, if history has taught us anything, that is the grand illusion. People in positions of power, like fools who ride on the backs of bronchos, buffalos, bulls, and tigers, always believe that they are in control. But it is never really true. They always come a cropper.

Today there are people who believe in a future that they can dictate. They are convinced that they can control the future of humanity by the sincerety of their beliefs and the boldness of their deeds...if only they have the courage of their convictions and the will to see them through. But this has always been the way of humanity. All of history tells us this.

But our own leaders are not alone in this illusion. There are others in the world, with differing views and visions, who are just as willing to gamble everything, including the earth itself and all who dwell upon it, to see the fulfillment of their dreams.

Religion..Politics...Money...Power...Ideology......these things sicken me more than my own cancer. Sometimes I despair at the thought of what we are doing to ourselves in the name of these terrlble, trifiling ideologies. I almost hope for some sort of evolutionary event that will take away the greatest threat to life on this small, insignificant, and beautiful planet...and yet that would also take away it's only hope...humanity.

Science may see humanity through the finite future of this lonely planet. It may see us into brave new worlds. We might be allowed to explore other worlds, that will live long past the time that is allowed to planet Earth, and we may well prosper long past even the life of our own Sun. But it won't be politics or religion or nationalism that gets us there...it will be science and a true sense of Humanity.

But is there hope?

Not much.

I would like to present a small video of Charles Chaplin...a great artist. He made a satirical film, in 1940, about Nazi Germany , before the USA even entered into WWII. In this film he played two characters: An insignificant Jewish barber and the dictator Adenoid Hynkel, who he happens to resemble. After witnessing the atrocities that are committed by Hynkel's regime, and being mistaken for the evil dictator, the barber finds himself addressing the masses in person and over the radio. This is what he has to say: It sounded corny then, and it may sound corny now, but it will always ring true.