Yesterday I went down to Thrift Town in San Leandro and bought my three-year-old granddaughter Mena a used Fisher-Price three-story parking garage and three bags full of recycled Matchbox cars, broken Transformers, miniature horses and a dinosaur. And when we got back home, Mena immediately set to work creating her own little world.
I was so impressed with the world that Mena had created that I decided to create my own little world too.
If you had the power of Jesus or Harry Potter to create any world that you wanted, what kind of world would you create? Here’s what I would do:
First, I would make every man on this planet impotent. Yes, that’s I-M-P-O-T-E-N-T, you heard me right. Sorry, guys, but not even Viagra will help you here. “But why?” you might ask. Why? So that after ten years’ time with no children being born, human beings might actually finally wake up and start appreciating the true wonder of children again and stop starving them, beating them and dropping bombs on their heads.
Second, I’d destroy every single nuclear weapon in the world. It would be as if the Manhattan Project had never existed. Sorry, J. Robert Oppenheimer, but no more glory days for you. And Julius and Ethel Rosenberg will have gotten on with their lives instead of being electrocuted and there would have been no Hiroshima, no Chernobyl and no DU babies born without arms, legs and heads in Kosovo and Fallugah.
Third, I’d wave my magic wand over Wall Street and the Pentagon. Poof. Southern Manhattan would now have a new Central Park where that worthless stock exchange/casino/den of thieves used to be, and Washington DC would have a fabulous new homeless shelter instead of its current five-sided death machine/money pit/home of Lord Voldemort.
And the next miracle that I would ask for would be that all interstate highways in America would suddenly have traffic signals installed at approximately every third mile, that all international airports — including military airbases like Lackland and Bagram — would suddenly get fogged in forever, and that any container ships and oil tankers larger than the Mayflower would be instantly converted into floating hospitals and houseboats (and cruise ships too perhaps? I’m not quite THAT saintly.)
Let’s go back to the good old days when it was harder to get from place to place and you had to manufacture your own stuff locally.
And last, I’d really get to the real heart of the matter and magically change mankind into becoming more like Christ than the Devil, more like Harry Potter than Lord Voldemort. Guns, knives, bombs, poisons and trans-fats don’t kill people. People kill people. No more killing! And no more mean, cruel, violent, vicious or evil types of misbehaving out there either, you hear? It’s time to grow up and evolve, guys — or else Harry Potter or Jesus will make you disappear too.
And then we’d finally have a world that would be safe for our grandchildren to grow up in.
Now wouldn’t that be nice.
“But Jane,” you might say, “all this evolved-mankind-wonderfulness stuff you’re talking about is just wistful thinking. The human race ain’t gonna ever change.” Yeah well, that still can’t keep me from being an idealist and hoping.
In all of human history, there has never been a time when mankind has been blessed with so much individual wealth as we are today. The affluence of each average American citizen, even in these very economically-troubled times, would have been unequaled even by ancient emperors, pashas and Khans.
And what have Americans become as a result of all this mind-boggling, unheard-of excess of wealth? We’ve become lying, greedy killers — never satisfied; always lying, cheating and killing in order to grab up even more stuff.
One million Iraqis now lie dead in their graves because of us — not to mention the millions of dead corpses that we have created in far-off places like Chile, Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Haiti, Palestine, Cambodia, Africa, Korea, South America, Wounded Knee….
The world that I want to create has just GOT to be better than the world that we now have.
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To see photos of barley-flour offerings sculpted by Buddhist monks at a three-month-long liturgy being performed daily in Alameda, CA — prayers for peace — please click here: http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/01/if-i-was-jesus-or-harry-potter-wed-have.html
For more information on how to attend some of the liturgies or to donate toward buying more barley flour, please click here: http://www.orgyendorjeden.org/rinchen_terzod.html
The more “Mass” our communications become, the less worthy most of that Communications seems of being “communicated.” If “the medium is the message,” does that negate the innate stupidity of most of what we attempt to say?
Having the power of a Potter or a Jesus might be fun, but Scribe fears we’d all abuse, eventually. Notice that Jesus used his supposed power far less that one would think. Meddle and you may just further muck up the mess. Kind of like what happened in The Butterfly Effect.
Comment by Ye Olde Scribe — January 22, 2011 @ 11:54 am
Agree completely Mr. Scribe, that absolute power corrupts absolutely, though I’d certainly like to wish that the disease known as “cancer” simply didn’t exist or that there was enough food, adequately distributed, that no one need to go to bed hungry in the world.
I’m not sure that I agree with the mass communication comment. I suggest that the problem arises no in reaching “everyone”; but rather in the 24 hr. broadcast news cycle. there simply isn’t enough “newsworthy” news to fill 24 hr/day. I mean how many persons in the USA really care that the Irish Government is about to collapse? How many care of the Knesset debates? How many can even name the countries of the former Soviet Union? (I can’t).
So you’ve got 24 hours of broadcasting to fill with something that won’t have the viewers turning off the TV. So you get the Natalie Holloway story for months on end. Members of Congress find that their pronouncements get broadcast no matter how nutty. You have pundits discussing the current news, regardless of whether there is news at all to discuss.
It’s not a matter of stupidity, it’s a matter of quantity.
Comment by db — January 23, 2011 @ 8:11 am
What you say is depressingly true, db and YOS, but there is another reason the 24/7 media chases those ‘missing blonde girls’ stories so assiduously, aside from having time to fill.
The maroons who are glued to the set over Natalie Holloway are the same people who buy supermarket tabloids and Sarah Palin books. Advertisers love them because they’re so freaking gullible and easy to gull into buying junk jewelry, overpriced gold coins and the latest ‘new and improved’ box of high-fructose crapola on the market. I believe the ad industry calls them ‘low discrimnation purchasers.’ They really can’t poor piss from a boot with the instructions printed on the heel, but they can be easily convinced they need such a boot for their urine, especially if it’s low in fat and sweet-tasting.
Comment by RS Janes — January 24, 2011 @ 7:29 am