Essential Selfishness

I am done with the monster of "We," the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame.

And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride.

This god, this one word:

"I.”

                                                    Ayn Rand, Anthem

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I have often wonder how humans can manage to get things so wrong

Humanity has been gifted with the planet

It is destroying it

It has been gifted with brains

But doesn’t use them, allowing demagogues to manipulate and control

It has been given the ability love

But has allowed this gift to devolve into lust

It has been given the power of creativity

And creates wonderful things

But also creates weapons of mass destruction

It has been given an intimate look at what Sacred looks like

In Jesus

It has been given clear instructions

Through Jesus

But others teachers as well

About what it looks like to live a life

Awake to the sacred

But even human religions have

Become things of horror

Used to justify war and killing

Used to justify hate and exclusion

What is wrong with the human race?

It seems to me that he problem is that we have made a god

Out of “I”

And have rejected the power of “we”

We have chosen individualism over community

Individual “winning” over the “common good”

We have chosen power, which is very much an “I” thing

And have let go of service, with is a “we” thing

It is not that it is not important to have a sense of “I”

It is not that we do not need to nurture and take care of ourselves as individuals

But we have to have a balance

Between ourselves as individuals and between ourselves as part of a greater whole

If Jesus taught us anything it was that philosophies such as that propounded by Rand

Are deadly

“what good is it” he said, “to gain the whole world and lose your soul”

Which is simply another way of saying

That when you are only about “self” you lose your self

And that when you give yourself, in the service of the “we”, you find yourself.

This basic message is woven into the fabric of the scriptures

If you ignore it

You violate the scriptures

It is that simple

That clear

And yet today, many pursue the God of I

Instead of the God of Love

And from this fundamental failure

A failure as old as the Garden of Eden

Comes all the ills of this world

It is clear that we have a choice

We can worship the god of “I”

Or we can worship the God of “we”

And that choice determines the

What legacy we leave

It is the difference between inequity, and economic injustice

It is the difference between war and peace

It is the difference between inclusion and exclusion

It is the different between fear and peace

Between a flourishing planet, and wasteland

It is the difference, between life and death

What will we choose?