 
### The Power Game Volume I

Copyright 2016 Jeff Katzman

Published by Jeff Katzman at Smashwords

Version 1.2

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: Nature

Chapter 2: Life

Chapter 3: Human

Chapter 4: Humanity

Chapter 5: The Church

Chapter 6: The Economy

Chapter 7: The State

Chapter 8: The Academy

Chapter 9: The Family

Chapter 10: The Power Game

About the author

Dedication

I dedicate this book to the five most influential people in my life:

To Mom, goddess of inspiration.

To Dr. Bellon, god of encouragement.

To Courtney, goddess of beauty.

To Nicki, goddess of love.

To Jill, goddess of wisdom.

Acknowledgements

Most of all I would like to acknowledge Prometheus -- the Greek titan, god, and muse who represents the treasure trove of all past human achievement. When we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, we stand on the shoulders of Prometheus.

As a species, humanity still would _not_ be all that interesting if each generation were only passing on its limited experience to the next _verbally_. We only became interesting when we switched from conversing amongst ourselves to conversing with the ancients. The best of these conversations are the ones in which the wisest men and women who ever lived followed the great chain of being and wrote collections of the best ideas of all time.

I too have followed this great chain of being starting with Homer and following it to the present. In particular, I would like to thank Nietzsche, Thoreau, Hesse, and Emerson for being the best guides in my life and providing me with the wisest ideas on the timeless elements of the human condition.

Cover art: Power is represented by a power plant. The game is represented by the estates of the church, the economy, the state, the academy, and the family.

Introduction

What is this crazy game called life all about? For humanity, life is a game -- a power game. The Power Game Volume I aims to come as close as possible to hitting the nail of reality on the head by exploring the timeless elements of the human condition from the perspective of _society toward the individual_. This authoritative book illuminates why we employ the strategies we do as we all play the power game of our lives. This volume shows how to strategically employ the five grandest of grand institutions (or estates as I like to call them) to win the power game of life. It is my hope that readers will learn how the church, the economy, the state, the academy, and the family battle one another in an attempt to achieve dominance over each other and all of humanity. In turn, these five estates also attempt to achieve dominance over the individual.

Since the dawn of civilization, these five estates have affected and made an impact on every individual in all cultures around the world every single day. Even the order of the presentation of the chapters is meaningful: when we wake up each day, we decide whether to be or not to be (The Church); then we get something to eat (The Economy); then we want to be safe (The State); then we want to quench our desire to know (The Academy); finally, we want to mate, procreate, and raise children (The Family). This volume examines the forces _beyond_ our control that _command us_ , while The Power Game Volume II concentrates on the forces _within_ our control that _we command_ over the course of our lives. Ultimately, it is my hope that taken together Volume I and Volume II will show _you_ how to apply the powers of the five estates to win the power game of _your_ life.

Why am I an expert in these ideas and ways of life -- because I made myself an expert. My adolescent period was hell on earth -- I was clearly traveling the path of misdevelopment without any role models. Neither of my parents was fit to serve as a role model for me. I decided that it was necessary for me to search elsewhere for role models in my life, and I determined that seeking the best ideas from the wisest men and women who ever lived would be the ideal way for me to make the transition to a wise and productive adult.

Originally, I had no intention of writing a book summarizing these ideas. I simply applied these ideas to my life and steered myself along a more original and adventurous path. However, while in graduate school I observed that I had a comparative advantage over my fellow students in providing executive summaries of the books, journal articles, and models that we read. Oftentimes I felt that I could summarize a writer's book even more cogently and succinctly than the writer could. Upon graduation, I decided to write these two companion volumes and share these ideas with as many people as I could so that you too could have a clearer model and better understanding of the power game going on around us. These two volumes represent the executive summary of my entire research and education -- this book is Volume I of the one book that I wish I had had access to when I first set out on my quest for knowledge when I was a freshman in college.

My research took me through thousands of hours and hundreds of books following the great chain of being -- the string of ideas linking the distant past like Homer's The Odyssey or The Old Testament up to the current prevailing wisdom of our age. So, rather than you having to read hundreds of books containing the best ideas of the wisest men and women who ever lived, you can read this brief executive summary of all of my executive summaries of those books.

In a world laden with forces beyond our control where the five estates rule over each of us, our educational system concentrates on teaching us a great deal about one particular field of expertise while teaching us next to nothing about the game of life going on around us. One of the major goals of The Power Game Volume I is to fill this void in our educational system and provide an executive summary vision or model of the power game that each of us plays. While all college students specialize in only one subject, this title would prove invaluable for those students who want to have a clearer picture of the other social science and humanities disciplines and how they interact with one another. Volume I aims to offer a high level summary of the remaining subjects of a social science education. This book would also help other adults who want a clearer understanding and more in-depth analysis of this crazy game called life going on around us every day.

As you read The Power Game Volume I and The Power Game Volume II, picture an eagle soaring high in the sky. The eagle starts circling thousands of feet above the earth and slowly spirals down. The eagle starts in Volume I, hovering in the lofty realm of nature; then it spirals down through life; then through man's ancestry; then through humanity; then through the five estates of the church, the economy, the state, the academy, and the family. Finally, the eagle hones in on you and explores your deepest depths in The Power Game Volume II.

May you too fare well on your journey through life as you master the art of living and yourself.

Love,

Jeff

Chapter 01: Nature

_Nature is force_ \-- a carnival of clashing forces continuously colliding and connecting with one another. Nature has no beginning and no end. It has always been; it is; and it will always be. It has neither goal nor purpose, unless cycling around in the same circle is a goal or a purpose. The forces rise and fall -- an endless building up and breaking down. The vision that comes to mind is that of the sea, of the waves breaking on the rocks, of the water endlessly rushing in and flowing out, only to rush back and to flow forward once again. We are surrounded by the ebb and flow of nature's perpetual motion, of its infinite movement over infinite time across infinite space.

_Nature is infinity_. Nature transcends time, lying beyond all of humanity's attempts to categorize and control it. Time's current passes through us, but infinity remains when we have flowed on by. From cosmic to atomic forces, the universe forever expands and contracts, endlessly orbiting around itself.

_Nature is perpetual presence_. Each passing moment is unique, though sometimes amazingly similar to what has come before. The past is always forgotten, even deleted -- only that which is still to come remains significant. Amongst this perpetual movement nature remains forever the same. Let's return to the edge of the sea -- the water surges and succumbs and yet it is always there; it is always the same and yet every moment it is new, renewed, recycled.

_Nature is power_ \-- an endless rise and fall of power. Picture a river, a river accelerating as it flows through rapids on the way to a waterfall, where it hurls itself over the edge with all of its momentum, discharging all of its energy on the rocks below. The world is in perpetual flux -- everything flows; everything moves; everything passes. Nothing remains still; nothing lasts; everything becomes and then vanishes \-- _everything_.

_Nature is energy_ \-- a grand orchestra of energy. The sound rings of cacophony most of the time. However, on rare occasions and with the most fortuitous alignment of random forces, nature conducts a masterpiece.

_Nature is chance_ \-- an infinitely complicated collection of coincidental forces. Nature is becoming and becoming has no goal, no purpose, and no design. Pure chance guides all events; each moment unlocks a cabinet of curiosities; each passing day delights us with a new series of surprises. The earth is a dance floor for accidents, a table for dice and dice players. The god destiny controls our fate, and his dice are always loaded. Yet, just as often as the dice throws are the source of sorrow and defeat, they are the source of joy and triumph.

_Nature is creator_ \-- an artist that gave birth to itself eons ago. The earth is a special place, a faithful vessel through a sea of space. Every part of our whole planet is locked in orbit like the earth around the sun. The moon circles the earth, forcing the seas to gravitate towards it in its wake. A tilted axis stabilizes the climate, keeping the earth warm enough during the night and cool enough during the day. The earth basks in the warm, caring glow of the sun, which casts an overflowing abundance of energy in our direction.

_Nature is destroyer_. Nature is that from which we spring but also that to which we return. Nature lives on itself -- its excrements are its food. The wind carves through glaciers, which melt and form rivers, which dislodge and carry boulders, which smash bridges and houses below. Every end is a beginning -- offering a fresh start and renewal.

_Nature is innocence_. Through all of its destruction, irrationality, immorality, irresponsibility, and indifference, Nature is neither good nor bad, neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent, neither right nor wrong, neither cause nor effect -- Nature just is.

_Nature is holiness_. Each day is holy, each day a mini-eternity -- the morning is spring, the afternoon summer, the evening fall, and the night winter. During a single day in the mountains we walk through all the seasons -- we ascend from the valley of summer along the slopes of spring to the majestic alpine peaks of perpetual winter, only to descend in the evening air of autumn. The great annual cycles occur and recur forever -- from the mating season, as every living thing on earth comes out to celebrate the emergence of spring from the depths of winter, to the playful summer, to the fruitful harvest, to the enclosing atmosphere of winter.

_Nature is beauty_ \-- a kaleidoscope of color. On Nature's infinite canvas unfolds the purple and orange blossoms bearing the rebirth of life in spring, the green blanketing of the earth beneath a blue canopy in summer, the ripening of brilliant crimson and golden fruits in autumn, and the melting away into minutely different shades of gray in winter.

_Nature is repetition_. Everything cycles and circulates. The sun evaporates the sea; the wind scatters the vapors; the vapors combine with dust to form clouds; the clouds accumulate moisture; the moisture overflows as rain; the life-giving water drains into rivers; the rivers deliver the water to the sea. Animals live off the waste of plants while plants live off the waste of animals. Stone becomes soil, which becomes part of living flesh, which turns back to stone. Nature has long been everything and always is everything. As the pressure in the atmosphere shifts with the weather, all the fluids on the surface \-- the ones around us and the ones within us -- either expand or contract. Everything is interconnected; the whole earth is alive.

_Nature is interconnection_. Every action that happens is inextricably intertwined to that which has happened and to that which will happen. A piece of infinity resides in all that exists -- that is to say is a necessary link in an infinite chain of interconnected occurrences that has been, is, and will be forever. Immortality is infinite motion. _The cycle circulates_.

_Nature is a chaotic monster of energy_ \-- an arena in which random forces battle and balance one another. These forces are disorganized, causally unconnected, though continuous and contiguous. Nature works very hard, endlessly experimenting though with no concern over which outcome obtains. With an infinite number of tosses, it must appear as if a few outcomes were full of purpose, the result of some grand design. Yet we must never forget that these favorable results are nothing more than fortuitous accidents -- if governed by anything at all, then governed by pure chance. The way of the world is anything but divine. When fate shakes the dice and tosses them on the grand table of chance, ever so rarely a die lands on its edge, if only once in a million or even a billion throws. Out of the chaos of one of these random tosses sprung an organizing force in the universe, out of chaos sprung life.

Chapter 2: Life

Life is an innocent accident arising out of the chaos of nature, which remains forever indifferent. Life is an arbitrary outcome that eventually happened after an infinite number of random tosses. Ever since life happened to be, it has been a continuous struggle to sustain itself and to remain victorious over blind chance. Each species knows of nothing more important than its own preservation. If life has a purpose, that purpose is to reproduce itself -- to survive for as many generations as possible. _Procreation is innocent and holy -- for all living creatures, sexuality is omnipotent_.

Life is a harbor of organization in the midst of a violent, clashing sea of chaos. Nevertheless, life remains subject to nature's forces, which flow through every living creature. Life cycles as nature does, with each species ebbing and flowing like the waves on the sea. We call this ebbing and flowing evolution, a dynamic collection of random occurrences that impact the species or its environment or both. Every species occupies a niche in its environment, and each ecosystem fosters interdependence amongst all species, with some forming symbiotic relationships with one another. Within a single species we observe multiple varieties, many of which have adopted differing strategies for survival. Variety offers the best opportunity for at least some members of the species to survive, even in times of environmental upheaval. Each individual is an experiment, a unique combination of genetics and environment geared to perpetuate the species. _The forces of life flow through every individual, with reproduction as the central force while all of the peripheral forces aid the individual in reaching sexual maturity_.

Each life form is a power generator -- a bundle of energy. Explosions, tensions, pressures, growths, and decays continuously occur in cells, organs, systems, and the whole individual. Though organisms appear to be the most well-designed machines nature has ever created, organisms also are the accumulation of an infinite number of trials over billions of years. From the molecular level to that of the organism, each component has evolved, battling and balancing with the other components, with only those that achieved enough harmony between the constituent parts to create viable offspring being the successful survivors.

Each life form is delicate, requiring access to air, food, water, pressure, certain temperatures, and other factors. All plants require carbon dioxide while all animals require oxygen to produce energy which creates a beautiful symbiotic dance of life. It is not difficult to imagine an environmental catastrophe affecting the earth that snuffs out all the oxygen, if only for a few minutes, that would wipe out the _entire_ animal kingdom as we know it -- forever. The first animals to go would be the more complex ones, the ones that require vast amounts of air and energy to sustain themselves. For example, mammals can hardly last two minutes without an adequate amount of oxygen. Most mammals can only last a few hours in extreme heat or cold, a few days without water, or a few weeks without food. A solid jolt lasting no longer than a millisecond may damage its vital organs beyond repair.

Each life form battles incessantly against the disorganizing forces of the universe, against randomness, accident, and decay. To live a full life -- to live until dying of old age -- requires tremendous health and good fortune. We need to remind ourselves that the living is merely a special type of the dead -- a highly organized, energetic, and rare type. _The only certainty for any life form is death, that the disorganizing force will eventually prevail over the organizing force_.

Life is precious and precarious, a gift requiring both an incredible degree of luck and fortuitous conditions to survive and even to thrive. Humanity is only acquainted with the fraction of the earth in which we live. We rarely delve further than six feet below the surface or hover as high above it. Yet, we frequently discover life forms in the most remote and hazardous environments -- that is, remote and hazardous for _us_. From algae bathing in boiling Yellowstone geysers, to edelweiss clinging to desolate Alpine cliffs, to bacteria enjoying a meal in one of the harshest environments on earth -- the human stomach, we can do nothing but marvel at how resilient and adaptive all life forms are.

Yet, we must never forget that life feeds on life. One type supplies the fuel necessary to keep another type alive. The chain forms a complete circle -- plants generate fuel from the sun; animals eat the plants; animals excrete, decay and die, which serves as fuel for plants. Plants and animals go together like yin and yang -- nowhere on earth can we find an ecosystem with only plants or one with only animals. Each link in the chain absorbs energy, uses it, and then passes it on, only to have a new dose of energy injected into the chain. For example, the perch swallows the worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, the fisherman swallows the pickerel, and the worm swallows the dead and decaying fisherman.

All life forms are links in this chain. Humanity is no more at the top of the food chain than the amoeba. Though during our lives we are rarely consumed by lions or tigers, bears or crocodiles, we are always consumed by worms or microbes after our deaths -- _so goes the innocent cycle of life_. No part of this cycle is any more necessary or valuable than the next \-- if nature were to remove a single link in the chain of life, it is possible that every other link would eventually vanish.

All plants and animals fulfill life's goal, for example: one spring morning the stem of a flower emerges in a garden. On the next day, it releases its pollen and receives pollen from nearby flowers, carried by the wind or bees. On the third day, the flower withers and dies. Exactly one year later, the stem of a flower emerges in a garden ... The parent flower fulfills life's goal -- it procreates itself. _The cycle circulates_.

An example from the animal kingdom is that a fly is born in the morning, nourishes itself to adulthood in the afternoon, procreates in the evening, and dies at nightfall, not even experiencing an entire day during its brief stay here on earth. But, the next morning a fly is born ... The parent fly fulfills life's goal. _The cycle circulates_.

As the cycle circulates, minor variations around common themes occur. These occurrences are not governed by design; rather, they are random outcomes occurring over the course of infinite time. Within this immense scope of time, there are infinitely repeated trials of random experiments. Humanity has just recently adopted this new perspective, of seeing well beyond our brief life spans into this vast horizon of infinite possibility.

All of life is connected. Both plants and animals share an ancient, common ancestor. Over a vast extent of time -- via a process of descent with modification -- life has branched out from this common ancestor to form the rich tapestry blanketing the earth today.

The plant and animal kingdoms do _not_ evolve from lower to higher forms according to any design. Rather, all life forms evolve randomly and chaotically at the same time. In this way, no species is superior to any other, and no species is more likely to remain extant than any other. _Humanity is just another species, not the culmination of evolution_.

Life is a struggle, and the variety of species coupled with the variety of individuals within a species greatly improves the possibility that life will continue through the next generation and beyond. _As a new branch in the tree of life develops, the likelihood that life continues in some form increases_.

_Evolution is the grand governing force flowing through all living beings_. Each organism within each species represents an experiment -- one of life's most valiant efforts to sustain itself. Since every organism is a unique combination of that which has come before, the probability that some organism or variety of organisms within a species matches well with its environment also increases.

Life is a struggle against the forces of nature. Each organism battles and balances with its environment to sustain itself while passing on the species. Most species lose the battle with the forces of nature -- more than ninety-nine percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. _The species currently inhabiting the earth are the most fortunate and the fittest -- fittest in the sense that they match well with the prevailing environment currently enveloping their ecosystem_.

Chance flows through every organism just as it flows through all other parts of nature. Procreation is nature's finest performance, in which the genes of each parent dance with each other to create something entirely new -- an offspring arising out of, yet different from, its parents. Each of these newly created beings possesses the future of the entire species. However, each offspring is an experiment, varying just enough from its peers to offer the species the opportunity to take advantage of different niches in the ecosystem. By differentiating the offspring and having as many offspring as the ecosystem can sustain, the species as a whole achieves the highest probability that at least some members survive, even through times of drastic environmental upheavals.

It is astounding how vast the earth can change in geological time. For example, climbers hiking Mount Everest get to see sea shells embedded in rock perched four miles above sea level. The ecosystems occupying the earth today also evolved, sometimes experiencing violent and revolutionary upheavals. Every Californian knows that what appears to be firm soil beneath their feet can shake and quake at any time. Eons can produce drastic changes across species and within species as well.

Chance flows through all the ecosystems of the earth. Picture the earth as a panoply of puzzles, with each single puzzle containing millions of pieces. Many of the puzzles remain barren as some regions of the earth are uninhabited or sparsely inhabited by all living beings -- the arctic, the deserts, the ocean floor, and high altitudes. However, in the vast stretches of the earth lying between these harsh extremes, the forces of nature align well enough to support life. _Within_ these regions, puzzle pieces are abundant, but _across_ these regions each puzzle is unique.

Examples of how species fit one another like puzzle pieces abound -- sharks and lampreys, wasps and flowers, barnacles and whales, and acacia trees and ants. We are just now beginning to grasp how interconnected species are. Every species has a harmonious, symbiotic relationship with at least one other species. When an animal consumes a plant, it aids the plant with its survival, either indirectly or directly. For example, the moose grazing on grass at night on the plateau of the Grand Canyon fertilize the soil simultaneously, helping the grass grow the next day. When humanity forms a new community, we bring farm plants and animals with us, which directly helps them to survive as well.

For example, wherever we are, there are farm plants and animals, dogs and cats, and even species we support involuntarily -- raccoons and rats, squirrels and ducks, ants and lice, and viruses and bacteria. Though we carry our environment around with us, we bring far more variety with us than we intend.

One particularly interesting puzzle is the African savanna. Here, millions of species fit together. One such piece, the giraffe, epitomizes how a species dovetails with certain other species to form an elaborate whole. The giraffe battles with the other herbivores of the savanna for access to leaves on trees. Many other species compete with one another as they feed on the leaves from the lower portions of trees. However, giraffes now exclusively occupy a niche in the food chain as they feed on leaves from the upper portions of trees. This example not only shows how a species fits like a puzzle piece with the rest of its environment, it also serves to indicate what happens over eons.

It is of the utmost importance to understand that giraffes currently occupying the savanna did not gradually grow longer necks through multiple generations of stretching to reach leaves higher up the trees. Giraffes with longer necks happened to have had a fortuitous advantage over the giraffes with shorter necks, who were forced to share the same food niche with other species. Over the course of millions of years and thousands of generations, giraffes with longer than average necks had a greater chance of sustaining themselves and thus also achieving greater reproductive success. Long neck giraffes simply matched better to the ecosystem than short neck giraffes. The long neck giraffes were simply luckier -- not necessarily stronger, superior, or more sexually attractive than short neck giraffes. _Chance is the guide to life -- which is a poor guide. Yet, life persists and even thrives in the lucky ones_.

Every species is locked in orbit. No species progresses or regresses by design -- it merely seeks to sustain itself. Over eons, a species experiences a series of shocks, either benevolent or malevolent, to its environmental and genetic makeup. The variety of species blanketing the earth comes and goes like waves crashing on the rocks. _Nature favors no species over any other -- in fact, nature is completely indifferent to all forms of life_.

Yet, within a single species, we observe multiple varieties, many of which have adopted different strategies for survival. Variety is not only the spice of life, it is also its sustenance. Increasing the variety of types and lifestyles of individual members of the species increases the probability that enough individuals will survive to propagate the species during periods of environmental upheaval.

Rapid changes in environment -- such as access to food, water, and shelter -- force a species to adapt quickly or risk extinction. As the level of the population contracts, the variety of individuals and their genes also contracts. The few remaining members of the species are forced to procreate with near-relatives. Mating with near-relatives greatly increases the risk of genetic defects or mutations in offspring. During these periods where the veritable survival of the species is called into question, evolution appears more like revolution. These periods of near-relatives being forced to breed with one another cause rapid alterations in the gene pool, most likely causing the species to die off. However, if enough beneficial mutations occur, they could also give rise to a more advanced, more fit, and even stronger species. Even though the population of the species passes through a bottleneck with the majority dying off, at least enough individuals survive to sustain and even to spread the species.

How environments will change or which varieties will produce beneficial mutations is uncertain, so the species does not favor any individual over any other, or any variety over any other. The species just wants enough variety to ensure that some types survive and pass on their genes to the next generation. _As long as there are enough members to sustain the species, no single individual is of particular concern to the species_.

_Though the species is not concerned with which individuals procreate, the individual is solely concerned with procreating itself_. For the individual, procreation brings the highest feeling of power -- god-like power. This creation of new life ushers in the future -- of itself and of its species. Each individual is an experiment, a unique combination of genetics, environment, and luck geared to perpetuate the species.

Every procreation is a gamble -- a random recombination of that which has come before, yet something entirely new and unique. _Out of an offspring anything can grow_.

As with all experiments, some go horribly awry while others produce magical effects. Every living being is more than an individual -- each links into the whole chain of being for its species as well, with the tasks of all the futures of that chain.

All individuals cycle through stages of development. For example, in every mammalian species, the individual develops from copulation to an embryo to the baby at birth. From the moment the individual is thrown into this world, it begins a period of intense learning from the previous generation. Upon passing through childhood, the organism reaches sexual maturity and adulthood. Reproduction soon follows. Now, as a parent, the adult teaches and rears its offspring. Once the offspring grows mature enough to care for itself, the adult passes through an extended period of freedom -- free of caring for offspring -- before passing away. _The cycle circulates_.

_Life's forces have been cycling their way through organisms since the dawn of life_. We are nothing more than a congealment of life forces vying for gratification, the strongest being that which propagates the species and transcends the individual -- _the reproductive drive_.

All of the other drives are concerned with forming a healthy individual that will have the power not only to produce a healthy offspring, but to rear that offspring to healthy adulthood so that the offspring can continue life's processes and propagate the species.

_Every living being is always a slave to something -- itself_. True freedom is never attained. At a minimum, the organism remains bound to its drives -- breathing, drinking, eating, excreting, recuperating, and procreating. All higher animals require nourishment in the form of oxygen, water, food, sleep, and sexual gratification.

A factory of forces forever flows through all life forms. For higher animals, the skin protects, the skeleton supports, the muscles move, the nerves sense external stimuli, the hormones integrate internal stimuli, the blood transports, the lungs breathe, the stomach digests, the intestines absorb, the anus excretes, and the sex organs procreate. _Life consists of keeping these systems functioning as long as possible_.

All animals spend their lives quelling one drive after another -- when the animal has finished its search for food, it consumes the meal. Then, it quenches its thirst, which also aids the digestive process. Next, it digests the meal and then excretes the superfluities. Finally, the animal gains a few moments of freedom from and for itself. At least once a day it rests -- repairing the internal systems and storing up enough energy to continue the identical process the next day. _The cycle circulates_.

All organisms are genetically programmed to reproduce. The sex drive commands and demands dominance in _all_ living organisms as a means of letting life's forces flow through the next generation and beyond. _The drive to procreate is the individual's strongest drive_.

_All social behavior is based on the pursuit of procreation possibilities_ \-- _making the most, healthiest offspring with as many mates as possible_. Everything else in the complex interaction between members of the same species is ultimately linked to producing healthy, viable offspring -- _everything_. The social behavior of all higher animals is fascinating, but that of one animal is by far the most fascinating \-- man.

Chapter 3: Human

Man is a fleeting inhabitant on the third planet from a distant sun. When viewed from the highest peaks or the most distant horizons, the game of life for any particular species appears at best a comedy and at worst a meaningless farce. After all, every single individual life form dies, and more than ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct.

_Nature is simply not concerned with the fate of any living being -- not even man_. Not even the life force is interested in any particular species as long as there is enough variety of flourishing life. Additionally, the life force encourages variety within a species since it is unclear which individuals will end up being the fortuitous ones as nature tosses the dice of fate. _Still, to every species its own survival is paramount -- just as for each individual its survival and procreation opportunities are paramount_.

_Procreation opportunities drive the social behavior of all higher animals_. If a male is looking for a purpose to its existence, the answer is the female and vice versa. If man is looking for an answer to the riddle of human existence, the answer is woman. For woman, it is man.

Man, like all other living beings, seeks to procreate himself and to perpetuate his species. _However, so long as mankind consists of multiple varieties, the procreation of any particular individual is of no concern to nature or even to life_.

_Man's distant ancestors were no different than any other ape or any other living being_. For the greatest part of man's history, his sole method of ensuring the survival of his species was procreation. Man's evolutionary path became unique when his hips fused together so that he could walk upright, which freed his hands from locomotion. He soon started scanning the horizon and learned to postpone immediate gratification of his desires. Man then invented time as the size of his brain dramatically increased. Man then used this powerful brain to make tools and to harness fire. Eventually, man became aware of his own death and began to work frantically to control his own environment.

Imagine journeying back to join man hundreds of thousands of generations ago on the open savanna of eastern Africa. Savanna is grassland spotted with trees that is dotted with lakes or streams. Life-giving water flows abundantly, providing an oasis for an abundance of plants and animals. Savanna is utopia for many animals, not just man. In fact, an overwhelming majority of modern man still occupy this ecological niche today.

At that time, man was an ape just beginning to walk upright as he roamed the plains -- occasionally pausing to scan the horizon for water, roots, and fruits. Just as every animal's ecosystem is a Garden of Eden, man spent his days searching for food and drink, which was always successful. Man was a mooch that followed the path of least resistance to obtain his next meal. Toiling is a word that was not yet in his minuscule arsenal of communication. He still had never tasted a bite of meat.

His frailty and timidity forced him to shun contact with any type of animal anywhere near his own size. Man only knew his immediate environment -- that of savanna. He was not the least bit concerned with the world hovering six feet over his head or lying six feet underground. Though he still spent the vast majority of his waking hours searching for food, he began experimenting with the world going on around him. At this point, tools and fire were still too far in his future to cross his incipient mind for even a second. However, he began using his dexterous hands to reach roots and fruits with ease that other animals were not able to grasp.

He was a plain lazy ape, resting the majority of the day and night. In fact, his mode of life was so similar to the chimps and gorillas of modern times as to be indistinguishable from them. He was as hairy as the ape that he was, and the size of his brain and head were only barely larger than his ape relatives. His pursuit of comfort and security was well underway as he made small nests in the trees when he was tired.

He kept to small bands, mostly loose-knit family units, wandering from place to place without any particular destination in mind. He still used gestures as the principle form of communication, but he was just beginning to speak.

His mind was not nearly as well-developed as our own, though it showed potential. He learned to differentiate that which lies directly in front of him from that which lies in the distance. Though occasionally glancing at his reflection in calm pools, he was not aware that he was looking at himself. In fact, neither he nor anyone he would ever meet was aware of himself or of his imminent death. Though no distinct ideas occupied his mind, his sensations were distinct, and he experienced mysterious feelings of unknown and indistinguishable origin.

Occasionally events that happened behind him recurred right in front of him, or at least in the world beginning to form inside of him. These sporadic incarnations of his past confused him more than anything else, but he was rapidly learning from and to control them -- _and to see that the life he led each day was forever repeating itself_.

Man was too frail, timid, and lazy to know or to notice that it was precisely the growth in capacity and control of this faculty -- of his memory -- that would rapidly lead to his separation from the other apes and the rest of the living world.

_The greater part of man's history is his prehistory_. Examining the monumental milestones of man's evolution in chronological order from time immemorial to the present reveals just how remarkable and how far man has come from his humble beginnings as an ape. Hundreds of thousands of generations ago -- a few million years ago -- modern man's ancestors were apes living in and out of trees in the forests of the savanna.

It is likely that environmental upheavals produced bottlenecks in the human population and that man responded with rapid genetic mutations to counter the threat to his existence. The major advances in man's anatomy and physiology most likely occurred at distinct, _revolutionary_ times in our past.

It is possible that a bottleneck in the human population occurred at a time of rapid environmental change, nearly wiping out the species. Evidence of this event occurs in mythologies around the world as well as in the mitochondrial DNA of modern man. One current anthropological theory claims that, based on evidence in the mitochondria of modern man, it is likely that modern man originated from a single mutation in a tribe in Africa.

_The first milestone in the evolution of man was fused hips, which support the heavy vital organs in his midsection_. This favorable genetic mutation allowed him to walk upright solely on his legs, because his hips were able to support the weight of his vital organs.

Once this advantageous mutation occurred, it quickly spread through the whole population. Eventually, man climbed down out of the trees and ventured into the open savanna for the first time in his existence. This process of environmental upheavals and genetic mutation leading to revolutionary anatomical and physiological changes in man is also seen in other developments over the course of man's evolution.

As we became the only ape species to roam the open plains, we developed a need for walking upright. Fused hips led to walking upright, and walking upright freed man's hands to perform other activities besides locomotion. Walking upright gave man a better view across the terrain and freed his hands, which allowed him to carry things. The advantage of carrying things was that man was able to carry his future drinks and meals around with him. Walking upright with free hands separated man from his _daily_ quest for food and thus opened up a vast horizon for him. _With both the structure and the need in place, man became the only ape and the only living being that walks upright for locomotion_.

Man then started scanning the horizon. Eventually, man learned to look in front and behind him, not just in a physical sense, but in a temporal sense as well. With all of this freedom, man began to see an entire world not perceptible to any other living being. Also, the unique shape of his upright body tilted his head at an advantageous angle -- he looked straight towards the horizon, instead of down at the earth, especially during locomotion. This enabled him to see beyond his immediate vicinity and corresponding immediate needs -- he began scanning the entire plain and eventually the distant horizon. His world grew in complexity and in every direction -- from left to right, to up and down, to forward and backward.

With his head held high, his hands free, and his eyes beaming at distant horizons, man began to experiment with this new and vast world. Eventually, he learned to store food, which freed him from the arduous daily task of scrounging his next meal. This newly discovered freedom opened up an even broader horizon for him.

Man's efficiency in obtaining his next meal opened up vastly more time for play, rest, and sexual gratification than all the other animals. Man eventually learned to apply this same efficiency in satisfying all of his drives. At an early age he began training his stomach, his bladder, and his intestines to endure higher variations in satisfying their corresponding instinctive drives. Over the course of his life, he continued to discipline all of his basic bodily urges. Without ever transcending any of his drives, he at least learned to control each of them as much as possible. All the other animals live in a perpetual present, constantly seeking to gratify their next drive. Man's control over himself opens up vast amounts of time to devote to other endeavors. _Postponing immediate gratification and learning to control his basic bodily functions also separates man from the rest of the living world_.

_For the first time in the history of life, a species was no longer locked in an innocent, perpetual present -- for man had invented time_. Man began to see into both his past and future. In addition to the perpetual present that he and the other animals had been occupying for eternity, man now had two new worlds to explore. He now had more play and leisure time than any other animal. His exploration and experimentation continued, but in a whole new dimension -- that of time. _Throughout all of nature, the past and the future exist in only one place -- in man's mind_.

As soon as the past and the future came into being, man found a new need and a new use for his large brain. Man's demand on his brain for memory to create and to even control his past, present, and future fostered advances in brain size and complexity, which in turn aided man's ability to remember.

The size of an organ changes over time with the organism's need and use for it. Over eons, neglecting an organ makes it wither. For example, the withering of organs can clearly be seen in modern man -- both the appendix and the tonsils have become vestige organs, ones no longer necessary for survival.

The converse also occurs -- repeated use of an organ throughout the species and over eons makes it grow and develop in complexity. Most likely a single mutation occurred that increased the size of man's brain, and it has been growing very slowly ever since. Once this advantageous mutation occurred, man experimented with ways of putting his powerful brain to use. The more uses he found for his brain -- the more demands he put on it \-- the larger and more complex his brain became.

Large brains spread through the human population via sexual selection. A clever mate -- one who happened to inherit a vastly larger, more complex, and superior brain than his rivals -- could and would be able to provide a better environment for a healthy offspring than a less clever one. Potential mates with substantially larger brains than their less fortunate counterparts were either able to directly outsmart them or indirectly out reproduce them. Males and females with the favorable mutation of a substantially larger brain chose each other as sexual partners. Over time and many generations, larger brains eventually spread through the entire population.

All of these additional abilities that man had acquired -- walking upright, scanning the horizon, using his hands continuously for other tasks besides locomotion, and exploring the past, present, and future -- were taxing on his brain. Eventually, man's larger and more complex brain greatly accelerated the rate of his evolution and the rate of separation between man and the rest of the living world.

Man's brain has the ability to monitor mental states, to infer the experiences of others, to grasp a sense of the self, and to serve as the means of experiencing worlds beyond the tangible and of making the intangible tangible. It is no coincidence that the part of man's brain that is both much larger and more advanced than any other animal is the frontal lobe, the part of the brain devoted to memory and to all higher mental processes. Since other animals live innocently in a perpetual present, they have no need to develop this frontal lobe -- as a result, it has not developed. _The size of man's frontal lobe differentiates him from the rest of the living world_.

_Man's memory is one of the most powerful tools nature has ever created_. Man slowly began using his brain, his memory, and his spare time to construct things that aided his existence. The forging of the first sharp stone flake used to open hides to get to meat represents man's first technological innovation. Man's diet shifted from herbivore to omnivore when he began eating meat. Man's brain continued to increase in size, and his teeth and facial features shifted from that of a herbivore to that of an omnivore. As man's variety of food sources expanded, satisfying his hunger drive became easier.

Man started using his tools to shape the environment around him. He also learned to harness fire and to use it to dominate other animals. Mankind was rapidly gaining dominance over the rest of the animals. At this point, though man was already much more clever than the rest of the animals, his lifestyle was not all that different from theirs. _In spite of all of these evolutionary advances, man was still not that interesting of a creature -- for the single most important event in man's evolution had not yet occurred_.

_The single most important event in the history of man and of life itself is man's discovery that he dies_. Man's powers of observation, exploration, and experimentation continued to compel him to discover new things about his existence. Armed with the powerful tool of memory, man eventually and accidentally discovered that he dies. With the discovery that he dies, man's dominion over the rest of the animal kingdom became solidified. However, not only was man no longer locked in a perpetual present, his life was no longer innocent. _Individual men became aware of their own deaths, and soon death awareness spread through the whole species_.

The first burials, dating from one hundred thousand years ago, signify that mankind was aware of death. Burials also imply well-developed consciousness and a means of sharing ideas across people and across generations. Since that time, man has had the _hardest_ life of any animal but also the most _secure_ from the perspective of evolution. _Man toils so much harder than the rest of the animals because he is aware that he dies_.

_From the moment of this world-historical and world-shaping event to the present, man has striven to sustain the species through two paths -- procreation and technological innovations_. It is through the survival strategy of technological innovations that man appears as a Promethean god -- as if touched by a wizard's wand to view a vastly more complex world than the world of any other animal. _Yet, man was the wizard who brought himself to life -- where this new way of life arose out of his awareness of his own death_.

Death awareness spurred man to act as both creature and creator. Since this critical event, man's life has had direction and purpose. _Man began toiling to ensure that as many members as possible of his species lived as long a life as possible_.

_Man not only quickly adapted his needs to match to his environment, he began adapting his environment to match his needs_. Man's first step in surpassing all the other animals was adapting to given environments and getting higher productivity from the resources available. The second step was when man began adapting the environment to fit his needs, which substantially reduced the threats to man's existence and led him to thrive and dominate the rest of the living world.

With the discovery that he dies, man began his quest for knowledge -- the quest to determine how to postpone an individual's death and the extinction of the species for as long as possible. _All knowledge ultimately arises out of and leads to the same place -- death_. _As a result, death awareness is simultaneously a curse and a blessing_.

Just as environmental upheavals necessitate genetic experimentation, a stable environment reduces the need for and thus slows the rate of evolution. _Man's advances in altering the environment to fit his needs rather than moving from one environment to another brought man's evolution to a screeching halt_.

Since man's environment stabilized thousands of years ago, most offspring have survived and thus were given the chance to produce their own offspring in turn. Since the species feels little to no threat to its existence, the genes feel little to no need for experimentation. Anthropological evidence supports this idea as well -- modern man's skeleton is identical to that of fossils dating back over one hundred thousand years. _The forces that propelled man along his unique evolutionary path are frozen in time -- the evolution of man is also frozen in time_. _Though man has seized evolving, his survival as a species is more likely than ever_ \-- _for man's discovery that he dies gave birth to civilization_.

Chapter 4: Humanity

The single most important event in the history of mankind is the discovery that man is doomed to die -- religions, economies, governments, academies, families, and every other facet of civilization are the _result_ of this discovery. Though man will never transcend death, he can still add to both the longevity and quality of his own life and to the lives of his fellow men.

_Man's awareness of his own death separates him from the rest of the apes and the rest of the living world_. Since becoming aware that he dies, man is the only species that has had two ways to increase its survivability -- either through procreation or through technological innovations which he uses to adapt the environment to fit his needs. _Death awareness has driven man to create civilization -- societies devoted to fending off death for as many individuals for as long as possible_.

All life forms are the actualizations of random mixtures of time, space, matter, force, and energy. Since discovering that he dies, man has spent his whole existence trying to impose order on this chaotic world. _Man originally created civilization to battle the forces of nature and life -- civilization is man's attempt to fend off death for as many individuals for as long as possible_.

From the time of man's first burial to the present, everything that man has done ultimately concerns mankind's survival. Individuals maximize the health of themselves and their families while collectively society maximizes the health and viability of the species. It is astounding how far man has come since he first stepped down from the trees and wandered into the open savanna of his existence. _Compared to the rest of the living world and even to his ancestors, modern man lives like a god_.

Death awareness has spurred man to toil harder than any other animal in creating the conditions under which his species flourishes. To maximize the survivability of his species, man was required to domesticate himself and his environment. First, man created a fortress to fend off attacks from the forces of nature and other life forms. Then, man built a zoo to fend off attacks from predatory men. Next, man built a village to fend off attacks from predatory villages. Finally, man has built a beehive and has organized himself to an unprecedented degree.

Society has created institutions to tame the wild animal within man. Society assassinates the individual for the salvation of the all. The loss of any single individual no matter how beautiful or how brilliant is of no consequence to society or the species. _The complex superstructure of institutions that one generation bequeaths to the next also captures them -- forcing man to live in a perpetual past_.

Man is an ape that domesticates himself. Man has relegated the satisfaction of his needs as an animal to the privacy of his chambers while publicly renouncing his animality. This separation between human and being into private and public makes man simultaneously the _tamest_ and the _wildest_ of all animals -- _for it is impossible to predict with certainty which side of man will prevail in any given situation_.

Religions, economies, governments, academies, and familial institutions have developed virtually overnight in comparison with the rest of man's evolution. Each of these institutions vies for dominance -- to gain the maximum power over the individual and over society. In turn, individuals use these institutions strategically to achieve their maximum feeling of joy and power. _For all men, this power game is the game of life_.

I. ORIGINS OF SOCIETY

Let's travel back five thousand generations to join man on the savanna. In addition to contributing to the survivability of his species via procreation, man has just begun to contribute via technological innovations as well. It is this second method of contributing to survivability that accelerated the rate of separation between man and the rest of the living world.

As soon as man discovered that he dies, the Garden of Eden that formerly surrounded him suddenly transformed itself into a world full of danger, decay, and death. Ever since, death has lingered behind every tree, under every rock, and around every corner. Death laughs as he dances around in the dark, constantly pointing at the hourglass on his wrist to remind us of our own mortality. The rattle of the reaper's bones sends chills down the spine of each of us.

Yet, the world had always been full of chaos and insecurity -- man was just not aware of it. Therewith began the battle against the forces in this new and frightening world. _Once man became aware of his own death, he had just passed through the stage of evolution that transformed him into a human being_.

Human beings became builders -- erecting walls, houses, community shelters, and anything and everything that we could think of to keep death out for as many members for as long as possible. _By far the most important and the most valuable of all of humanity's creations is language_.

Human beings use language to bring order to a chaotic world. _The fundamental purpose of language is to aid man in coming to an understanding over the simplest needs of life_. _Language is a weapon in the struggle for life_. Language originated as a tool to aid survival and only evolved much later into an instrument for playing the complex social games that we have invented for ourselves. In moments of survival, the greater the danger, the greater the need to reach agreement quickly and easily about what must be done. Survival words are brief and to the point, such as -- stop! halt! danger! attention! watch out! and be careful!

It took thousands of years for language to start serving the purpose of knowledge, and it was only very recently that language started serving the purpose of truth. This most recent stage is so new that we still have not learned how to use it well. Truth is still too youthful and weak to compete with its rival -- deception. _In nearly all circumstances, employing deception proves to be the more effective survival strategy_.

_The written word is the key innovation that accelerated the rate of human advancement_. Humanity's dominion over the rest of the living world is _not_ due to any special ability that the current generation possesses; rather, our dominion is due to the accumulation of knowledge passed on in one form or another from one generation to the next. _Technological innovations drive human history -- as each idea is passed on eternally via the written word_.

_Language is the treasure trove that houses all past human achievement_. Language serves as a storage depot for words, ideas, and experiences. This ever-expanding universe allows us to live like gods compared to our ancestors. Language allows the wisest human beings throughout all the ages to communicate with their progeny. _With the written word, we created eternity_.

World history represents just a tiny portion of humanity's existence -- the period beginning with the invention of the written word. We have advanced more since the invention of the written word seven thousand years ago than we did in the first seven million years of our existence. The fact that the current generation can learn life's lessons through others that came before them is miraculous and even borders on the divine. We can either be lazy in our research and only learn from our contemporaries, or we can study those who lived the greatest lives in history and learn from them. The written word is the vehicle that makes this possible. _In this way, language is god, and god is the word -- the written word_.

II. ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY

_With the exception of language, science, and technology, human beings have not advanced one bit since the dawn of civilization_. Humanity's goal is the perpetuation of the species, and, to achieve this goal, we have created a complex society to battle, to mask, and to postpone death for as many individuals as possible for as long as possible.

_Society is a zoo for human beings_. Once human beings gained dominion over the forces of nature and other life forms, we refocused our energy on specific types of men. Once we walled out the wilderness, we had just walled ourselves in.

With everyone enclosed inside the wall, society determined that it was necessary to start sorting and separating different types of men. The clawless members of society \-- harmless herbivores -- have been free to roam the open plains -- so long as they play nicely with each other and by society's rules. At the same time, society locks predatory men -- ferocious carnivores -- in cages to keep them from preying on the harmless herbivores. Society also mutilates the wings of those who can fly farthest to keep them from flying out of the zoo.

Administrative facilities are located throughout the open plains to supervise the members of society and to sort the members accordingly. A hospital is located in the center of the open plains where individuals who have had an accident or been attacked are cared for. Some staff members make sure that food is abundant for everyone -- _for a well fed herd is a happy herd, an even a well fed predator is a happy predator most of the time_. Other staff members expel all forms of darkness -- illness, decay, and death -- from the open plains. _In this way, the open plains remain a playground where we all live as if we are not going to die_.

Society employs punishment to banish predators from the open plains. The fear of the credible threat of punishment drives most human beings to play by society's rules. The lions and tigers of humanity are imprisoned in cages while the herd wanders virtually worry-free on the open plains.

The dynamic effects of this division -- of carving society into herbivores and carnivores -- include making the herbivores more dense and feeble while the carnivores become more clever and ferocious. To make the open plains even safer, society removes all obstacles that pose a threat. _As society gets closer to creating the kingdom of heaven on earth -- an earth as free from death as possible -- our habitat is starting to look more like a padded cell than a playground_.

Over time, the human zoo became more populated and better organized, eventually forming villages. The origin of the village was to protect the members of one community from the human carnivores of another. Each village was a well-organized, fortified community ready to defend attacks from hostile villages. At the heart of every village was a castle which is surrounded by concentric rings of protection on the periphery. The marketplace rested between the castle and the fortress -- the first ring of protection surrounding the castle. A second ring of farms encircled the entire village just beyond the village wall. The vitals of every village were the marketplace, the watering hole, and the gathering place. Certain groups were deputized -- the military, the police, the fire brigade, and sanitation employees -- to protect the village citizens against potential threats, while others were deputized -- the hospital, emergency services, and care givers -- to heal the sick.

As the population expanded at an accelerating rate for generation upon generation, villages began colliding with one another -- forming large cities resembling beehives. Human beings had already long achieved dominion over nature, the rest of the living world, predatory men, and rival villages.

The origin of the beehive was to protect the members of one nation from the human carnivores of another. Since organized communities had a much better chance of defending themselves against disorganized ones, we continued to structure our societies. With each passing generation, we became better organized \-- so organized that our sprawling cities appeared more like beehives than habitats for human beings. Viewed from the air, it appears that homes in the suburbs of cities are assembled with the same mathematical precision as the honeycombs of a beehive.

It took us millions of years to learn from the bees how to reorganize the production of life's energy to create more energy with less exertion. The way we produce food more resembles that of the bees than that of other large predators.

_Society has become so obsessed with organizing itself that individuals are sacrificed to serve as tools_. Bustling city streets are lined with people working as hard as slaves. The present age of the human beehive is an age of haste and hurry -- of people perspiring in perpetual movement. It seems that people are always on the go but that they never arrive. Rarely does anyone want anything more than to get things done; but, getting something done just means that it is time to start the next thing. The vast majority of humanity live lives like drone bees -- drone bees that are capable of reproducing so that society will have access to ever more drone bees.

Our lives as human bees are drearily mechanized and absurdly specialized. We are bombarded with commands to dress alike, to drive cars alike, and to own property alike. We all work as hard as and act as harmless as our neighbors.

Society asks us to kindly discard our individuality and to melt into the masses. Education is nothing more than society training youth and preparing them to function as obedient and efficient automatons in the work force. Mass goods are turned out rapidly for rapid consumption and designed for an even more rapid decaying into obsolescence.

_Human beings have become the tools of their tools_. We have exchanged a life of wandering free in a world of chaos, discomfort, and insecurity for a stationary world of predictability, comfort, and security. We no longer seek _to live_ ; we merely seek to _remain alive_ for as long as possible. In spite of this world-changing and world-shaping shift in our lifestyle, humanity's goal remains forever the same -- to perpetuate the species for as many generations as possible.

Now, for the vast majority of members of the human beehive, suffering stems not from nature or other life forms, but from fellow men. Humanity's dominion over nature and the rest of the living world has become so secure that we now focus exclusively on our fellow human beings.

III. SOCIETY VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL

_Humanity is banded together across time, one generation leaning on the previous, cascading all the way back to our original ancestors, who leaned on nothing at all_. As a result, we live in a perpetual past -- we have created our own tragic-comedy in which each generation passes on the same comical script for the next generation to perform. _Each generation imprisons the next with a huge burden of information -- the most important being death awareness_.

Our life is error stacked upon error, where each generation passes on the weight of the previous until we are all crushed beneath the weight of our own past. Major innovations are fortuitous outcomes that arise from repeated experimentation and trial and error. _Chance and error are the guides to life_.

_The more we educate ourselves, the less we are able to think for ourselves_. We come to trust the experiences of others over our own -- substituting ideas and presuppositions from the previous generation when we should be relying on our own observations and deductions from ourselves.

_Each individual lives in the past, smothered by his own history_. What compels us to comply with a compact made long before our creation? These institutions that we inherit from our predecessors undoubtedly make society a safer place, but do they do so at the expense of life itself? The only way to take the risk out of life is to take the life out of life itself. _Life is delicate and precious, but pretending that it is safe and secure is dangerous and delusional_.

Most of our actions are guided by example, not choice. Society teaches us to turn away from and deny the self. We see the self disappear every time we go to pubs -- the marketplace for playing the mating game. Each man and woman wears nearly identical clothes, all in tune with the current fashion. _Most seek to fit in; few seek to stand out_.

Everything we know is the result of the accumulated effort of individuals who all lived less than one hundred and fifty years. _Sure, some were wiser than others, but no one has ever deduced or induced the rules of the game of life itself_.

_It is possible that from the moment we are thrown into this world we are taught all the wrong stuff_. Rather than being taught how to play the game of life as best as we can for ourselves, society teaches us how to be the best servant we can be. It reaches the level of absurdity when kindergarten teachers ask their class of five year olds what they want to be when they grow up. Each individual begins learning from the previous generation long before he has figured out how to think for himself. Yet, as he matures, his ability to critically think improves and with it his ability to determine what information is most valuable for him to live his life also improves.

_The previous generation captures each individual long before he has had the chance to discover the very traits that make him the unique individual he is_. Unless an individual has the insight and the power to forget everything that he has been taught prior to reaching intellectual maturity and embarking on his own voyage of discovery, all he ends up doing is carrying out the commands and demands that society has pre-programmed within him since his infancy.

_Our lives are dictated based on where we land when we are thrown into the world_ \-- _without our permission_. We inherit the majority of the material that makes up our world-view from the age in which we are born, our parents, and our social class.

The chief purpose of society's laws is to keep the nitwits from killing each other. The brilliant ones study these same rules and figure out ways to exploit them to their advantage. For society the loss of even the best individual is but a small sacrifice. Society is geared to the masses -- treating everyone equal and rendering them ever more serviceable for the benefit of society. _Society seeks to create the ideal herd animal_ \-- _an individual who is tame, harmless, and predictable_.

_Society is a pyramid -- at the base of this pyramid lies a huge supply of people with mediocre talent and little to no ambition other than to master one particular task_. The ideal worker is modest, industrious, honest, and obedient. For them, society's specialization proves an advantage. The middle tier is composed of people with mediocre talent but with supreme ambition. The highest echelon is full of the rarest spirits, those with both supreme talent and supreme ambition -- the leaders in this upper echelon provide direction for the entire pyramid as best they can.

_Every individual either rules or is ruled in the game of life_. Knowledge reaches its highest value strategically – knowing more than the next guy allows you to control and even to dominate him.

Humanity is divided into a mass of procreators -- the womb of mankind -- and a few geniuses -- the exceptions. The masses preserve the species while the exceptions invent technological innovations that protect the womb.

For the individual, the purpose of life is to live eternally, passing on his genes to the next generation. For human beings, as opposed to the rest of the living world, there is another alternative -- to live eternally in language. The genius who chooses the path of technological innovations offers himself and his life as a sacrifice to his fellow men and to progeny.

The two paths are nearly mutually exclusive. To produce and rear children, an individual must sacrifice his life. To master the art of living to the point of being welcomed into the halls of language, the individual has to sacrifice the lives of his children. Few have ever been able to do both, and even they have only done so by carving their lives into two distinct stages. First, they devote themselves to humanity, and, only much later, to their own family.

_Not enough and too much -- so goes the distribution of resources among men_. Nature is a plethora of riches -- each animal's ecosystem is a Garden of Eden so long as that ecosystem remains intact. Scarcity is humanity's invention -- it offers one type of man a way to exercise power over other types. _It is his fellow men who make an individual's life miserable_.

Man is the only species where one type of man sits around idly, conjuring up ridiculous, expensive cultural competitions while the vast majority work their hands to the bone just to barely make ends meet. How did this happen? Is life any harder now than it was before? How does someone in the majority become a member of the leisure class?

Wealth is accumulated across generations and grants the wealthy social advantages from selecting amongst the fairest mates, to gaining the best possible education, and to having the freedom _not_ to do any particular task that _they do not want to do_. _As a result, the wealthy tend to remain wealthy, to remain young-looking and beautiful longer, to become leaders of society, and to have wealthy and attractive offspring for generations to come_.

The best view of society lies on the ridge between poverty and privilege. A viewpoint from down either slope in either direction means that the other side can no longer be seen. Down in the valley of privilege lie people consumed by their own success. They have both the time and resources to speak out but it is no longer in their interest to say or do anything to change society's status quo or, even more importantly, their relative position in it.

Down in the pit of poverty lie people consumed by their own failure. They have neither the time nor the resources to speak out and to force changes in society's status quo. As a result, the overwhelming majority of society's members remain in the same relative social standing -- only a small percentage make the leap from one side to the other during a single lifespan. _Since the dawn of civilization, the distribution of society has remained the same from one generation to the next_ \-- _the cycle circulates_.

The history of society is the battle of the strong versus the weak. The bold and powerful aim to reduce the lazy and timid to slavery while the weak and mediocre form herds to defend themselves and even to prey on the few who are bold and powerful.

The sick represent the greatest danger for the healthy; it is _not_ the strongest but the weakest who spell disaster for the strong. Society itself is the struggle of the sick to remain as healthy as possible, which often comes at the expense of the strong. In turn, it is most often the healthy who care for the sick. The strongest ones are inclined to separate as the weakest are to congregate.

The most fundamental instinct of the privileged is mutual achievement with the desire to see others succeed. The most fundamental instinct of the underprivileged is revenge with the desire to see others fail. There are two ways to achieve equality. For the strong and the noble, they expend their energy elevating themselves and everyone else around them -- by recognizing their virtues, helping them, and rejoicing in their success. For the weak and the jealous, they expend their energy drawing everyone else down to themselves -- by diminishing them, spying on them, and thwarting their attempts to succeed.

The idea that humanity is progressing toward ever stronger, better-constituted individuals lies in direct opposition to population dynamics. Wealthy, strong, and talented people have fewer children, while poor, weak, and mediocre people have more. If anything, humanity's recent population expansion has sent humanity headed in the opposite direction of ever-enhanced individuals.

The entire population distribution of humanity continuously shifts to the left and up. More specifically, with each generation, the number of ill-fed, ill-bred individuals increases. There are more and more people below average making more and more people below average with each passing generation, thus making the _average_ human being for the _whole human population_ ever more mediocre.

Though the recent population expansion maximizes humanity's survivability, it also creates problems. The central problem facing modern man is and will continue to be generating resources and infrastructure fast enough to keep pace with rapid population growth.

IV. THE INDIVIDUAL VERSUS HIMSELF

_Man is the only animal who tries to be who he is not_. Man has come a long way since his origin as an ape, but the ape still resides within and composes the human part of every human being. Man, the namer of all things, named himself homo sapiens -- wise man. It is hardly surprising that man would deem himself worthy of such a noble name. Surely other names would fit more accurately like homo animus mortis -- man aware of death. Another name that fits better is homo sciens -- knowledgeable man.

However, the wisdom in our self-given name is not as obvious in our deeds, or at least in the deeds of the mass of mankind. The lives of far too many a man more closely resemble those of the apes than those of the wisest human beings. It is up to each and every individual to find and display the wisdom within – to reveal more of the _being_ inside instead of the _human_. Wisdom in life, deed, and title is earned, not granted by biologists. _We did not lose our innocence when we discovered that we die; we lost our innocence when we began denying that we are animals -- when we began denying how we became who we are_.

The only way society attains peace on the open plains is by having each individual wage war against himself \-- each is forced to rein his desire to use physical force to conquer and dominate. Fulfilling the need to dominate and conquer _without_ using physical force has made us extremely intelligent. Each individual must be far craftier than his fellow men to succeed. _In this way, the man of intelligence came to dominate the man of brute force long ago_.

Yet, based on tremendous pressure from society, man often turns against himself, refusing to discharge his instincts outwardly or denying them altogether. As a result, his urges well up only to manifest themselves in perverse and often psychologically devastating ways.

The degree to which an individual can master the balance between human and being and between private and public often reveals the strength of his character and determines his relative social standing.

As each individual learns to fetter the beast of prey within, he ends up resembling a domesticated animal. Yet, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot eliminate the animal within. The being -- the divine virtuous conscience -- competes with the human -- the diabolic wild animal roaming inside of us.

Though most animals shed their shells on the way to maturity, we construct one. From early on in our lives, way before the I within us emerges, society spends thousands of hours building the shell that cages the wild animal roaming within us. Once the wild animal is under control, a new creature emerges -- human being.

Being human means absorbing years of education and training to learn advanced language skills and to acquire a sense of the self and death awareness. Much newer in man's evolution and thus much less fully developed are the higher intellectual faculties -- imagination, foresight, and reasoning.

_Human beings act like angels in public and like devils in private_. In public, we act law-abiding, honest, loyal, and faithful -- in short, predictable. It is the accumulation of society's ever more complicated rules over thousands of generations that has forced the wild animal within us to retreat to its cage when we are in public.

However, the instant that we withdraw into the secrecy of our private chambers, we remove our shells and unleash the wild animal within. In private, we eat, we drink, we excrete, we sleep, we dream, we secrete, we fantasize, we masturbate, we copulate, we cheat, we hunt, we wander, we gather, and we play.

Human beings have banished the animal within to the privacy of our chambers. Each room in a house is carefully crafted to tend to our animalistic needs -- the kitchen and dining room for eating and drinking, the bedroom for sleeping and secreting, the bathroom for excreting, and the living room for resting and lounging.

This duality of _human_ and _being_ makes human beings the _wildest_ of all animals. Our being is the craftiest invention in the history of living organisms. The needs of human and being continually conflict with one another. _With being, man has created and incorporated anti-man within himself_.

In any given situation, it is impossible to predict which side of man will dominate -- _the human or the being_. _This fundamental unpredictability is a fantastic tool for survival -- especially in confrontations with fellow human beings_.

We are animals programmed to procreate, animals that need an abundance of energy and heat to grow into virile adults. It is precisely the human within us that contains the fire of creation and the passion of procreation. _Man will forever remain a slave -- a slave to himself and the forces of life flowing through him_.

Yet, society doesn't stop with banishing the animal to the private sphere. Society still tries to make each individual ashamed of the animal within himself. Not surprisingly, as society drove the human further and further from the public sphere, we eventually came to declare that we are nearer to the angels than to the other animals. _The single most ridiculous delusion that man has ever invented for himself is that he is somehow superior to the rest of the animal kingdom and even to nature_.

All of our most natural instincts appear to be forbidden. We have created institutions that twist, turn, and torture our animality into pretzels, so that we have become ashamed of ourselves. These animalistic drives are so deeply ingrained inside of us that they are more a part of us than any higher mental faculty -- the very same mental faculties that create these institutions which turn against the animal within us. We are forced to turn drives inward because society refuses to allow their release in public, which causes them to build up and either manifest themselves as sudden, violent bursts or as cruelty turned inward.

The stronger an individual's drives are, the more powerful his demons may become. If an individual can learn to dominate these demons, they will serve as the fire of his creativity. However, if these demons dominate, the individual's demise is nigh.

_The sex drive is the most powerful, necessary, and innocent drive of all -- for it is the drive that creates the next generation of humanity and keeps the species going_. By banishing sexuality from the public sphere, we torture ourselves. _The public renunciation of the sex drive is blasphemy against the life force itself_.

_Man is the only animal at odds with his sex drive and thus at odds with himself_. Of all the riddles facing humanity, this one is far and away the most perplexing. Our inability to manage our sex drives in a healthy manner is the single most important source of personal and social problems -- perversions, addictions, violence, and even murder. After all, the best type of healing is sexual healing -- for with the healthy fulfillment of the sex drive, physiological and psychological troubles dissipate and disappear.

How human beings have come to condemn our most precious and life-giving drive is simply beyond comprehension. Rather than treating the sex drive as the most special and holiest of all drives, we have driven the satisfaction of the sex drive underground -- into the bedroom, into the bathroom, into the bordello, and into even darker recesses of the world and the imagination.

When did satisfaction of animalistic drives turn from beautiful and harmonious to something indecent and shameful? How did we ever allow this to happen? How harmful has this been for us ever since? Of all creatures, we are the ones that understand this least. All the other life systems -- eating, drinking, excreting, and breathing -- have only evolved to aid the individual in becoming a healthy enough adult to produce a viable offspring.

Every single action for an adult human being is just a game through which each individual tries to maximize the number of healthy offspring he brings into the world. Pursuing any other goal -- wealth, fame, celebrity, social status, inner peace, or eternity -- is only a means to this grandest of goals.

_The sex drive is the veritable life force itself_ \-- it is the drive that keeps the human race flowing from one generation to the next. Why is the sex drive not lauded, even worshipped, rather than confined to the deepest, darkest, most remote recesses of our lives? Can this riddle be solved -- can our disdain for our own sexuality be revalued, turned into something sacred rather than something shameful?

_Surviving comes first -- always_. Thriving only comes much later, long after surviving has been assured. No matter how comfortable and secure society becomes, our instincts will always dominate our reasoning -- for instincts are solely concerned with self-preservation and have evolved over millions of years. For example, with movement close at hand, we lose sight of distant objects. All of our energy focuses on the potential threat to bodily harm immediately in front of us. We will never be able to alter this instinct, nor will it ever be beneficial to do so.

_Though being does all the talking, human does all the doing_. In the last thousand generations, we have not become any wiser; we have only become better at fooling ourselves. For millennia we have been trying to convince ourselves that we are not animals. The danger in heading this direction is that in the distant future a generation may come along that succeeds in convincing itself -- and this generation will be our last. _It is high time to re-discover and even to celebrate both the human and the being within ourselves -- in private and in public_.

_Though it is with being that adults are entertained, human is far deeper in our souls ingrained. Try as being might, it will never human tame. Though human and being battle each and every day, human always dominates; human always reigns. Being never has and never will overcome human, because human's instinct fuels life's eternal flame. Through human's offspring, life satisfies its aim_.

V. ROLE OF SOCIETY IN MODERN TIMES

_Though survival is never certain, the potential threats to our survival are now fewer than those to all the other species combined_. At any single point in time, we occupy every viable niche on the planet, even including those miles above the earth and miles beneath the ocean's surface. _Humanity has achieved its fundamental goal -- in generating a plethora of population that creates a surplus of survivability_.

_Every institution that we have ever and will ever create is used to control and restrict the actions of the individual_. First, we imprisoned ourselves long ago when we began constructing the human zoo. Ever since, each and every human being has in part helped to construct the prison cell that he occupies for his entire life. _Humanity's superior success in surviving as a species has come at the expense of the individual_.

_Man is the only animal eternally dissatisfied with who he is and what becomes of him_. We attempt to deny life's processes -- _in vain_ \-- rather than accepting them and even celebrating them. For human beings, life has become an avoidance of death. _Rather than searching for the highest quality of life, we search for the highest quantity -- this is the grandest of errors_.

Our ability to create more and more powerful tools inspires and amazes us. _Yet, these tremendous advances in science and technology have caused humanity to stagnate -- man as a species has stopped evolving_.

_Though we continue to create scientific and technological wonders, our ability to create ourselves remains miserably mired_. Though in every age a precious few attempt to reach their full potential as human beings, humanity on the whole just continuously cycles around the same circle -- _the cycle circulates_.

Is it possible that the other animals live better lives than we do -- just as children have much more enjoyable and satisfying lives than adults? Perhaps we are just sicker than the rest of the animals -- for we are the only ones who have caught the potentially fatal illness of death awareness. Since other animals live their lives unaware of their own demise, they have no need to work so hard creating lasting images of themselves \-- constructing monuments, memorials, and gods. In fact, other animals have no need for gods at all -- _life is just a healthy, loving force that flows through them innocently and without suspicion_.

Though language grants us the power to document time, history, and progress, man as a species is not moving anywhere -- neither forward nor backward. We are just cycling around in a circle like the planet we occupy. We are the only animals that needs a direction, a purpose, and a meaning to our existence -- if for no other reason than to avoid falling into our own precipice. _Time, history, progress -- all of these are illusions that we have created to fend off the void left by death awareness_. _We have invented all of these metaphysical illusions for ourselves to grant the meaning and purpose to our lives_.

_Throughout our entire history, the world hasn't changed -- only we have_. Even though we have gained so much power in controlling our immediate environment and shaping it to fit our needs, we must remind ourselves of our own frailty and limitations. During a volcanic eruption, we still run from lava like ants from a garden hose. An eruption from a single volcano is far more destructive than the most destructive of our weapons. Still, a single volcano has little to no impact on the overall temperature of the earth.

Unfortunately, at times we exhibit monumental megalomania -- pretending to be able to impact forces much more powerful than ourselves. _We waste so much time and energy pretending to be much more powerful than we are, which takes time away from developing the things within our control -- ourselves_.

Our superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom is not as obvious as once thought. How many other species spend so much of their lives toiling nearly as hard as we do? How many other species are haunted daily with the prospect of their own deaths? How many other species need meaning and purpose to get on with their lives?

As we continue to succeed in manipulating our environment to expand our dominion, we have begun extirpating other animals or their environments or both. As the variety of life forms diminish, life's battle with nature becomes more difficult. If we continue to prove to be the cause of the extinction of our fellow creatures, will the life force eventually fight back and declare war on us? Would it not be perfect irony on the part of life to have us bring about our own destruction?

After all, our intellectual superiority over the other animals may not be so obvious either -- if we are so crafty in finding ways to survive, why do we devote so much effort inventing ways of annihilating ourselves? How many other species devote so much time, energy, and resources to finding more efficient ways of killing themselves in mass numbers -- even to the point of turning weapons of mass destruction upon themselves?

Could this be the grandest of grand ironies, that nature and life take revenge on the one and only species intelligent enough to recognize that it dies -- by getting it to bring about its own demise? Could it be that our demise will not come from _beyond_ \-- from an event that destroys our ecosystem -- but that we will ultimately destroy ourselves?

Is there anything that can prevent us from plunging into our own precipice? Yes -- all we have to do is to let the forces of life flow through us and to let the cycle of life circulate. _Letting the next generation have its turn spinning around the sun sixty or seventy times until it too passes away is how we answer the riddle of existence and give the meaning and purpose to our lives_.

VI. ROLE OF SOCIETY IN THE POWER GAME

_For man, life is a power game -- a struggle of one type of man against another_. The five estates-- the church, the economy, the state, the academy, and the family -- use various promises and corresponding rewards and punishments as weapons to gain supremacy over as many different groups and individuals of the entire human race.

The highest form of power is power over progeny -- power in the sense that an individual or a group can project itself as far as possible into the lives of other human beings across society and over time -- in action, commandment, law, belief, idea, or word.

The game of life is the struggle for either an individual, a group, or an estate to become the dominant perspective amongst humanity. During antiquity, the state dominated. During the Middle Ages, the church dominated. The state re-established its dominance after the Renaissance. Most recently, the economy has become dominant. Yet, through all of these historical fluctuations, the role of the family in the power game has remained the same.

Chapter 5: The Church

Humanity has and always will rest atop an iceberg floating in a sea of mystery. Eons ago, when we first discovered that we die, gazing upon this new and mysterious sea produced feelings of anxiety, dread, and despair. Our initial response was to wall off the sea and conceal it from our view.

It didn't take long for us to build the wall high enough so that we could no longer see beyond it, and shortly after we forgot what lies _out there_. As we gained confidence _in our knowledge of our world_ , we became ever more proud of our iceberg. _With advances in science and technology, we began to celebrate the possibility that our world could be absolutely known_.

The more secure and comfortable we felt on our iceberg, the more forgetful we became. We forgot that we dwell in between twin pillars -- bracketed by the two most mysterious questions of all, the two fundamental religious questions that we will _never_ be able to answer -- _why we are here and why we are going to die_.

Having been educated for so many generations about the peace and serenity in our lives, humanity no longer remembers the void that lies beyond. We continuously forget that _nothing_ is out there in the sea of mystery -- _for all is emptiness_. _This void will always be with us -- for this is the void that death awareness rips open inside each of us_. _It is this void that religion aims to fill_.

As humanity heads toward the light of health, wealth, tolerance, equality, peace, justice, and liberty, we shun the darkness of illness, poverty, intolerance, discrimination, war, injustice, and oppression. Yet, no matter how many times we try to eject these forms of darkness from our lives, they remain with us. In the meantime, our iceberg continues to shake and quake as it perpetually floats atop the sea of mystery.

Genesis gets the particulars right but the timing wrong -- from the instant that we became aware of death, we started gorging ourselves on the fruits of the tree of knowledge. We began scurrying around like mad figuring out new ways of postponing death for as long as possible for as many individuals as possible.

Since discovering that we die, our universal journey has been to find the meaning and purpose of our existence amidst a chaotic and inexplicable world. Death awareness is older than civilization itself -- _human beings need religion because it fills the void left by death awareness_.

_All religions were founded to fend off the greatest enemy of all -- death_. This enemy lies within each of us. It is the enemy of the void, of the gaping hole ripped open within us, of the deep wound from which we will never heal -- _for we are all aware that we are doomed to die_.

_Though nature is divinely indifferent to our truths, we need them_. Religious ideas are constructed of the strongest materials that the human race has ever forged. Meaning and purpose are as real to the human condition as breathing and eating. Trying to live without these metaphysical ideas would be like trying to live without water.

The human race is unlike any other species and at times appears cursed. Yet, this curse motivates us to expend tremendous energy and effort. We are the hardest working species on the planet, not the ants or the bees. _We are the ones who work so hard giving the meaning and purpose to our lives, and the church is the institution society created to fend off death_.

I. ORIGINS OF THE CHURCH

_The most defining, personal, and inevitable happening in an individual's life is his own death_. Death, being the only certainty in our lives, is the possibility that is most our own. Death does not follow life but is already in life itself. _Most forget death as they live their lives_.

Religion seeks to reconcile the most personal experience of human beings -- that we die -- with the possibility of a meaningful human existence. Yet, death and mystery combine to balance life and clarity, giving existence the possibility of being meaningful. Death and ignorance are as necessary a part of human existence as life and knowledge. _The greatest mystery of all is that life dies_ \-- _this mystery will never be solved_.

_Life is a happening -- a chain of mysterious events that happen to us_. If our security is threatened, one of two things happen -- either we panic and lose control, or we reduce all of our attention to fighting the threat to our security. Either way, all thought ceases. For example, a pedestrian is most likely to be hit by a car right after nearly being hit by another car -- for he just doesn't have enough time to gather himself in the aftermath of the previous happening to prepare for the next.

Yet, the way the happenings of life occur is wondrous and mysterious. At the level of the happening, speech may fail us because we are stunned or terrified. The silence of the unsaid enshrouds us and leaves us awestruck.

This awareness of the nature of the happening of human existence opens up new horizons of possibility -- the realization that life is a gift. This gift simultaneously evokes feelings of joy and anxiety. At this fundamental level of experience, the paradox and contradiction of life is revealed to us.

_Our ability to question is far more powerful than our ability to answer_. The two fundamental religious questions -- why we are here and why we are going to die \-- escape our ability to answer them. _It is simply beyond the power of life forms to figure out the meaning of their own existence_.

Life is simply not equipped with the tools necessary to understand its own death or the meaning of its life -- it is simply beyond our capacity to understand our purpose here on earth.

Our inability to solve the riddle of the sphinx is neither devastating nor destructive; on the contrary, it is empowering and uplifting -- _we are granted the freedom to determine what our purpose will be in the here and now of our lives. We set before ourselves a destiny and a chance to become who we are_.

Religion rests and relies on faith, which shields us from the harsh reality of the certainty of our own deaths and allows us to get on with our lives. The Promethean shield of faith holds back the void and allows us to live. Faith keeps us from being perpetually conscious of the _certainty_ that we are going to die. The question of faith _in what_ only comes much later -- whether it is faith in a god, in an afterlife, in family, in friends, or in ourselves.

_For human beings, life rests on faith -- the faith that life is better than death_. When we get up each day, we make the conscious choice to continue living -- of the decision whether to be or not to be, which really is _the question_. _Faith is the hidden yes to life -- that life is preferable to death_.

What is this mysterious force faith? Faith bridges the abyss and creates tall towers that protect us from becoming aware of and falling into the abyss. Faith is the most powerful force in the minds of human beings -- for faith fills in the chasm that death awareness rips open within us. _Human beings would rather believe than know_.

The purpose of religion is to adapt nature for the benefit of humanity, that is to say to impose a regularity and a rule of law upon nature which it does not possess -- _religion seeks to explain the inexplicable_.

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH

_Danger is the mother of all morals_ \-- throughout history, humanity has created thousands of religions to battle these unknown dangers. _Every mythology is a fairy tale, a story, a fable -- an attempt, however vain, to comprehend the incomprehensible_.

We may never be able to embrace our finitude and live authentically -- we may always need fairy tales to mask the fear and pain of death.

We invented gods to fulfill a basic human need -- to shield ourselves from the harsh reality of death. All gods are images of their maker -- gods are created in the image of human beings and are the work of our own hands.

First, god was a multiplicity of animal spirits. Then, god resembled human beings -- taking shape in an anthropomorphic pantheon of gods. Gradually, the pantheon was reduced to fewer and fewer gods -- where only the major ones remained. Next, the few main gods were reduced to one. The only possible stage remaining is the transformation from the one god to none at all.

With the creation of gods, the abyss vanished. From that magical moment forward, every single human being has occupied a special place and value in _this_ world \-- _a world having a goal, a purpose, and thus a reason to exist_.

There is no god in the sense of a universal architect -- no god would want to be held responsible for creating this crazy and chaotic place. There is no god in the sense of a creator of human beings -- again, no god would want to be held responsible for this mess.

The universe is _not_ the result of intelligent design -- there is neither a goal nor a purpose to the universe. The few organized forms that have materialized amidst the grand sea of mystery and chaos are the results of blind luck -- fortuitous outcomes of random events stretching out over infinite time.

Alternatives for god include god as mystery \-- as that which will forever remain inexplicable. God also represents humanity's treasure trove -- as the cumulative creations that each generation bequeaths to the next. _Most often though, god represents a battle cry -- a word that one type of man shouts as it battles other types of men for earthly supremacy_.

These types of human beings all have prophets \-- historical and mythological human beings who have special and even superior relations with god. These belief makers -- prophets like Buddha and Jesus -- occupy roughly the same position on the religious spectrum. However, each has a monopoly on his particular region of the world. Our image now of each of these men is more that of the mythological figure than that of the actual person who lived centuries ago.

_Each represents the shift into selflessness -- a surrendering of the self to forces beyond an individual's control_. Prophets recur; however, few have ever taken hold as religious leaders with followers the way Buddha and Jesus have.

What magical ingredient did Buddha and Jesus possess that allowed them to take hold? It is the same quality -- each sacrificed himself on the altar of service to humanity. _Each had the courage to stare death in the face for as long as possible before finally surrendering to it_.

_These prophets are god incarnate -- the human representations of death itself_. The best single representation is the image of the starving and dying Jesus on the cross. _Each prophet is death -- god is death -- humanity worships death_.

The primary word of Buddha is peace -- peace to all beings -- not just to humanity, but to all that exists. The primary word of Jesus is love -- love of fellow men and of the most distant posterity. God is love -- of humanity.

Jesus foresaw that attaching his death to his cause -- that of altering the behavior of human beings for generations to come -- would allow him to achieve far greater results than any he ever could have achieved during his own lifetime. _Jesus chose to die as he did to give the strongest possible public proof of his doctrine -- he lived and died as he thought and did_.

_Jesus' message is that the kingdom of heaven lies within a person_. The kingdom of heaven is a condition of the heart -- it requires an individual to undergo a psychological transformation to find an entirely new way of life for himself. To find _his_ kingdom of heaven, an individual must completely ignore _all_ earthly power as he becomes divinely indifferent to churches, priests, dogmas, cults, theologies, and all other systems that legislate crude formalities governing relations with god. Jesus fought against community hierarchy -- _the church is precisely that against which Jesus preached_.

_Jesus saw straight through the veils of life to the core of existence -- he saw that life is nothing but death and death avoidance_. He saw through all of our attempts to create immortality and to transcend death. Death is the only thing we will _never_ transcend. Jesus became determined not to pursue such a futile quest; instead, he surrendered to death, to nature, and to god.

_Jesus aimed inward -- the kingdom of heaven is an inward change in the individual. He demonstrated how an individual must live to feel like a deity -- for Jesus burned with pure love_.

His celibacy may just have been a signal to the rest of us that we are cursed as a species -- that we are the only guilty animal that walks this wondrous and glorious earth. Knowledge leads us nowhere -- since it does and never will do anything to transcend death.

Is this the conclusion that Jesus reached during his brief life -- that death awareness is a curse? Since no amount of knowledge, wisdom, belief, or faith can aid us in transcending death, why continue this futile madness called life -- that the only way to eliminate the curse may be to eliminate ourselves?

Killing someone must bring an overwhelming feeling of god-like power to a murderer, if only for a moment. Jesus attempted to get people to stop killing each other -- _Jesus sacrificed himself on the altar of humanity to get us to stop behaving like humans and to start behaving like human beings_.

At his moment of truth, Jesus did not resist, he did not defend his rights, he did not take a single step to ward off the worst -- on the contrary, he _provoked_ it.

The primary fact that the only certainty in life is death motivated Jesus to live an amazing life. _He discovered that achieving the most powerful psychological state possible -- that of divine indifference to life itself -- makes an individual invincible_.

In contrast to Jesus, we have Christ. _Christ's message is that an individual must obey -- or beware of the wrath of Christ's superhuman powers_. The Christ of judgment, the Christ of the cross, and the Christ of classical mythology are idols and icons little different from Zeus or other powerful gods throughout history.

It is in the rituals of the church that Christians worship Christ the myth rather than Jesus the man. Christians have never put into practice the acts Jesus prescribed for them. Christianity has become something fundamentally different from what its founder desired and did. _In creating the Christ myth, the Church barbarized Jesus' message -- worshipping Christ is the opposite of worshipping Jesus_.

Jesus' original and innovative idea -- that it is up to an individual to find his kingdom of heaven, independent of all earthly powers -- was immediately diluted and distorted by his disciples, who desired nothing other than earthly power.

All revolutions fail in the end -- for soon after the great revolutionary dies, his followers either dilute or distort his message. In this way, the followers of Jesus neutralized his spiritual revolt -- which was mainly against the church of a foreign imperial power.

In turn, his followers -- the founders of the Christian religion -- created a church all-too-similar to the one Jesus revolted against. To make matters worse, the public only bothers to remember the most marvelous manifestations of the message while ignoring, disregarding, or misunderstanding its substance.

_Jesus' disciples gave the public what it wanted and needed -- they turned the man Jesus into the mythological figure Jesus Christ_. _In so doing, they gave Jesus superhuman powers similar to those of the very Roman gods he revolted against. Jesus just ended up replacing the pagan gods_.

Jesus' power and his message gradually diluted and disappeared in the following way -- first, Jesus _lived_ his life and his message; then, his disciples attempted _to write_ rather than _to live_ his message. Next, successive generations of popes _preached_ the messages of the disciples, not Jesus. Finally, the parishioners _ignored_ the priest's words -- and what Jesus actually said and did during his life disappeared. _By the time Christians went from living it to writing it to preaching it to hearing it, Jesus' words and deeds had lost their power_.

Jesus' choice to remain a virgin precludes him and his lifestyle from being the model for humanity. In fact, if all of Jesus' followers strictly adhered to his lifestyle, Jesus would soon have no followers at all.

Fortunately, most Christians are too hypocritical to do as Jesus did or said. Human beings haven't altered how we treat ourselves or our neighbors one bit since the time of Jesus. _Though Jesus failed to get his progeny to incorporate his words into their actions, the church succeeded in spreading itself and its message around the world_.

The founders of Christianity then set off to become the dominant earthly religion and to make the church the dominant estate governing humanity. Though it took five hundred more years, the Christian church succeeded and reigned over humanity for the next thousand years.

Though Christianity is the most comfortable religion, the worldwide kingdom of the Christian church is an underworld kingdom, a subterranean kingdom, a ghetto kingdom. Christianity is a conspiracy of the catacombs -- religion radiating from the subterranean strata of existence. Again, what the priest says only applies to his parishioners -- these same commandments do _not_ govern the priest himself.

Strict obedience to these rules -- judge not so as not to be judged or do to men as an individual would have men do unto him -- is how to get played time and time again by other members of society. Chastity is _not_ the _flowering_ of humanity -- chastity is the _withering_ of humanity.

The formal religious ceremonies of the church \-- with priesthood, theology, cult, sacrament, and miracles -- represent everything that Jesus combated. Jesus didn't speak of the immortality of the person or of the even more mysterious concept known as the soul. Jesus didn't speak of the afterlife. _Jesus spoke of the kingdom of heaven -- it is a condition of the heart that only comes if an individual seeks it. The kingdom of heaven lies within -- it is a place in the here and now of life on earth._

Christianity has gradually become sick to the marrow -- hypocritical and untruthful -- and degenerated into a contradiction of its original goal. There is no sign of Jesus in Christians -- in how they act towards themselves and towards one another.

People with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in Biblical stories. It is as if the moral of all Biblical stories is -- give up and become one of us, the gregarious grass eating herd with no claws and no fangs.

_There are no thou shalts or thou shalt nots_. Situations arise and recur that require violating religious covenants in order for an individual to survive -- there are times to lie and even to kill. The fundamental unpredictability of nature and life make it impossible to implement generic rules of conduct. _There are no universals governing human behavior -- everything is conditional_.

III. THE CHURCH VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL

Every _religion_ was born out of need and fear -- fear of mystery, of that which lies beyond what is known. The _church_ is above all an institution for ruling. Nothing has been exercised and cultivated better and longer among men than _obedience_.

The village priest was a sentinel walking the boundary of the boundless -- he sat on the outer edge, battling death and protecting society from the mystery lying beyond. _Originally, priests were the men society had deputized to battle death and mystery_.

The priest desires _power, earthly power_. _Even today, the priest uses god as a means of gaining power over all other types of men_. The priest also uses religion as the source of his subsistence and as the means for maximizing his earthly power. The priest uses concepts, doctrines, and symbols to tyrannize his parishioners -- the masses. _Though the priest started out defending society from death and mystery, he eventually spun around and started attacking society to increase his role in the game for earthly power_.

The priest is no better than the individual at fending off death or at combating the forces of nature; he is just much better at creating the _illusion_ that he is. The priest invents myths claiming that the world beyond the village walls is full of deceit and danger. If someone dares to embark on his own path to adventure, he risks being consumed by goblins or trolls or devils or demons. The priest's point is to make himself valuable as he defends the village from the unknown while simultaneously convincing his parishioners to remain in the village where everything is secure, comfortable, and predictable. _In short, the priest conjures up stories of fear and uncertainty to spur the demand for his services_.

It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterlifes -- brief but biting pains of madness and bliss that can only be experienced by those capable of enduring the deepest suffering. The afterlife originated more as a psychological delusion in this world than that of heaven in another. Priests -- those who offer the promise of the afterlife -- only guarantee admittance to those who are willing to forfeit their lives here on earth. _The afterlife is not about the next life or any future life for human beings -- the afterlife is a tool that the priest invented to control and extend his earthly power over other types of men_.

The priest is the type of man who takes up the fight against the wild animal within. The priest teaches human beings to despise their basic drives. The invention of the soul teaches us to neglect our bodies. The priest even has the audacity to teach human beings to experience sexuality as something unclean. The priest aims to deprive us of our self-satisfaction -- teaching us to slander our instincts. Though there is a major difference between committing adultery and coveting a neighbor's wife, expecting human beings with sex drives to avoid coveting their neighbor's wife is a lofty but futile ambition.

_Aiming to turn the holiest and most venerable of all drives -- the sex drive -- into something shameful and despicable is blasphemy against the life force itself_. It is this misalignment with the forces of nature and life that has turned us into pretzels. This revenge against life could ultimately lead to humanity's demise.

_The priest desires to make parishioners weak and sick, often turning his parishioners into prisoners_ \-- _for a ruined human being is an obedient one_. However, it is impossible to turn a lion into a zebra -- the lion will perish long before becoming a herbivore. The lion is what it is -- a beautiful, ferocious killing and eating machine. _Yet, the lion is innocent \-- it does what is necessary for it to survive and does so with a good conscience_.

The priest tries to turn omnivores into herbivores -- he has aimed to undo millions of years of evolution in less than a few thousand. The priest has tried to instill the guilty conscience in us for thousands of years. _This attempt to turn animal into angel only causes psychological torment and destroys the innocence of life -- of our lives_.

_The Bible serves as a how to book for the priest -- how to imprison fellow human beings_. Rather than deifying his fellow men, the priest aims to get his fellow men to lacerate themselves, to rage against themselves, to _never_ feel at home with themselves. He preaches sin, decay, and death as he rounds up as many of the masses as possible to confine them within a church. In return for preaching his message of death, the parishioners feed, clothe, and house him.

The priest invented free will as a means of making men responsible for their actions, which in turn makes men dependent on the priest. The priest invented the will essentially for the purpose of punishment and to instill a guilty conscience in his parishioners.

_The priest is a death salesman_. Like all businessmen, the priest must first create demand for his product. He does so by preaching a terrifying, world-denying vision of this world -- one full of sin, hate, dread, and destruction.

Then, for a small fee, the priest offers his parishioners a chance to purchase their salvation -- the way out of this dreadful place, even if it only comes to them after they die. The priest gets his money and the parishioners get their psychological soothing oil. Hopefully the transaction ends in a success with both parties walking away happy.

_The priest is a quack_ \-- first he poisons his parishioners, then he has the audacity to charge them for the antidote. Regardless of how much the parishioner pays, the priest is powerless to prevent death. _Avoiding priests and the church reduces both the amount of poison and payments in an individual's life_.

_God forgives those who repent -- that is to say, those who pay the priest_. The priest offers forgiveness to those who forever give to the priest. Again, the forever giving flows in both directions -- the priest collects worldly gain in return for supplying promises of otherworldly gain to his parishioners. Is this not the greatest scam in the history of humanity? Even when used car salesman sell lemons to naive customers, at least the scrap metal of a car confirms that the customer received _something_ in return for his money. As for the priest's promises, confirmation is not possible -- at least not in this world. What granted these death interlocutors the power to interpret the will of god? _Organized religion is the greatest scam in history -- for we are all going to die, the pagans, the parishioners, and even the priests_.

Death is inescapable -- death is part of life. The church just offers a means to power for one type of man \-- _the priest_. Aging and death are as much parts of life as growth and birth. A priest promising immortality to men doomed to die is no different than a hair tonic salesman promising the cure for baldness to bald men. A bald man wants nothing more than to cure his baldness; a man doomed to die wants nothing more than to transcend death. However, there never will be a cure for baldness just as there never will be a cure for death. Sure, farcical partial remedies may alleviate the suffering involved with baldness and death, but they do not _cure_ them. _Just as baldness is part of the aging process, death is part of life_.

So many are so zealous to preach but oh so reluctant to demonstrate. So many talk of heaven as they disgrace the earth. What the priest preaches lays far away in a very holy but unreal world of his own.

The commandments and _every_ rule provided by _every_ religion are just weapons priests wield as they play the power game -- maximizing their power and control over their fellow men. The ten commandments are a list of rules -- of thou shalts -- for _those who are ruled to obey_. Why are the ten commandments not _we shalts_? For example, one commandment is " _thou_ shalt not kill." Why is it not " _we_ shalt not kill?" If the recipient group of this particular commandment is the thou group, then who is the we or the I doing the commanding?

The word choice alone indicates that some group is left out of the thou group and thus not bound by these commandments. Who is this group -- this group with immunity to the ten commandments? _Rulers_ \-- _the inventors of the ten commandments_. Who are these rulers? _Priests_.

What then are the priests' commandments? Is there a corresponding commandment in this case, such as: "we shalt kill when necessary. Thou shalt be killed or be used to kill others whenever we need to attack or defend ourselves and our power?"

The afterlife diverts attention from our one and only journey through life and gets us to focus on a promise -- a promise that is impossible to verify. _Speaking of an afterlife simultaneously curses this one_.

We need to be wary of all who deprecate this world for the greater glory of another -- for other worlds simply do not exist. _Priests have invented these other worlds to imprison their parishioners in this one_.

_Though the original purpose of religion was to explore why we are here and why we are going to die, the central purpose of organized religion -- the church -- now is to control the masses, one individual at a time_. The priest persuades his parishioners to sacrifice themselves now in return for some reward later, after their deaths. A person who ceases to exist -- or at least ceases to be selfish and self-seeking -- is a person who is easy to control.

The church originated to fulfill a basic human need but the priest ultimately twisted it into something entirely different -- rather than battling death and mystery, the priest ended up creating a never-never land that he uses to control and even to imprison his fellow men.

The church discourages social experimentation and thus hinders the creation of new and better customs -- _it encourages people to be stupid while volunteering to do their thinking for them_.

Religious values are always expressions of the needs of a society and the masses. Religion trains the individual to be a tool for society and to ascribe value to himself only as a tool. _Morality is nothing more than the domination of the herd instinct in individuals_.

Still, religion offers the opportunity for the poor and feeble to find contentment in their misery and suffering. The priest demands that parishioners be peaceable, fair, moderate, modest, reverent, considerate, brave, chaste, honest, faithful, devout, straight, trusting, devoted, sympathetic, helpful, conscientious, simple, mild, just, generous, supportive, gracious, and industrious -- in short, to act as obedient and predictable servants.

The priest demands that the parishioner exhibits an exaggerated form of self-control -- that in order to restrain his desires he must extirpate or crucify them. The golden mean is no longer the ideal aimed for -- it is just the midway point on the way to total annihilation of the human within the human being.

Humility is vanity; weakness is strength; sickness is health; life begins after death; the greatest selfishness is selflessness -- these fundamental revaluations of life at the hands of Christianity make human beings the wildest of all animals. These valuations come from the leaders of the community -- the priests, who propagate the message that the community is more valuable than the individual. _The principle commandment of religion is that the individual must sacrifice himself_.

_The mass of men want a single thing most of all -- that no harm comes to them_. Virtue to them is that which makes everyone and everything tame and predictable. Just as the masses have turned wolves into dogs, they have turned themselves into man's best friend -- into domesticated animals. What these people see as moderation is just mediocrity in disguise.

_Christianity seeks to alleviate suffering, but an alleviation of suffering requires an alleviation of life_. He who suffers the least takes the fewest risks and lives the most boring and sterile life. The goal of the masses is to put an end to suffering -- to eliminate the source of anything that can bring them harm or of anything that makes them afraid. _The only way to put an end to suffering is to put an end to life itself_.

_For the masses love gives the greatest feeling of power -- being useful and helpful continually arouses the feeling of power_. Yet, disinterested action is an exceedingly interesting and interested act. The most moral human being is he who does the least with his life -- he who never takes risks and never offends anyone, because he never _does_ anything. The values that moral men admire are modesty, pity, benevolence, industriousness, goodwill, and moderation -- again, mediocrity.

_Christianity is for the masses, and life is probably better for them and for everyone else that it is that way_. One positive effect of religion -- of the promises and threats of the afterlife -- is that it helps keep the nitwits from killing each other most of the time.

Christianity corrupts men by instilling ideas of sin, shame, guilt, punishment, and the promise of immortality. In the presence of the church -- as in the presence of any authority, parishioners are not _allowed_ to think, far less to express opinions. In the church, everyone has to -- _obey_.

_What is called good is good for the weak, while what is called evil is good for the strong_. Jesus invented this central valuation of Christianity, Paul propagated it, and practicing Christians have solidified it in Christian culture. The highest and strongest drives are branded and slandered most because they pose the greatest threat to the masses. High and independent spirits -- those with the will to stand alone -- are perceived as threats. Everything that elevates the individual above the masses and intimidates the neighbor is called _evil_ ; everything mediocre, harmless, conforming, and predictable is called _good_.

Though religious founders promise a way to freedom for potential followers, as soon as followers join the church, the authorities put them in fetters. _Often, it appears that the followers need their redeemer to return. However, it is the redeemer who needs to save his followers from the very church that the redeemer ended up establishing -- what divine irony_.

_Always remember that what is good for the saint destroys the sinner_. The church turns human beings into contradictions -- paralyzing us beyond the ability to act. _Since the dawn of Christianity, human has battled being each and every day of our lives_. This discord leads to the dread and despair that denigrates the individual.

_Christianity is a curse, because for the last two thousand years it has taught human beings to hate who they are -- to be ashamed of their animality_. This misalignment with the life force and what it is to be a human being only means that the church is full of hypocrites -- people _saying_ one thing as they _do_ the opposite.

Christian moral superiority is merely a strategy one type of man uses in the pursuit of power -- it allows conniving and manipulative types the opportunity to deceive others as to their true objectives and to disguise the means to those objectives. Deceitful, manipulative, and cunning types have been and will always be with us. This peculiar breed of liar lies beneath a cloak of moral superiority. _These master concealers act like everyone else -- they just refuse to admit it to anyone or even to themselves_.

Rather than mastering themselves and controlling their animalistic drives, parishioners create an image of themselves -- an unrealistic and unbelievable image that denies who they are, at least in public.

The central life force is procreation. Christians are misaligned with the central force flowing through them -- epitomized by Jesus himself, who died a virgin. _Fortunately, the Christian's hypocrisy is healthy in this case \-- for human beings are procreating more successfully than ever before_.

This _hangover of hypocrisy_ \-- this need for secrecy -- carves society into public and private spheres _. This chasing of the human into private spheres and even darker realms serves as the origin of our shame and guilt -- shame and guilt at being who we are_.

Whether or not believers in god gain from believing in him is beyond our ability to confirm either way. Regardless, both parishioners and pagans end up dying in the same ways. How the parishioner and the pagan act is not very different at all. It is easy to confirm that each satisfies his basic needs as a human being -- each group is quite successful at passing itself on from one generation to the next. _The central difference lies in what they say -- the parishioner is locked in an endless war of words with himself while the pagan is at peace with who he is_.

_Christianity is a well-meaning religion but simply asks too much of its followers_. Christianity ends up being _poisonous_ \-- confusing an individual's feelings and judgments to the point that it enfeebles him. Rather than _freeing_ the individual, religion ends up _enslaving_ him.

The central problem of Christianity is that everything natural is considered base and unholy while the denial of the natural is considered admirable and holy. _Every human being is part human and part being -- only with both parts is a human being whole_. _An attack on the source of passion is an attack on the source of life -- this practice on the part of the church is hostile towards life and treachery towards humanity_.

IV. ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN MODERN TIMES

We have spent millennia trying to give our existence meaning and purpose. Yet, with modern scientific inquiry highlighted by the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions, we have removed any and all veils in less than five centuries.

Recent developments in science and technology have created such powerful tools that many of the forces that were once beyond our control now lie within our control. _As we learn more about the universe, the more meaningless it and our role in it appears_.

As our knowledge has grown, mystery has waned. Along with this decline in mystery has come a decline in the power of priests and the church. _God himself has begun to dissipate -- and with that death's abyss has started revealing its infinitely dark depths once again_.

Simultaneously, the belittling of human beings has progressed irresistibly and even accelerated with the recent expansion in the human population. Faith in the dignity and uniqueness of a human being -- that an individual is irreplaceable in the great chain of being -- is a thing of the past. _Man has returned to acting like the animal that he is_. _Humanity seems to have lost interest in finding a transcendental solution to the riddle of its existence -- this puts us right back where we were when we started creating gods in the first place_.

Still, the secular answer to the riddle -- of making the daily life of human beings more secure, comfortable, and predictable -- has provided an answer -- even if this answer is far more finite and incomplete than the comprehensive religious one. Ironically, both the religious and the secular answers to the fundamental religious questions aid humanity in achieving our principle goal -- _of fending off death for as many individuals for as long as possible_.

What can humanity now do to fill the void? Can we create new gods? To what goal and purpose does modern man now exist? Does modern man still _need_ a goal and a purpose? What then could possibly be our response to the abyss?

_The way out of the abyss of absurdity is to surrender to our finitude_. First, we must pass through the thicket of Christianity to arrive in the clearing where Jesus dwelt to draw on the powerful and mysterious forces that religion possesses. We need to let life be given to us instead of trying to take it.

Although life happens to us and we suffer life because of it, life is still granted to us as a gift. We need to learn to accept life with gratitude and to treasure it. _We must create the meaning and purpose to our lives. We need to expend our life force giving a gift back to life itself_.

V. ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE POWER GAME

The church uses the promise of an afterlife and the corresponding rewards and punishments as weapons in the battle for supremacy in the here and now of earthly power -- of power over fellow men. Just as believers and non-believers battle one another, just as world religions battle one another, churches are clubs that battle one another. _Each church plays politics -- seeking to redistribute earthly power in favor of itself, its priests, and its parishioners_.

Though different groups battle death and death awareness in different ways, attempting to escape religion is like attempting to escape breathing -- either one leads to a quick death, one from a lack of purpose and the other from a lack of air.

Though religion offers answers to the riddle of the mystery of life, the church only ends up veiling the void with promises of the soul, immortality, and the afterlife.

Others answer the riddle by spanning the abyss pursuing the promise of eternity. These creators sacrifice their lives and use their works to build a bridge to eternity -- eternity in the sense of being invited into the holy halls of language.

Prophets are the rarest, most famous, and most influential group of all -- those with the farthest reaching power. First and foremost, prophets force us to look deep inside ourselves and to examine our own abyss. They attempt the most challenging feat of all -- to fill in the abyss.

Since the abyss may never be completely filled in, organized religion plays and will always play a role in the power game. The role of the church has changed over time, which can be seen the clearest in humanity's churches. The paragon of churches is Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. This building is the single most valuable of all of humanity's creations. The value of this artistic masterpiece -- most of which is built into the building itself -- is priceless. The value of every other single structure that we have ever built pales in comparison to St. Peter's.

St. Peter's was built at the high point of the church's earthly power during the Renaissance. The lack of the same degree of devotion and master craftsmanship in modern churches built since the time of St. Peter's reflects the decline in the church's power over the last six centuries.

_Yet, whether there is a god or no god, there is no difference. Religion's timeless message is that we need to treat ourselves and everyone and everything around us with love and respect -- the kingdom of heaven only comes to an individual if he seeks and finds happiness with who he is_.

Chapter 6: The Economy

Like all animals, human beings are required to seek heat, energy, and fuel from the moment we are born. We are no better at conquering the tyranny of our stomachs than any other animal. _Living beings are never free -- human beings will never be free_.

People in the _developed_ world have freed themselves _politically_ only to find themselves slaves to _economic_ tyranny. People in the _developing_ world have freed themselves _economically_ only to find themselves slaves to _political_ tyranny. _Such is life -- choose a type of freedom and with it comes a type of tyranny_. _Freedom may be the most misused word in the history of language_.
Given that we are not and never will be free, then the economy must have nothing to do with freedom. The question then must be how to best spend our time devoted to surviving -- satisfying our basic drives -- versus how to best spend our time devoted to thriving -- attending to our higher needs, whether it is amongst our families, our friends, our hobbies, or our other leisure activities.

Animals live innocently and obliviously with respect to their own deaths. This provides no incentive or need for them to exert extra energy accumulating resources or battling forces that do not exist -- _for them_. _Still, all animals must work to eat_.

Rather than searching for food and playing as the other animals do, we toil in our search for the meaning and purpose to our existence -- we expend far more energy in our quest than any animal does looking for its next meal.

All life forms have the grand necessity of fueling the flames that keep the vital heat within burning bright. We must obtain fuel -- in the form of food, water, clothing, and shelter -- if we are to entertain the true problems of life with any hope of success. No one can think on an empty stomach since all thought and activity is directed towards finding the next meal. _Once the basic needs of life are satisfied, only then can we focus on what we need to thrive rather than just to survive_.

_We build elaborate caves for ourselves_ , abodes that provide these basic necessities: they provide security -- keeping out harmful predators, like human carnivores. They provide privacy -- allowing for the separation of public and private affairs. They provide shelter -- keeping the elements out. They insulate -- keeping the temperature inside less volatile than outside. They enclose -- creating barriers on all sides to minimize the flow of unwanted house guests, like spiders or scorpions. They provide a fixed environment for increasing living standards -- allowing for the connection to city grids, like water, gas, electricity, and phone lines. They provide a space for tending to the spice of life -- adding amenities that actually make life a joy, like a spa or a swimming pool.

Most abodes are further divided into rooms that serve as specialized spaces for fulfilling specific drives -- kitchens and dining rooms for eating, living rooms for drinking, bathrooms for excreting, and bedrooms for secreting and sleeping.

Connecting abodes to one another creates additional advantages. For example, a casual stroll through the ruins of Pompeii reveals how _little_ life has changed for human beings in the last two thousand years. As for public utilities, the average house in Pompeii had running water, sewage, and trash removal. A stove and a fireplace made public heating unnecessary.

Humanity added next to nothing to ease suffering for the common man in the next one thousand eight hundred years. _All_ of the major changes in the average household have occurred in the last two hundred -- indoor toilets, more efficient heating and air conditioning, electricity, phones, radios, televisions, cable, computers, and the internet. It is worth noting that the rate of innovations is increasing. The next major innovations in the public utilities feeding into households will most likely ride piggy-back on the computer, just like the internet.

I. ORIGINS OF THE ECONOMY

After discovering that we die but prior to founding settlements, humanity's primary concern was to procure the basic necessities of life for _surviving_ \-- little time was available and even less effort was expended on _thriving_.

In addition to procuring basic necessities, we formed groups to survive over the forces of nature, other animals, and other men. Eventually, these groups became clans -- bands of mutual defense who protected each other from nature, from other life forms, and most of all, from rival clans.

The first signs of civilization -- human settlements --date from about ten thousand years ago. Civilization aimed at taking the randomness out of life -- at reducing fear, chance, and uncertainty. Becoming civilized meant and still means learning to postpone immediate gratification, to calculate, and to think strategically and causally.

Civilization originated when our ancestors stopped being nomads and decided to settle down -- as we switched from _gathering_ to _producing_ food. _Man exchanged mobility for stability_ \-- _the end of wandering led to the beginning of property development and accumulation_.

Man built permanent establishments as he began using agriculture. Over time, technological innovations in agriculture saved time in food procurement and production and eventually led to the creation of food surpluses. _For the first time, a species had freed itself from the daily search for its next meal, and with this innovation a vast ocean of time opened for man_. _The mass of men became free from the daily battle with survival, and with that the lifestyle of human beings began drifting away from the lifestyle of the rest of the living world_.

The production of surplus food reduced the need for workers devoted to food production, which freed them up to perform other specialized social functions. These specialized functions eventually formed into the military, the police, the legislature, the hospital, and the academy -- all of which significantly increased the quality of life for humanity as a whole.

In addition to the division of labor, a few other major technological innovations increased the rate of advance of civilization -- written language, markets, and systems of reciprocity. _As the rate of technological innovations has accelerated, so has the rate of separation between man and the rest of the living world_.

_All_ of our creations fulfill basic needs -- from mathematics to science to laws to philosophy. Each innovation aids us in the preservation and extension of the power of our species. Over eons, civilization has made tremendous strides in making our lives more secure, comfortable, and predictable. _Humanity has transcended surviving and is now thriving_.

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE ECONOMY

An individual can buy and sell his way through life quite easily without any guiding principle other than faith in markets and money. All an individual has to do is avoid autarky, which is an economic system in which a person produces everything he consumes. Autarky is the worst possible way to organize an economy. Though learning how to do multiple jobs and to produce multiple goods may prove useful from a survival standpoint, it is neither economical nor necessary. Autarky fails to reap the rewards that specialization and exchange offer.

Instead of autarky, specializing in a few tasks that lead to the production of a couple of goods and exchanging both our goods and our labor in a market has considerable advantages. Focusing on just a few tasks leads to mastery of all of them, which leads to the production of higher quality goods, which brings a higher price at the market for the goods, which returns a higher wage to skilled specialists.

With our increased buying power resulting from our higher wages, skilled specialists can purchase more of the other high quality goods available at the market. _As everyone specializes in particular tasks, society ends up producing a much greater quantity and variety of higher quality goods that are produced cheaper and faster than those produced in autarky_.

Rather than wearing burlap clothes as we eat stale bread beneath a thatched roof, we are able to wear the latest fashions as we eat fresh pastries beneath a shingled roof. _We live more secure, comfortable, and predictable lives than the previous generation, and, compared to our ancestors, we live like gods_.

All human beings have twenty-four hours in their day and on average seventy years worth of days in their lives. The poor have an abundance of time while the rich have an abundance of money. It is up to each one to decide whether he is to be rich in time or in money.

Yet, some starve to death while others die of overeating; some roast at home while others die from no heating. Some have closets brimming while others dress in rags or worse; some drink themselves to death while others die of thirst. _Not enough and too much -- so goes the distribution of resources among mankind_.

_Poverty is a choice_ \-- a choice most often made by lazy, cowardly, and unmotivated individuals who prefer vast amounts of leisure time to money. _Wealth too is a choice_ \-- a choice most often made by energetic, courageous, and motivated individuals who prefer vast amounts of money to leisure time. Still, only one thing separates the wealthiest man from the poorest -- how lavish his tombstone is.

_The sacred law of the economy is that private property may not and cannot be touched_. Theft most often occurs in communities where some have more than enough while others do not have enough.

Most men devote their entire lives to creating surplus value. These surpluses skew the distribution of wealth in favor of the rich which leads one man to covet the property of another, which leads one nation to covet the property of another, which leads to wars between men and between nations. To end all wars would require the elimination of all surplus value, but to eliminate the pursuit of surplus value may be to eliminate the lives of so many men.

It is in the realm of the affairs of man that the lives of some men are made miserable. Gloom in the life of a man arises out of the darkness that his fellow men create -- _not_ out of any darkness from the world surrounding him. For nature is a plethora of riches, and each animal's ecosystem is a Garden of Eden for that particular plant or animal.

As one type of man creates profits for himself, he often creates scarcity for other types of men. _Scarcity is man's invention -- it offers one type of man a way to exercise power over other types of men_.

Money is power and at a minimum represents stored up units of time. The amount of money an individual has not only determines his social rank, it determines his world view -- _for the rich get to make the rules_.

_What a serf once did for the sake of god, modern man now does for the sake of money_. The profit motive is one of the most powerful of our innovations -- for it is one of the few motives that spurs otherwise lazy cowards to get up and contribute to society. _Under the right incentives, it is possible to get anyone to choose to work instead of to shirk_. Add fortuitous circumstances to the right incentives and a group of people will work very hard to produce magic.

Yet, it is always the least motivated or the least energetic who are most critical of the profit motive. _Those most interested in redistributing the pie are those least interested in contributing to the size of it_.

III. THE ECONOMY VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL

_Since the dawn of civilization, society's main goal has been to sustain itself_. The inexorable force of the marketplace demands that we set a price on ourselves in exchange for producing some product. To accomplish this, we cease to be human beings and transform ourselves into parts of a machine. We press ourselves into our labor -- driving our thought, our energy, and our effort into some product which remains the only visible sign of our power, until it is taken from us and sold on the open market.

_The academy aims to convert human beings into usable automatons_. Rather than being taught how to complete the transition from acting like a human to acting like a human being, students are taught how to be the best cog they can be.

Society is rapidly becoming a machine -- a mindless mechanized mass that lacks direction and purpose. This powerful and persistent economic giant appears to be heading somewhere, but it never seems to arrive. _Humanity has become so obsessed with the economic management of the earth that we are starting to find our meaning and purpose in the endless servicing and expansion of this economy_.

This giant, this tremendous clockwork, this relentless rush to nowhere demands that people convert themselves into ever smaller, more subtle, and more specialized cogs. Each individual now represents nothing more than a minimal force, a minimal value -- that of a mass-produced, replaceable cog. A reserve army of cogs waits in training or in the unemployment line for an opportunity to step in and be useful.

No single cog in the great wheel of being is any more important than any other cog. In fact, the loss of a cog is hardly a loss at all since other cogs are just sitting around waiting for an opportunity to step in. _The economic giant lives within each of us_.

For most, professions are chosen for them and represent a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. They let their parents or society or teachers or social situations dictate what they do with their lives. They accumulate a set of tools and tasks and continuously develop them if for no other reason than out of habit and laziness. Most refuse to pause to reflect and discover who they are, and few bother to take the time to assign the necessary tasks and acquire the necessary tools to achieve their goals.

_For the vast majority, work is a means and not an end_. Most choose vocations without paying the slightest attention to what it is that they truly love to do. It is as if these desperate men had grown so weary by the time they chose a vocation that they ended up letting their vocation choose them, but by that time it was too late. As a result, their vocation ends up deadening their spirit and possessing them.

Most people go to the same job and do the same tasks over and over again, as if imprisoned like Sisyphus. What motivates so many to play this mad and maddening game? _The only thing worse than having to push the same rock up the same hill is not having a rock to push_.

To do the same thing over and over is not only boring -- it is to be controlled by rather than to control what gets done. Work becomes a chore --a repetitive chore that dehumanizes individuals.

How is it that so many choose to become accountants and lawyers? What strange circumstances could drive someone to a career in either of these two dehumanizing professions? Surely the monotony of bean-counting, of making sure this equals that on each side of a balance sheet, must convert an individual into a flatliner -- draining the life force from him. Surely the monotony of lawsuits, of aiming to blame _someone_ for the happenings of chance, error, and circumstance, must drive an individual toward the edge of insanity -- again, draining the life force from him. When the rest of us are forced to interact with these poor souls, we sense that a volcano of desperation churns beneath a thin layer of projected contentment -- that even the slightest tremor may lead to an eruption of screaming desperation.

Are these individuals just lazy? Are they just cowards? Are they just out of ideas? Are they just not clever enough to look into themselves and discover what it is they truly love to do and then to spend the necessary time to burst forth in their finest flowering?

_This dehumanizing grinding of gears turns life into a burden for the vast majority of humanity_. For these poor souls, life is experienced solely as a labor, with little room left for love. _They bear their lives as burdens instead of viewing their lives as the chance to perform as much magic as they can before they die_.

Society tries to convince individuals to separate their labor from their leisure -- to see pleasure and duty as altogether separate things. This way an individual devotes his leisure time to relaxation and rejuvenation to be able to recuperate just enough so that when he returns to work, he will be the best servant he can be.

Hyper-specialization reduces us to _things_ \-- so severed, so dismembered, and so isolated that we are no longer able to integrate the parts into the whole. _In this way, humanity creates its own chasm_ \-- _the chasm that separates us all_ \-- _and hyper-specialization catapults us right into it_.

IV. ROLE OF THE ECONOMY IN MODERN TIMES

Gross National Product is the most frequently used measure of the power and value of a society's economy. Though useful in comparing official production figures between two regions that are already very similar, the measure misguides as often as it guides when used to value affairs across different regions of the world.

The measure ignores the distribution of wealth, the tradeoff between labor and leisure, the fitness of the government in providing accurate statistics, the unofficial economy, and transactions that occur without money changing hands. Additional sources of mistakes arise from measurement error in the collection and calculation of enormous amounts of data.

In addition to these severe limitations of Gross National Product, even if the measure were one hundred percent accurate, we would still be measuring the wrong thing. For example, if there were a Garden of Eden, its Gross National _Product_ would be _zero_ , even though the quality of life -- its Gross National _Welfare_ \-- would be _infinite_. _The point is that we were not put here on this grand and glorious earth to produce_ \-- _we were put here to consume as much life as we can before we die_.

As a result, it is quite possible that people in less developed countries are happier than people in developed countries even though they have less -- for though they have less property, they have more time to enjoy the property that they do have and their lives.

Though our age is the wealthiest and most industrious of all ages, we do not know how to make anything out of our money and industriousness except for still more money and still more industriousness. _It requires far more genius to spend time rather than to acquire property_. For all of us time is finite and it is up to each of us to choose how best to spend our few precious moments on this glorious earth. _We must determine how to utilize that most precious of all commodities -- our lives_. _How can we best spend our lives_?

V. ROLE OF THE ECONOMY IN THE POWER GAME

The economy uses the promise of a higher standard of living and the corresponding rewards and punishments to get us to work intensively and extensively in the battle for supremacy in the here and now of earthly power -- of power over fellow men. _The economy is the struggle for relative social position_. _In modern times, this promise of higher living standards for every individual has proven to be the dominant force in humanity's power game_.

For example, comparing Rockefeller Center to St. Patrick's Cathedral reveals that humanity for the past few hundred years has been far more interested in creating wealth here on earth than in creating wealth in an afterlife. _Just as skyscrapers soar above St. Patrick's spires, the economy towers over the church_.

How is this lure of a more secure, comfortable, and predictable life able to drive so many people to work so hard? Below a certain threshold, life can be extremely difficult and demanding -- no one wants to be scrounging his next meal. It is easy to see how so many people are motivated to work hard enough to attain some _minimum_ level of living standards. However, this does _not_ explain why people are willing to work so hard for their entire lives.

_What triggers this ever-accelerating mad dash through life_? Where is everyone in such a hurry to get to? We inherit the majority of the material that makes up our world-view from our parents and our social class. Yet, no child gets to choose his parents or his location along the social spectrum. Nevertheless, nearly every individual spends the rest of his life running around like a maniac trying to improve his _relative_ social standing.

Could it be that since the normal path through life includes bringing more children into it, most people desire to have their children enter at a better _relative_ position -- if only to make amends for their own misfortunate landing when they were involuntarily thrown into this world? Again, it is easy to see how people want a more secure, comfortable, and predictable life for themselves and their children. However, this still does _not_ explain why so many people get drawn into and consumed by _the game of relative social standing_.

This game of perpetually pursuing property -- of perpetually keeping up with the Joneses -- clearly improves the standard of living, but it may _reduce_ the quality of life. This game's outcome comes with a sad and ironic twist for nearly everyone who plays it: except for the upper-most echelon of the social spectrum, each movement in that direction requires working like a slave. Yet, since everyone else is pursuing the same goal, the _relative_ social standing of most people rarely changes. Still fewer ever achieve their ultimate goal -- of becoming a member of the idle leisure class in the upper-most echelon. _Instead, an individual ends up working like mad to gain on the next guy, which undoubtedly increases society's overall standard of living, but his relative position to the next guy doesn't change at all_.

In addition, an individual's increase in material well-being often comes at the expense of his spiritual, familial, and psychological well-being. For both individuals and for societies, it could even be that once achieving a certain _threshold_ level of living standards, each additional increase actually _reduces_ welfare. Even though their material well-being continues to improve, their overall quality of life actually gets worse. _We are not here to maximize our own property or standards of living_ \-- _we are here to maximize our own welfare, the quality of our lives_.

The origin of this paradox of pleasure is that in order to meet each increase in living standards, these individuals are forced to increase their total hours worked. As a result, each rise in their standard of living is offset by a reduction in the time they have to enjoy their possessions. _Their possessions end up possessing them_.

Their property ends up becoming their prison \-- for even horses would rather have hay than gold. For three thousand dollars a wealthy person's family can buy him a lavish tombstone; for three dollars anyone can buy a pound of flour. _The pursuit of wealth ends up making men slaves to their material possessions_.

The majority of humanity think that they must have a house as nice as their neighbor's, which ends up keeping them poor their entire lives. They are never able to acquire enough capital to feed the engine of perpetual wealth accumulation that investing creates. _Most people confuse the endless acquisition of property with getting the most out of life -- this is the grandest of grand errors_.

_Most men are so occupied with their life-long labors that their fingers become too coarse or their minds too numb to pluck or to enjoy the finer fruits of life_. They have no time to be anything other than machines. However, they were their own slave-drivers -- they were the ones who turned themselves into machines.

So, the mystery remains -- what drives so many to work so hard in the pursuit of _relative_ social position? _Relative_ is the key word here -- for even the slightest upper-hand on rivals may result in a single and substantial reward.

_As each individual plays the game of relative social standing, he is playing the mating game_. An individual with just a slight _relative_ economic advantage over very similar rivals often is able to attract a much more sexually fit mate.

Next to physical beauty, economic power offers the most _visible_ way to send clear signals of sexual fitness to potential mates. Economic power offers the _direct_ signal that an individual is a _relatively_ more preferable mate since a person who has more wealth is most often more beautiful and healthier than other potential mates. Economic power also offers the _indirect_ signal of the _relative_ ability of the individual to rear healthy and wealthy children -- for the next and foreseeable generations.

_Each individual seeks the healthiest possible mate with which to have as many healthy children as possible_. _The effort and energy that individuals expend playing the mating game fuels the economic engine_.

Chapter 7: The State

The major constraints impacting the lives of human beings were created by our predecessors. Every institution we have ever created is based on fear and attempts to cage the savage beast within -- especially those of the most ferocious human predators. These constraints are known as laws, and all laws are variations on the common theme -- individuals are to behave as the ruling class tells them to. Though most laws are written, some laws remain unwritten -- honor parents, refrain from incest, and repay benefits.

The lives of far too many a man more closely resemble those of the apes than those of the wisest human beings. These predators are either unwilling or unable to display the wisdom within themselves, and society has charged the state with the power to convert these predators from human beasts into human beings or at least to separate the human beasts from the human beings.

The only way the state is able to create peace on the open plains is by waging war against specific individuals. These specific individuals are those who lose the war they wage against themselves. _The state is charged with the power of controlling these individuals -- the ones who are unwilling or unable to control themselves_.

By restricting the freedom of those who can _not_ control themselves, the freedom of those who can control themselves is greatly expanded. As a result, society is far more secure, comfortable, and predictable than it would be if everyone was forced to defend themselves.

Humanity has assigned the task of converting humans into human beings to the state -- to get the vast majority of men to domesticate themselves. Both the state and the church are interested in turning humans into human beings, though they each use a different means to attain this central goal. On the one hand, the _church_ uses the non-credible promise of rewards in an afterlife to get an individual to agree to surrender his sense of self in the here and now of life on earth -- _for an individual who ceases to exist is one who is easy to control_.

On the other hand, the _state_ uses the credible threat of the legitimate use of force to get an individual to agree to surrender using force in dealing with other individuals \-- _for an individual who ceases to use force is one who is easy to control_.

Since every individual participates in a constant struggle to expand his power and relative social standing, humanity is forced to deputize one group to protect individuals from each other. These deputies are empowered with the right to the legitimate use of force to restrict the actions of others. _The state's deputies exercise power over others to ensure that citizens do what the ruling class wants them to_.

Rather than anarchy like the wild west where everyone is responsible for protecting themselves, the state creates an open plain -- a playground where harmless herbivores are free to roam. However, the only way this game works is if the carnivores are imprisoned simultaneously. _In this way, the state serves society by fending off death for as many individuals for as long as possible_.

I. ORIGINS OF THE STATE

As every individual plays the game of relative social standing, some individuals achieve favorable results, which skews the distribution of wealth in their favor. This disparate distribution of wealth amongst citizens leads one man to covet the property of another, which leads one nation to covet the property of another, which leads to conflict between men and between nations.

The only possible way to end conflict would be to end the generation of surplus wealth. Yet, since every individual aims to improve his _relative_ social standing, he is driven to _obtain_ and _retain_ as much wealth as he can. Though most citizens choose to play by society's rules as they generate wealth, a few choose to play by their own rules -- those who commit crimes. _Since the sacred law of the economy is that private property may not and can not be touched_ , _the state's central role is to solidify the gains individuals make and ensure that they retain the wealth they generate_.

_The original and still the central purpose of the state is to protect citizens from crime committers, especially foreign ones_. _War is the father of all_ , and _peace_ only occurs when a variety of competing groups with disparate interests and objectives are able to achieve harmony. Peace _within_ and _between_ societies is a _rare_ and _brief_ occurrence.

What motivates one state to invade another? Throughout history, the aggressor state is most often the state that considers it absolutely necessary to launch a pre-emptive strike against an evil neighbor that is bound to attack at any moment. The aggressor state seeks to gain the fruits of victory -- more citizens, resources, and territory from its rival state. The winning state reaps the rewards of victory, at least temporarily.

When states go to war, they confront each other in the following manner -- they presuppose that their neighbors have evil dispositions while they perceive themselves as the most benevolent of human beings. The ruling classes in each state use this doublethink to instigate wars.

The ruling class of each warring state stirs up war fever within its own state -- convincing citizens that the entire population of the opposing state is composed of subhuman, tyrannical maniacs bent on world domination. The flip side of this reasoning is that each state does in fact have a group of subhuman, tyrannical maniacs bent on world domination. This group is a tiny but powerful minority -- its own ruling class.

When states go to war, who gains and who loses _within_ each state? Powerful minority groups within each state clearly gain regardless of which state wins the war. Expanding the size of the military _directly_ increases the power of the state. The tax increase necessary to finance the increase in government expenditures on the war _indirectly_ increases the power of the state. Large firms in the economy gain as they supply the military -- fuel producers, weapons manufacturers, logistics firms, etc. _It is no surprise that when the ruling class of a state elects to go to war that its members clearly gain_.

Who loses when a state goes to war? The clear losers in any war are the members of the military and civilians who die during the fight. However, the vast majority of citizens gain nothing indirectly from the war machine but clearly lose by being forced to pay higher taxes to finance the war and possibly to accept lower wages. Thus, regardless of the outcome of the war, the clear winners are the ruling class of each warring state while the clear losers are the vast majority of citizens within each warring state.

The _possible_ result and the motivation for going to war in the first place is that one state _may_ actually win and gain the fruits of victory at the expense of the rival state. This victory lifts the standard of living for all of its citizens and justifies going to war. The _guaranteed_ result of war is that the ruling class of each warring state directly gains at the expense of the other classes within its own state regardless of the outcome.

In addition to protecting its citizens from _foreign_ aggressors, the state protects its citizens from _domestic_ aggressors. To accomplish this goal domestically, the state constricts the liberty of those who can _not_ control themselves while expanding the liberty of those who can.

Just as crime committers _beyond_ a society led to the origin of the military, crime committers _within_ a society led to the origin of the justice system. _The state aims to create as much freedom as it can for as many citizens as possible_.

Though _politics_ is the tension that arises from groups exerting power over one another, _justice_ is the harmony that results from an equilibrium of self-interests in which individuals implicitly form reciprocal agreements _not_ to harm each other. To crime committers, the state appears as a tyrannical organization that instills _fear_ in its citizens. To crime victims and law abiding citizens, the state appears as a protective organization that instills _freedom_ for its citizens. _The state uses the tools of politics and justice to expel a vast quantity of freedom from the few while expanding the quantity of freedom for as many people as possible_.

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE STATE

States are composed of rule makers and rule takers. The ruling class is composed of wealthy and powerful individuals who hire deputies to govern the ruled masses. Those who possess power have but one desire -- to overpower. Those who do not possess power have but one desire -- to be free. The powerful desire to overpower the powerless, while the powerless desire to have the powerful leave them alone. The group of the few but strong rulers aim to dominate the group of the many but weak. The weak masses aim to organize and consolidate their power to challenge the rulers. This tension between differing types of men composes the political constellation _within_ any state in any age.

The ruling class uses deputies to see that the gains individuals make as they play the game of relative social standing are _retained_. _The ruling class uses the state to protect and expand its wealth_ \-- _this wealth is the foundation on which their rule rests_.

The ruling class exerts power over its citizens -- getting them to do what the ruling class wants them to do. Power over others includes the ability to impact the lives of men henceforth and may even include altering the past to serve present and future needs. The ruling class aims to manipulate the thoughts, words, and deeds of other classes. The ruling class aims to dominate the values and corresponding set of actions of its citizens. The ruling class aims to demonstrate its superior ability in wielding the use of force to as much of humanity as possible.

The ruling class uses two means of keeping its citizens obedient and living in fear -- the older and cruder one of the army and the newer and more refined one of the academy.

Depending on the particular type of state, the ruling class either funds, controls, or censors the media. Even media in relatively free states seem to work in tandem with the state -- propagating the state's wishes to invoke fear in or to distract its citizens.

To control the masses, the ruling class is forced to pay a revolution prevention premium to its citizens -- always being sure to take just enough care of the other classes to keep them from revolting. Providing the other classes with luxuries proves too costly while not providing them with enough necessities can prove disastrous -- _for the ruling class_.

The most significant portion of the revolution prevention premium is ensuring that citizens can find jobs easily. Just as well-fed, exhausted animals do not revolt against their masters, neither do wage-slaves. _It is much easier to control a pack of well fed dogs than a pack of hungry wolves_.

Even if citizens decide to revolt, overthrowing the ruling class is futile -- in every struggle for power, society is delivered from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another. Though the individuals that constitute the ruling class may change, the new individuals will act just like the previous ones. Though the conductor of the state changes, the train of felonies rides on. _The powers that be are the powers that were are the powers that will be_.

The ruling class has always tried to convince citizens that it is in their best interest to forfeit rights in exchange for contributing to the common good, while in fact citizens are just being robbed of control over their own lives.

The ruling class employs different means in governing strong and energetic individuals, weak and lazy individuals, voiceless individuals, and crime committers. If an individual is a strong and energetic celebrity who speaks his mind, then the state will not leave him alone. If an individual is a weak and lazy coward who keeps to himself, then the state will leave him alone.

If an individual is a voiceless one -- a member of the poor, the disenfranchised, or the rest of the living world -- then the state will entirely ignore them. Though the silence of the voiceless ones is at times deafening, their power to persuade does not exist. _Those who have the most to say are most often those unable to speak_.

If an individual commits a crime, then the ruling class will remove him from the open plains and place him in a cage. _Since theft most often occurs in a society where some have more than enough while others do not have enough, the state is vigilant in defending the wealth of those with more than enough_.

The ruling class places crime fighters on the edge of society to protect everyone, but most of all to protect their own wealth. These crime fighters are locked in a perpetual arms race with crime committers. This battle, known as the battle between the radar gun and the radar detector, started at the dawn of civilization.

Each side has used technological innovations in weaponry to leap frog the other. Even a slight advantage in weaponry can lead to large gains for one side in its battle with the other. _This endless ratcheting effect in weaponry between crime fighters and crime committers has led to the advanced weaponry in use today_.

When they succeed in catching crime committers, crime fighters place the crime committers in cages. Caging criminals often leads them to emerge as even more hardened enemies of society, rather than as rehabilitated individuals ready to join society and to play by its rules. For example, a criminal may make one petty mistake that lands him in jail. Once in jail, he is in the academy of criminality where he learns from master criminals how to extract ever harsher revenge on society in return for the time he is forced to serve in prison.

Most often, society has committed the crime against the criminal -- whether it is a dismal landing along the social standing spectrum, parental neglect, academic disregard, or abuse from authorities -- long before he ever commits his first crime against society. _All_ crime committers emerge from the group of citizens that are forced to endure events and circumstances that foster _rebellion from_ instead of _allegiance to_ society.

III. THE STATE VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL

States are composed of crime fighters, crime committers, crime victims, and citizens. Crime fighters include people deputized to serve as politicians, soldiers, policemen, detectives, judges, juries, and prison wardens.

Crime fighters leave most citizens alone most of the time. If an individual never commits a crime and can avoid falling victim to one, he may never have to deal with the state.

The deputies of the state are charged with preventing or at least deterring crime and chasing after criminals once they commit one. However, occasionally mistakes are made, and the deputies either chase after the wrong man or are unable to identify or to find the criminal responsible for the crime.

Before concluding that deputies have thankless jobs, just remember that the first person a victim of a crime goes to is a policeman. If the policeman or his superior -- the detective -- is able to solve the crime, then they receive a great deal of praise from both the victim and society.

If a man can _not_ fetter the beast of prey within him, he ends up committing a crime and becoming a ward of the state. The stronger an individual's drives are, the more powerful his demons may become. If an individual can _not_ dominate these demons, then his demise is nigh. When an individual turns to a life of crime, though his death may _not_ be imminent, his departure from the open plains is.

An individual's choice whether or not to commit a crime depends on many factors -- whether or not the action is legal, how high the reward is from succeeding, how likely it is to get caught, how likely it is to get prosecuted, how likely it is to be found guilty, how stiff the sentence will be, and how inhumane the confinement will be.

Politicians occupy the highest level of the state -- acting as puppets for the ruling class. In exchange for acquiring their positions via force, votes, or campaign contributions, politicians determine which actions are legal and which are illegal and legislate laws accordingly -- always for the benefit of the ruling class. _Society's rules apply to everyone except those who make them_.

At the other extreme, policemen occupy the front lines of defense against crime committers. The police simultaneously deter and detect crime -- aiming to prevent it from happening or to apprehend the suspect as soon as possible after the crime has been committed.

Yet, the gap separating the crime committer from the crime fighter is far less than the gap separating the crime _committer_ from the average citizen and even the gap separating the crime _fighter_ from the average citizen. The endless ratcheting in the weapons race between criminal and policeman forces each type of man to use the same means, though to opposite ends. As a result, the type of man who chooses to lead a life _committing_ crime is very similar to the type of man who chooses to lead a life _solving_ crime.

If a criminal is able to escape police detection, the criminal investigation is turned over to the detective. The detective aims to solve the crime and catch the criminal.

Once the detective catches the criminal, the case is turned over to the justice system. The prosecutor then decides whether or not it is worth prosecuting the criminal.

Once the case goes to trial, the jury then decides if the criminal is guilty. Once the criminal is found guilty, the judge then decides the sentence. Once the sentence is given, the criminal then serves his sentence in the appropriate incarceration facilities.

The warden at these facilities then decides how to treat this particular criminal while he serves his sentence in a cage away from the open plains of society.

Those most likely to commit crimes are those most critical of the state. Those most likely to fall victim to crimes are those most grateful of the state. _Collectively, the state protects the harmless herbivores from the ferocious predators_.

During the lives of most individuals, they will be neither crime committers nor crime victims and thus will have little direct interaction with the deputies of the state. Nevertheless, every crime victim knows how important the state's role is and is grateful for it.

IV. ROLE OF THE STATE IN MODERN TIMES

The two most relevant and prevalent issues that display how the state provides domestic and foreign security are the issues of global warming and nuclear weapons.

The state is charged with the power of protecting its citizens from domestic threats. Many consider the global warming issue to be one such threat. Scientists today _swear_ to the importance of global warming, but remember that the ancestors of these same scientists _swore_ that the sun revolved around the earth until five hundred years ago. In one corner of the scientific world, we have ecologists talking about global warming while in another corner we have geologists talking about ice ages. In yet another corner, we have astronomers asserting that the earth orbits the sun but that it does so in a sporadic way.

Why are scientists so deeply concerned with the global warming issue? Scientists have a vested interest in the topic -- scientists who devotes their lives to this issue collect ample research funding.

Why are politicians also so deeply concerned with the global warming issue? Politicians also have a vested interest in the topic -- politicians representing themselves as adamant defenders of mother nature have found a sure fire way to gain citizens' votes.

Though it is _possible_ to argue that global warming is occurring, it is _impossible_ to make a legitimate argument that the actions of humanity have the ability to impact the overall temperature of the earth.

Sure, the earth may be experiencing a warming trend. It is possible that shifts in the earth's orbit lead to periods of ice ages and non-ice ages. If ice ages actually occur, then it follows that the earth is either moving towards one and experiencing a cooling trend or moving away from one and experiencing a warming trend. It is these powerful forces -- forces far beyond humanity's control -- that have the largest impact on the overall temperature of the earth.

The result is that global warming is really just a cunning way for us to tout our power -- it offers a way for some of us to feel far more powerful than we actually are and for others to entertain themselves. It is hard to imagine that mother nature could actually have produced such a clever little creature that he would come to think that he could impact the earth on a _global_ scale, even if only in a _negative_ way. _Just because the earth is showing signs of warming does not mean that it has anything to do with humanity's activities_.

Is there a way to convince scientists and politicians that global warming has nothing to do with us?

One way to answer this question would be to round up all the scientists and politicians and take them on a field trip to the Grand Canyon. One moment's glance over the rim would instantly convince all of them that man is a rather insignificant creature. Anything and everything that man has ever created and will ever create would fit easily inside this tiny gash in the earth's surface. Spending another ten minutes on the rim would _cure_ them or any man of his inclination to behave like a _monumental megalomaniac_.

Global warming is _not_ about people honorably defending mother nature -- it is about self-righteous pundits with a purpose -- with the purpose of creating jobs for themselves and to promote their agenda in the battle for earthly power.

If global warming does not relate to the temperature patterns of the earth, then what does it relate to?

_Global warming is a term that serves as a catch-all euphemism for the most severe problems facing humanity in modern times_. Rapid population expansion is the driving factor behind the global warming issue. The issues usually tied to global warming are poorly designed and overcrowded cities, pollution, and waste disposal. All of these concerns for _our_ environment are the results of _our_ struggle to cope with _our_ smashing success in expanding humanity's prowess.

_Global warming is concerned with the problems that we have created for ourselves_ \-- _problems that do not offer simple political solutions_. One easy solution to a rapidly expanding population is to expand less rapidly -- to place controls on the rate of population expansion. However, neither the powers of the state nor the church are willing to come close to discussing this solution -- or even to admitting that rapid population expansion is _the cause_ of the majority of the problems facing humanity today.

The global warming issue is the _purest political_ issue facing man in modern times. Global warming is a safe, one-sided political issue -- after all, who is going to come out _against_ mother nature and say that we should start contaminating the earth as fast we can?

Whenever it comes to _political_ issues, paying attention to who wins and who loses illuminates what is really going on with and behind an issue. The winners from the global warming issue are scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, scholars, and businesses. After all, everyone must win when we defend mother nature, right?

Wrong -- there are plenty of losers from the global warming issue. The average citizen loses because he is forced to pay higher taxes -- taxes that fund unnecessary and useless government expenditures on white elephant global warming projects.

Politicians make it appear that they created this multi-billion dollar industry in their noble quest to defend mother nature when in fact the industry spun off from global warming means big bucks for the politicians themselves. Firms with close ties to these politicians gain as well. These firms end up winning the bids on these lucrative government contracts in return for supporting the politician. _The only certainty about the global warming issue is that it warms up the pockets of scientists, politicians, and their big business cronies_.

_Though we have displayed an uncanny ability to contaminate our environment, we have done little to nothing to contaminate the entire earth_. Viewing the vastness of the earth from the wilderness instead of the city reduces all arguments about global warming to jokes. A few days wandering in remote regions would make anyone realize that all of these eco-horror stories are just over-inflated fairy tales that one group of people have conjured up to make a living. _The idea that global warming actually comes from the hands of man is nonsense_.

Even with six billion people, the vastness of the earth still makes us seem like the miserable and petty creatures that we are. Only we are maniacal enough to overrate our ability on such a vast scale -- pretending to have the power to harm mother nature herself. _The only thing more troubling than the horror stories of global warming is that there are people naive enough to believe them_.

The next time someone mentions global warming, think of it instead as the issue of coping with rapid population expansion. Rather than talking in circles around the effects of rapid population expansion as politicians do, it is high time that humanity confronts the real problems associated with it. The easiest way to resolve this problem is to attack the cause of it -- to figure out how to slow the rate of expansion. If we do not, then the harmful effects of disasters like famine, overcrowding, urban sprawl, and even war are just going to keep getting worse.

In addition to dealing with domestic threats like global warming, the state is also charged with the power of protecting its citizens against foreign threats. _Rapid population expansion forces a society to search for a higher quantity of more productive resources -- this search is better known as war_.

A society goes to war with one object only -- to secure the best possible living conditions for itself. The motivation for war is that one group seeks to expand its territory by invading another territory with superior resources currently occupied by another group -- whether it is for access to more living space, more productive resources, or better mating opportunities.

Wars accelerated the ratcheting effect in weaponry, which eventually has led to the creation of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are most often associated with messages portending doom for humanity. _Nuclear weapons may end up saving the human race, since they eliminate the motivation for going to war in the first place_.

The threat of a nuclear war is simply not credible -- not for the usual reason of potential retaliation, but because the damage from a nuclear war defeats the purpose for going to war in the first place. A nuclear war between two states with nuclear weapons would prove futile since each state would see its territory _contract_ rather than _expand_.

Even if two states with nuclear weapons somehow become locked in a war using conventional weaponry that escalates to the brink of using nuclear weapons, then still neither side will have the incentive to use nuclear weapons. Since both the aggressor and the defender state will lose valuable _domestic_ territory, each side would lose from using nuclear weapons. _Nuclear weapons are priceless_ \-- _for they offer immunity from attack to every state that possesses them_.

Since nuclear weapons destroy both the resources and the territory in the enemy state, there is no longer any motivation to attack a state _with nuclear weapons_. _This is why states that do not possess nuclear weapons expend so much energy attempting to acquire them_.

It is no coincidence that the longest period of peace between the major powers of the world in the last thousand years has been since the invention of nuclear weapons. Though for the longest time it appeared that nothing would ever be able to get humanity to stop killing itself, the destructive power of nuclear weapons may offer the best hope yet. Though pleading prophets weren't able to alter the behavior of humanity in the least, the silent specter of nuclear weapons may be able to. _It is quite possible that the threat of our annihilation must reach its climax before we attain our salvation -- salvation from ourselves_.

In addition to providing domestic and foreign security, modern states have taken on the role of acting like gigantic insurance companies. The state creates policies that provide insurance -- policies that serve as buffers against shocks that impact private economic activity.

Examining the share of government expenditures shows that transfers from one citizen to another represent over fifty percent of the state's budget. Even the enormous sums of money spent on defense are a relatively minor fraction of federal budgets compared to these transfers. These transfers flow in one direction -- from healthy and productive individuals to sick and unproductive individuals.

With each additional entitlement that politicians promise, the sick and unproductive reach their hands ever deeper into the pockets of the healthy and productive -- though they are not the only ones. Politicians and other government officials naturally take their cuts from these transfers as well.

The problem with these government insurance policies is that they are fraught with the paradox that the state creates a _permanent_ institution in response to a _temporary_ shock. Once created, these bureaucratic agencies take on lives of their own with one goal -- to remain viable for as long as possible. As a result, many of these agencies linger long after the shock has disappeared. _This paradox of policy explains how states have continuously expanded their power and grown to their enormous sizes in modern times_.

For example, it will be interesting to see how long the United States Homeland Security Agency lingers in the aftermath of a one-time, _temporary_ shock -- particularly if the number of terrorist acts _decreases_ substantially. The Director of Homeland Security will sit before Congress and plead his case for additional funding _because_ the number of terrorist acts has decreased significantly since the creation of the Homeland Security Agency.

It is even possible that the agency may trump up false threats or even get involved in minor terrorist acts to justify its existence, just as firefighters in areas prone to wild fires have been known to start fires to create jobs for themselves. _The point of this paradox of policy is that once an agency is created, it is impossible to tell what would have happened without the agency in place_.

Again, who gains and who loses from the creation of these permanent agencies? The agency clearly gains, and the state clearly gains by growing in size and power. However, average citizens lose once again because they must forfeit rights that they formerly had prior to the agency being put in place while simultaneously being forced to pay higher taxes to fund the agency.

In contrast to the paradoxes arising from the creation of lasting institutions, there are paradoxes arising from the creation of laws. Every time politicians legislate a new law, it creates players on each side of the law and the need for a referee to make the call in each case.

_Politicians invoke new laws or policies to attempt to improve the lot of those in need_. However, the solutions are most often _static_ and geared towards helping those _currently_ in need. The solutions most often fail to anticipate how people will _dynamically_ respond to the policy change itself. When politicians change incentives, every individual including those eligible and those ineligible respond as best as they can to the change. What often ends up happening is that the size of the eligible group grows significantly when the new policy is put into place.

_The irony of the endless manufacturing of laws is that ones that are made with good but naive intentions often exacerbate the problems they were intended to solve rather than solving them_. Instead of reducing the number of people suffering from the problem, the law institutionalizes the problem and creates incentives for acquiring the problem.

The best example of this type of paradox of policy is welfare. Welfare was created with the good intention of helping poor people survive. However, rather than achieving its original goal of mitigating or eliminating poverty for the people who were poor at the time, the promise of payments to the poor provided an incentive for people with living standards slightly above the poverty line to quit their jobs and collect welfare payments instead. Rather than reducing the number of people who were already living in poverty, welfare saw a dramatic increase in the number of people who became poor. _The paradox of welfare policy is that it had the exact opposite effect of its initial intentions_. _The point is that if society wants fewer people living in poverty or on welfare, dismantling the welfare program is the way to do it_.

If the goal is to reduce the number of people in poverty, the opposite policy may work better -- make it next to impossible for the poor to receive gifts from the government while simultaneously creating more job opportunities for them. The direct effect is that welfare recipients will no longer receive welfare checks and that those who were _unwilling but able_ to work will then be forced to get jobs. Another program will need to be in place to provide benefits to those _unable_ to work, but fortunately that institution already exists and is known as social security.

The choice of the legal age for drinking versus the legal age for driving offers another stark example of the paradox of policy. _There is no easier way to boost demand for a product than for politicians to declare it illegal_.

Currently, politicians have set the drinking age at twenty-one, presumably to prevent those under twenty-one from drinking, which is most likely because this age cohort causes the most alcohol-related traffic accidents.

Rather than preventing teenagers from drinking, the law makes it cool and challenging for teenagers to find ways to obtain alcohol and to drink it. By age twenty-one, drinking loses its luster because any twenty-one year old can do it since it is legal.

The point is that if the goal is to have fewer teenagers drinking alcohol, then _lowering_ the age limit is the way to do it. Even more importantly, if the main reason is to lower the number of alcohol-related traffic accidents, then having teenagers start drinking before they start driving will make them more knowledgeable of the harmful effects of drunk driving.

Teenagers will choose to drink and drive less for two reasons -- first, the direct reason is that they will drink less by the time they start driving because drinking will have lost its luster. The second reason is the indirect effect that teenagers will already have plenty of experience drinking and will thus be better able to drink responsibly.

As a result, if the drinking and driving ages in the United States were flipped -- with the drinking age at sixteen and the driving age somewhere between eighteen and twenty-one, there would be far _less_ drinking amongst teenagers and far _fewer_ alcohol-related traffic accidents. The wider the gap between the legal ages for drinking and driving, the more time teenagers would have to learn how to drink responsibly. _The point is that the current laws on the drinking age and the driving age exacerbate the problem rather than solve it_.

The lesson of the paradox of policy is that in the absence of policies, laws, and institutions, citizens are forced to make decisions on their own. Without being able to rely on the state to make decisions for them, citizens will most often make the best choices for themselves. _In this way, a nation with a state that is far less pervasive and intrusive than states in modern times is a nation in which its citizens are much freer to choose what to do, and thus to do what is best for themselves_.

V. ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE POWER GAME

The state uses the credible threat of the legitimate use of force and the corresponding promise of security as weapons in the battle with other types of man for supremacy in the here and now of earthly power -- of power over fellow men.

Since the separation of church and state, the power of the state has trumped the power of the church. People are subject to the rules of the church for two hours on Sunday while they are subject to the rules of the state twenty-four hours a day.

However, since the state depends on the economy for tax revenue and for the support of the people, the power of the economy trumps the power of the state. Though the state is much larger than the largest corporation, the cumulative power of the economy is much larger than that of the state. For example, New York City appears to be the most powerful city in the United States, even more powerful than Washington. However, Washington's power stretches around the globe via the United States military and thus trumps New York City's power. Nevertheless, the cumulative power of every major city in the United States is vastly superior to Washington's power.

_Though humanity has wasted so many lives and so much time fighting over religious issues, religious tolerance may be the single greatest discovery that man has ever stumbled upon_. Additionally, the rise of secular power and the decline of the church's power have led to much _less_ fighting between states than previously.

Though the twentieth century had the largest and most devastating wars thus far, it also had the single longest period of peace between the major nations of the world. The increase in living standards in these major nations during the postwar economic boom of the second half of the century was the single largest increase in history.

The lives of people at the turn of the twenty-first century are so much better off than the lives of people at the turn of the twentieth that they would not believe what they saw if they were alive today. There are people alive today in less developed countries who would not believe their eyes if they saw the average home in developed countries. _People who experience dramatic increases in living standards and the quality of their lives owe a debt of gratitude to the state and the church for providing both religious and secular peace_.

Though war machines generate extraordinary profits for particular interest groups within a state, they do not increase the standard of living for the majority of citizens within that state. _At the same time, it is in the states where its citizens feel the most secure which most often experience dramatic increases in both living standards and the quality of life_. _Its citizens no longer need to worry about their life or their liberty and can focus on the pursuit of their happiness_.

The result of the power game between the state, the church, and the economy is that what a person once did for the sake of god or for the sake of a prince, he now does for the sake of his own bank account.

Chapter 8: The Academy

The world has always been full of chaos and insecurity, though humanity is far more aware of it than the rest of the living world. Death awareness drives us to know as much about life as possible and spurs us to discover ideas that we can use to battle the forces in this dangerous and frightening world. Just as life rests on death, ideas rest on human beings -- _for all ideas originate from and lead to death_. _Humanity created the academy to fulfill the basic human need of the need to know_.

Ideas are the most powerful force within humanity's control, and at times it appears as if ideas chose us as the vehicle for their expression, not the other way around. _By far the most valuable of all of our creations is language -- the treasure trove that houses ideas_.

Scholars faithfully ensure that our ideas are carefully preserved in libraries. Libraries are churches for language, and god resides as much in our libraries as in our churches -- _for language is god, and god is the written word_.

These ideas -- these technological innovations -- drive history, and _all_ new ideas are minor variations on or recombinations of pre-existing ones. Our dominance over the rest of the living world is due to the accumulation of ideas over vast amounts of time passed on eternally from one generation to the next. _The written word is the key innovation that accelerated the rate of our advancement_.

Geniuses generate these innovations while scholars gather and collect these ideas -- the ideas of others. Geniuses are intelligent enough to figure out how to create the conditions for the production of their genius. All of the greatest creators in history were unbound -- they did not work at the academy where they were forced to distort what they did or said just to feed themselves.

While geniuses generate ideas, scholars are the _keepers_ of them. Scholars are like squirrels -- they gather and assemble the ideas of others. Scholars lack either the intelligence or the confidence necessary for the production of genius. Scholars are forced to exchange their creativity for their daily bread -- in this way every scholar eventually falls out of history. Scholars are forced to seek refuge in the comfort and conformity offered by the academy, which protects them from the harsh realities of the world. _None of the wisest human beings who have ever lived were scholars_.

The academy teaches the institutions and the systems of the giant that rules us all. Students learn the power structures and economic systems currently employed. They rarely if ever are taught the ways and means to succeed in society as it is. They are _not_ taught to critically think or to criticize society's institutions -- _they learn what the ruling class wants them to know_.

Students are _not_ encouraged to brainstorm ways of improving society's institutions. On the brief occasions that these ideas are discussed, it is only in the context of utopias -- of non-existent, unattainable worlds. In other words, the only alternatives a student experiences while at the academy are alternatives that do _not_ and can _not_ exist. _Students are supposed to reach the Candidean conclusion that the world as it is right now is the best of all possible worlds_.

The argument runs as follows -- if it were possible to have better institutions, contemporary society would have incorporated them long ago into the present system. Since any proposed institutional innovation is _not_ part of the system today, it is easy to deduce that it is simply not _possible_ or _feasible_ to incorporate this innovation into contemporary society. Instead of learning how to change society for the better, students learn the rules of the game as best they can so that they can live the best of all possible lives for themselves in this best of all possible worlds. _In this way the academy fulfills its ultimate goal -- to get each student to come to the realization that there is no reason to rebel against the current ruling class \-- that today's society must be and is the best of all possible societies_.

Rather than teaching the wisest ideas to humans so that they can convert themselves into human beings, the academy aims to turn individuals into useable automatons that desire nothing more than to conform and obey. As a result, most students learn next to nothing while at the academy about the rules of the game of life and even less about how to play the game of life to win. The vast majority of students emerge from the academy as obedient conformists and useable automatons rather than as human beings. Only a select few end up teaching themselves how to act like human beings -- members of this all-too-small minority are able to take advantage of the opportunity to take a single, gigantic leap up the social spectrum when they depart the academy and enter the economy.

I. ORIGINS OF THE ACADEMY

The academy originally served as the estate in which the geniuses of the previous generation taught the geniuses of the next. The academy was the place where geniuses studied society's institutions and invented ways of improving them.

Only much later was it that society shifted the focus of the academy from teaching a few geniuses to providing _universal_ education. The academy channels its universal education _against_ the exceptions for the good of the mediocre. Universal education is so concerned with unnecessary and bothersome learning -- with technical jargon and speculative theories -- _that it is as if it is intentional that the academy teaches all the wrong stuff_.

This bombardment of useless information makes it more difficult to live our lives -- forcing us to sift through the mountain of rough to uncover the few precious diamonds that are worth knowing. Even the brightest students become hostile to knowledge itself. _Instead of the geniuses of the previous generation teaching the geniuses of the next, the mediocre of the previous generation teach everyone in the next generation_.

_Society uses universal education to create the ideal herd animal_. The academy commands its students to extirpate those instincts with which they can be enemies, can cause harm, can be angry, or can demand revenge. _The academy succeeds on those particular graduates who emerge tame, harmless, and predictable_.

The academy's universal education always aims to condition the individual by various attractions and advantages to adopt a way of thinking and behaving that, once it has become a habit, will dominate him to _his own disadvantage but for the good of society_. _The academy unleashes brutal training designed to prepare huge numbers of students to become usable and abusable in their service to society_.

Over the ages, ruling classes have hired scholars to teach the other social classes what the rulers want them to know, while ordering scholars to remain silent on what the rulers do _not_ want the other classes to know. Only the rich and the idle get to appraise the life of man -- for they are the only ones who have both the time and the money to pause and reflect and to produce their results. The rich finance themselves, while the idle receive funding from the rich to acquire the necessary leisure time to write. In return, the idle tell stories their financiers want to hear.

The ruling class provides the grant money that finance academies, either directly via endowments or indirectly via the state. The veritable livelihood of these naive, foolish, Candidean scholars depends on their ability to constantly reinforce how _their_ society is _the_ society.

For example, it is no surprise that political scientists and economists in Christian, liberal democratic, capitalist societies are constantly extolling the virtues of _their_ system. Political scientists and economists are the best salesmen democracy and capitalism could ever have wished for. _Yet, all scholars everywhere and at all times are constantly explaining how their society is the best of all possible societies_.

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE ACADEMY

The academy aims to turn humans into cogs to serve society. The means is to use education to teach students to be bored -- to teach them that knowledge is boring. The task is accomplished by instilling the concept of duty into student's minds \-- that the sole reason they exist is to serve society as best as they can. There is no sign of the individual anywhere in the academy. The academy's goal is to create the ideal serf, an individual ready and willing to enter into a life of servitude in service to society. _The obliteration of the individual coupled with his maximum integration into society's hierarchy has always been one of humanity's ruling principles_.

The academy does _not_ teach students anything they need to know to play the game of life to win. Though the academy claims to teach truth, scholars spend no time teaching wisdom. The academy is not concerned with originality and creativity; it is concerned with reaffirming, fortifying, and justifying the status quo. Scholars stifle their students' creativity while simultaneously controlling them as much as they can.

Scholars are left telling fairy tales about how the world works. These fairy tales do as much to conceal as to reveal how the world works. Just as children are told fairy tales to mask the harsh realities of life, students are told fairy tales by the previous generation. _The academy is composed of nothing more than storytellers_.

As students are told more and more fairy tales, they drift further and further away from the reason they went to the academy in the first place -- to learn. Most students drift so far away that they lose sight of the purpose for which they entered. _The academy just ends up serving as a tool for power -- a means for creating and controlling citizens_.

Though students are given a brief and vague overview of the rules of the game, they never learn them well enough to criticize them or, even better, to create their own. Learning demands poor eyesight -- for students learn to look at propositions through a monocle. They fail to expand their horizons and to see both the antithesis and the plethora of potential interpretations that exist with regard to _any_ particular proposition. Instead of learning how to see what is missing and to experiment with themselves and with life, students are led into the realm of mediocrity, where they become a mindless mass that merely repeats all that has been said and done before. In this way, students are prepared for a life of bowing to the powers that be upon graduating.

_The state uses the lower levels of the first tier of the academy to tame and annihilate the individual_. It is far easier to govern a state full of obedient conformists than one full of human beings who can think for themselves. The state funds academies that in turn teach two things \-- obedience and conformity. _Pupils entering the academy for the first time are less spoiled by their miseducation than the adults teaching them_. In these youngsters, there is something wild which first has to be tamed. _The academy's first task is to tame these wild humans_.

_The economy uses the higher levels of the first tier of the academy to convert human beings into usable automatons_. Students are taught how to be the best cog they can be instead of how to complete the transition from acting like a human to acting like a human being. _As a result, the majority never completes the transition into adulthood -- only a few learn to act as human beings while the majority act all-too-human_.

Only a few students elect to continue into the second tier of the academy -- that of higher education. The higher the level of the academy, the deeper beneath the wheel the student slips. The undergraduate enters not knowing anything but aware that he doesn't know anything. The graduate student begins to think that he knows a few things but still lacks confidence in anything he knows. The scholar pretends to know everything while having forgotten long ago that he doesn't know anything.

The task of undergraduate education is to let students roam free through the library. Undergraduate education is the period of an individual's life when he has the most leisure time to do whatever he wants -- to think, to create, to travel, or to party.

The task of graduate education is to use the library to crush students beneath its weight. Like everything else in life, education is all in the degree -- graduate school is the period when an individual has the least amount of time to think, to create, to travel, or to party. Graduate school teaches physical and psychological exhaustion -- _for too much pressure compresses thought_. Mental exertion muddles thought, rather than clarifying it. Graduate students also learn to obey authority, how to balance time amongst many activities, how to be workaholics, and the basic skills of reading, writing, and debate.

_The highest levels of the academy are not concerned with fostering creative thinking -- they are concerned with creating foster thinkers_. Doctoral students are forced to concern themselves with the ideas of others rather than their own. These incipient scholars are so busy with deadlines, useless theories, and other people's ideas that they never have the time to pause and to let their thoughts come to them. In this way, the education of students at this level of the university remains absurd -- it is rare even for these incipient scholars to like anything they learn.

In the end, every tier of the academy is used to subdue and to control the student with force and to forge him into an obedient conformist and a usable automaton. _Academic studies are capable of wasting a man's life and keeping him from learning many useful things_.

III. THE ACADEMY VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL

The fundamental transformation of the purpose of the academy from teaching the next generation of geniuses to providing universal education has had disastrous consequences. Talented individuals from the previous generation go on to become leaders of their generation while the mediocre ones are left over to teach the next -- _those who can do, and those who can't teach_. As a result, talented individuals from the next generation are forced to learn from the mediocre individuals of the previous one.

For example, long before arriving at the university, every genius has surpassed the intelligence of his best and wisest scholar. The genius recognizes that scholars are more interested in teaching obedience to authority rather than obedience to the art of thinking. Being taught all the wrong stuff often discourages and disgusts even the best and brightest students -- they end up losing interest in ideas, losing faith in society, and wandering off course for the rest of their lives.

A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on scholars -- for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Scholars go to infinite pains to nip the few profound or more valuable intellects in the bud.

Scholars are members of the underprivileged, and the most fundamental instinct of the underprivileged is revenge. Scholars go around preaching petty morals and petty convictions and live pettily ever after, never achieving greatness. Instead, these jealous, envious, vengeful, and untalented underachievers stifle geniuses and attempt to drag them down.

Scholars aim to discourage students, to force them _not_ to think for themselves, and to ensure that they give up any attempt to scan the horizon of human action, for fear of what they might observe. In their effort to extirpate the individual in each of their students, scholars surely accomplish one thing -- they extirpate the individual within themselves. Scholars are like peas -- no one can tell them apart.

The academy stifles creativity, often cutting off the strongest instincts of youth at the roots. It can even deprive youth of its fairest privilege -- of its power to implant in itself the belief in a great idea and then let it grow into an even greater one.

One of the greatest rip offs in life is to be offered admittance into the scholarly guild. Sure, the previous generation of scholars will admit the next, but in exchange for their souls. Every scholar wants an influx of the passion, the fire, the energy, and the originality they themselves lack. They need it -- for they are vampires that feed on originality instead of blood. A creative soul with innovative ideas nourishes them and keeps them alive. Each scholar is a dead soul -- for each had his own soul ripped from his body at the time of his admittance to the guild.

The qualifications required to become a scholar are the same of those for any load-bearing profession -- these camels and mules need to be stubborn, to have the ability to let the custom and tradition of their discipline dominate their thinking, and to have uncritical and unquestioning allegiance to those in charge -- to the heads of their discipline.

It is hard to imagine how traumatic events must have been in the life of a scholar to get him to desire to remain lifelong in the academy. They remain safe and secure behind the walls of the ivory tower, where everything is fixed and predictable -- that is to say _dead_. Scholars seek comfort in the past since they lack the fortitude necessary for dealing with the present and the future. Scholars are weaklings and cowards who remain in the academy their entire lives because they are too afraid to face the harsh realities of the world.

To be granted admission into a discipline, scholars must swear allegiance to it -- blind and uncritical allegiance. Upon taking the oath, they are no longer permitted to speak critically of their discipline. Once they stop speaking critically of their discipline, they stop thinking critically of their discipline. Once they stop thinking critically, they are no longer scholars. Instead, they end up reducing themselves to knowledge salesmen -- peddling the goods that other men create. _Scholars are salesmen like in any other profession -- they just peddle knowledge instead of goods_.

The games scholars play spring from their need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary and innocuous world. The academy offers them refuge -- a place where they can take the time and trouble to strengthen themselves against fear -- to combat the dread of death within themselves.

Even though scholars are experts in their own field, they are often oblivious to matters beyond their expertise. These poor scholars are so focused on their never-never lands and the never-never lands of their colleagues that they have long lost interest in the world going on around them.

Scholars display a mysterious combination of arrogance and incompetence -- of comprehension of reality and complete withdrawal from it. A thin veil of smiling faces masks an undergarment of dejection and depression. These poor souls force one another to write utterly useless and ludicrously difficult articles. Except for themselves, no one will ever read their works.

Scholars spend all of their energies on saying yes or no -- of criticizing what _others_ have thought \-- they themselves no longer think. Scholars have to read before they can think -- when they are not thumbing pages, they are not thinking. Scholars are only permitted to look at one side of an issue. On occasion, the best scholars are able to _describe_ a social dilemma -- they are _never_ able to offer a means of _solving_ it. Scholars overestimate the importance of their little corner of the universe. Scholars are good, unthinking, happy children who take themselves far too seriously.

_Scholars only defend the status quo -- only writing stories for which they will receive funding in return_. The result is that scholarly treatises favor the views of the ruling class. Scholars are unwilling to depart into uncharted territory -- _for scholars aim to disturb no one_.

Scholars prostitute themselves in the same way that politicians do -- in their attempt to satisfy their craving for their positions, they sell every piece of themselves that made them who they are. In return, they eventually obtain a chair at the academy, but they are no longer the creative individual they were when they first desired that chair. _Scholars just end up becoming puppets representing powers far greater than themselves -- acting as retained attorneys for the ruling class_.

Scholars are linguistic policeman -- they are adamant defenders of historically accepted metaphors and are opposed to the creation of new ones. Scholars stand in direct opposition to _creators_ \-- those who lift humanity on their shoulders and carry us forward a few paces. _All_ creators work in the realm of freedom -- _all_ work in the open pastures of language.

Scholars dedicate themselves to the accumulation of an effort that transcends many generations. These searchers remain faithful to a task that many predecessors have begun long before them and that they too will one day leave to their successors. This tenacious trudging forward is long-lived, yet never-ending.

_The further away we get from the level of the individual, the less we know_. If scholars appear to be babbling when they talk about global politics, or macroeconomics, or the history of civilization up to the present, they are. In fairness to scholars, _all_ of these topics are far too complicated to speak meaningfully about. When students go to the academy, they are not going to learn how the world works for the simple reason that no one knows how the world works. It is little wonder that the majority of students emerge from their education and immediately plunge themselves into a life of servitude. _Still, students owe at least one benefit to the academy -- access to its library_.

IV. ROLE OF THE ACADEMY IN MODERN TIMES

_The ever-accelerating hyper-specialization of humanity demands that students -- incipient worker bees -- know a great deal about a precious little, while knowing a precious little about a great deal_.

Scholars remain silent on this great deal -- for this great deal contains the source of the most interesting and challenging problems facing contemporary society. _What could possibly be the source of this paradox of universal education -- of educating the universe of humanity about nothing of value in the universe_?

Nearly all of the problems facing modern man arise from the skewed distribution of wealth in favor of the ruling class -- both _across_ and _within_ nations. Since humanity has achieved dominion over the rest of the living world and made tremendous strides in facing nature, the major source of misery in an individual's life emanates from his fellow men.

Nature is a plethora of riches, and each animal's ecosystem is a Garden of Eden for that particular animal. It is a rare sight to see a starving animal in the wild; yet, millions of human beings are starving around the world.

It is in the ruling class's best interest that individuals should know as little as possible about where they stand in the game of relative social standing. For if each individual knew, then the comfort, security, and predictability that the ruling class has spent millennia building would collapse overnight, as it has done during various revolutions over the ages.

Though the central problem of Christian, liberal democratic, capitalist societies is the skewed distribution of wealth, it is rarely if ever discussed -- even in courses in economics and politics. Economists discard this problem as political while political scientists consider this problem an economic one.

Taken together, it is as if the ruling class has set up this game in which economists and political scientists study and teach nothing of relevance or importance -- that these scholars only conjure up diversions to steer students away from studying what is worth studying -- that of the single most fascinating political economy issue in modern times.

Instead, students of economics and political science waste countless hours learning about indifference curves, marginal utility, referendums, and voter preferences instead of learning basic facts and relationships about the political-economic world they've been thrown into.

The distribution of wealth and poverty are rarely discussed at the academy -- after all, the students attending are _never_ society's poorest. As a result, no one at the academy has a vested interest in aiding the poor -- that is to say those poorer than themselves. The flip side of this issue is that academy succeeds in its mission -- of masking how poor those in attendance are in comparison with those in the ruling class.

However, on the rare occasions that the topic of poverty comes up, solutions are discussed, though none are ever proposed involving a major redistribution of society's wealth. Trying to solve the problem of poverty without using an effective and substantial means of redistributing wealth is like trying to build a house without using wood, nails, bricks, or mortar.

This example of how the academy plays the shell game epitomizes the role of the academy throughout history -- _that what remains untaught is often far more important than what is taught, while what is taught is often of little relevance and even less significance in living life_.

A clever student may well wish to enter the academy and only listen to what is said to take note of what remains unsaid. The unsaid problems facing modern man are the ones most worthy of discussion.

Though these problems remain unsaid, they do not remain unexamined. The library houses a plethora of information on all of these topics, even if it requires an extensive and diligent search through a haystack of information to find them. Perhaps enough clever and adventurous students will delve deep into the bowels of their library and learn enough about these unsaid problems to venture into the world and do something about them.

Rather than creating bold and clever adventurers who are ready to face life head on, the academy only prepares students for a specialty in which they can earn their livelihoods, while stamping out whatever sense of freedom and individuality they may have had prior to entering. _The academy now serves solely as the breeding ground for developing the next generation of worker bees_.

V. ROLE OF THE ACADEMY IN THE POWER GAME

The academy uses the promise of rapid social advancement and the corresponding rewards and punishments associated with knowledge and truth as weapons in the battle with other types of man for supremacy in the here and now of earthly power -- of power over fellow men.

In modern times, the academy has been reduced to nothing more than a tool for the state and the economy. The vast majority of students only proceed through the lower tier of the academy, emerging ready to serve society as best they can. For the few who venture into higher levels, they end up disappointed and discouraged to learn that even in the upper tier there are no lessons in the art of thinking, but only advanced lessons in the art of obeying.

The academy is the youngest and the least powerful estate. The academy can be a wonderful place for an individual -- so long as he forgets everything that scholars try to teach him while he sits in the library teaching himself what is truly worth knowing. _Just as it is with each discipline, the academy itself is ... academic_.

Chapter 9: The Family

Life has been in a continuous struggle to remain victorious over blind chance ever since coming to be. If life has a purpose, that purpose is to procreate itself. _Procreation is innocent and holy -- for all living things, sexuality is omnipotent_.

Within any particular species, there are multiple varieties, many of which have adopted different strategies for survival. Variety is not only the spice of life, it is also its sustenance. Increasing the variety of the species increases the probability that enough individuals will survive during environmental upheavals. _How environments will change or which varieties will produce beneficial mutations is uncertain, so the species does not favor any individual over any other, or any variety over any other. The species just wants enough variety to ensure that some types survive_.

As long as there are enough members to sustain the species, no single individual is of concern to the species. _Though a species is not concerned with which individuals procreate, the individual is solely concerned with procreating itself_.

_It takes all types to make up the human race_. Since none of us has any idea which individuals are best fit to survive environmental upheavals, humanity has created the institutions of marriage and the family to offer the opportunity to procreate to as many individuals as possible.

Marriage originated at the dawn of civilization as a means of guaranteeing the propagation of the species while simultaneously maximizing the likelihood of health and success of the offspring and thus of the offspring's offspring. Marriage also offers guaranteed sexual gratification to each partner while minimizing the rivalry that arises in the quest for multiple partners. _Both marriage and the family aid humanity in maximizing the survivability of the species by creating as many individuals as possible whose lives are as long and as healthy as possible_.

Everything in the complex interaction between members of our species is ultimately linked to producing healthy, viable offspring -- _everything_. _All social behavior is based on the pursuit of procreation possibilities_ \-- _making the most and the healthiest offspring with as many mates as possible_.

Human beings who contribute to our survivability do so via the paths of procreation or technological innovations. Those who venture along the path of procreation do so via the family. On the other hand, those who venture along the path of technological innovations perform their duty via the institutions of the church, the economy, the state, and the academy. _Both paths fulfill the ultimate goal of our species -- of reproducing ourselves eternally_.

I. ORIGINS OF THE FAMILY

_The institutions of marriage and the family originated to satisfy two of man's basic drives at once -- sexual gratification and procreation_. Procreation is simultaneously a path to survivability and to eternity. For each individual, procreation brings the highest feeling of power -- _god-like power_. This creation of new life brings in the future -- of ourselves and our species. Every human being is genetically programmed to reproduce. The sex drive commands and demands dominance in _us_ as a means of letting life's forces flow through the next generation and beyond. _The drive to procreate is a human being's strongest drive_.

Playing the mating game makes us smart and forces us to become ever smarter. We drive ourselves to higher intelligence via ever more complex games of social interaction in the pursuit of mates. The skills necessary to _survive_ are relatively minimal while the skills necessary to _thrive_ are extremely complex.

Every individual makes alliances in an attempt to outwit and out-duel potential rivals in the pursuit of a mate. The best strategy is to have no clear strategy -- to remain as unpredictable as possible. Just as for all other life forms, _the game of life for human beings is the mating game_.

The _natural_ instinct of male human beings is the same as all the other large animals -- to mate with as many females as often as possible. On the other hand, the _natural_ instinct of female human beings is the same as all the other large animals -- to be highly selective in choosing a mate and to mate with as few males as possible. Millions of years of evolution have genetically programmed male and female human beings to pursue these asymmetric mating strategies.

This asymmetry between the sexes creates tensions between man and woman, between husband and wife, and within the estates of marriage and the family. The asymmetry starts with procreation itself. In a one-time, random sexual encounter, the male is able to walk away with no lasting reminder of the encounter yet with the feeling of triumph that comes from satisfying life's aim. On the other hand, the female may end up stuck with a lasting reminder -- for the next nine months and beyond.

Based on this drastic, fundamental asymmetry, the institution of marriage first appears as a strictly _feminine_ institution -- that society created marriage to force the _father_ to _rear_ the child as well.

However, marriage is not solely for the sake of the mother. The father is _equally genetically_ bound to marriage since it is in _his_ interest and _his genes'_ interest that each child be given the necessary support to grow into a healthy adult capable of producing healthy children. _Marriage is such a successful institution because of the benefits it confers in rearing children to both women and men_.

Though the male and female relationships to _rearing_ are _mutual_ , they too are _asymmetric_. The relationships between father, mother, and child share basic commonalities. Having a family requires the parents to make sacrifices. Husbands and wives each play different roles in fulfilling all of the basic drives and needs of their families. Together, their contributions maximize the chances that their family's goal is achieved -- to produce as many healthy offspring as possible, who in turn will be given the best opportunity to produce healthy offspring in perpetuity.

Each spouse specializes in rearing the child \-- the father acts as _protector-provider_ for his wife and children while the mother acts as _bearer-rearer_ for the children. It is natural for a mother to raise a child as a newborn at least for the first year. After all, the mother and child were one for nine months, and it will take time for separation to occur \-- first from the umbilical cord and finally from the breast. _Working together, father and mother act as life-givers -- as the child's veritable gods_.

Anyone who discards this theory as too oversimplified may wish to witness these experiments. If someone were to make a pass at a female in front of her male, the protector part of him would rage forth. If someone were to take a swing at one of their children, the protector part of both parents would rage forth to the aid of their child. Parents defend their children with the tenacity of individuals who are defending their opportunity to live eternally through their genes. _Family bonds are not just cultural -- they are genetic_.

These insights explain why the penalties for deadbeat dads are so severe. Though any male can _conceive_ a child, the key is to _rear_ the child to a healthy adult. It is in society's interest to see that both parents remain together \-- for parenting doesn't end at conception, it _begins_ at conception. These insights also explain why it is so psychologically troubling for parents to lose a child prematurely.

For those individuals who fail to complete the transition into adulthood -- deadbeat dads and other types of overgrown adolescents, marriage appears as a prison. On the other hand, for people who complete the transition into adulthood and are ready and willing to live eternally via their children, marriage appears as the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Parents sacrifice themselves to create a kingdom of heaven for _their_ children. In many ways, having a family is a form of dying -- of parents electing to let their bachelor lifestyles die so as to usher in a new and better lifestyle for their children. For no matter how attractive either parent is, a bond between husband and wife develops in which each stops publicly advertising sexual readiness while still remaining attractive.

_The symbolism of the wedding rings and their corresponding strategic values can not be overstated_. Each ring emits a magical aura that protects and shelters both the children and the parents. The children get to be raised by loving parents in a peaceful environment that resembles the kingdom of heaven. The parents get to sexually gratify one another while simultaneously sending a clear signal to potential rivals to back off -- that neither partner is presently participating in the mating game.

Not only do parents make sacrifices, rival mates do as well to ensure that a family succeeds in achieving its goals. Society devotes years to shaping individuals and teaching them to be obedient, respectful rule followers. In return, having a majority of obedient, respectful rule followers provides each individual with the best possible opportunity to procreate and to pass himself on eternally through his children.

Of all of society's rules, one of the most-adhered-to is that of the ring -- most rivals abide by the ring's rules and leave each respective parent alone. _This is the main advantage offered by marriage -- it minimizes rivalry between potential mates_.

As with any rule, there are always exceptions. Power and politics apply as much to marriage as they do to all four of the other estates. When it comes to marriage, there are rule _makers_ and rule _takers_. The clever ones make the rules for the not-as-clever ones to follow. The rule makers state that an individual may mate as often as he likes with one _but only one_ partner for a lifetime, but he _must_ leave _all_ other potential mates alone.

This is the ruling class at its finest -- _rule takers_ must bind themselves to the prison of _one and only one_ mate. On the other hand and as usual, rule makers are above their own rule and live in accordance with their natural instincts and urges. _Rule makers_ may mate with whomever they please. Witness the behavior of most politicians -- the promiscuous puppets of the ruling class. As a result, these clever rule makers benefit immensely from their social status while the not-as-clever rule takers struggle to adhere to artificial covenants or to combat their most natural urges for the rest of their lives.

Still, on the whole, _marriage_ offers strategic value in handling _external_ relations. On the other hand, _the family_ offers strategic value in handling _internal_ relations. The family derives benefits from the _centripetal forces_ that serve as the _strategic_ impetus for getting married -- this veritable gravitational pull applies to both _genetic_ and _social_ forces.

While the _state_ allows individuals to _retain_ the _gains_ they make playing the game of relative social standing, the _family_ allows individuals to _transfer_ the _gains_ they make from one generation to the next. _These intergenerational wealth transfers allow the ruling class to remain in power in perpetuity_. _Via the family, the powers that be are the powers that were are the powers that will be_.

On the one hand, the family allows for wealth to be transferred seamlessly via trust funds from one generation to the next. On the other hand, marriage and the corresponding prenuptial agreements preclude new entrants into a family from obtaining the family's wealth in the case of divorce.

The interests of ruling class families are well-aligned with those of every family. The accumulation of wealth brings with it first and foremost an increase in _relative_ social standing. The additional wealth also increases the educational and social possibilities of children for generations to come. A family with only one fortunate generation has the potential to perpetually sustain that success. _In this way, each successive generation accumulates the gains made while the family's predecessors played the game of relative social standing_.

Wealth not only increases the family's _power_ for the current generation, it assures _genetic_ success for future generations as well. Over generations, a wealthy family will become a more beautiful one, and the beautiful and wealthy individuals within the family will have their pick of nearly any mate. _As a result, wealthy families win the economic, the political, and the mating games_.

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE FAMILY

Though the mating game _arises out of_ the desire to gratify the sex drive, its gratification often leads to procreation, and children often lead to marriage. _Every individual plays the mating game, which depends on his ability to lure potential mates based on his and their relative attractiveness_.

For both women and men, each individual's attractiveness depends on beauty, social status, intelligence, personality, and psychology and how important each of these factors is to each potential mate.

Far and away the most important factor is beauty -- physical beauty. After all, sexual selection is a major reason that human eyesight is so well-developed. We judge the sexual fitness of potential mates based on physical features -- symmetry, complexion, body, and voluptuousness -- that are all best perceived with the eyes.

An individual's physical beauty most often directly relates to the beauty of his genes. After all, the scarcity of beautiful individuals is what makes them beautiful. Not only is beauty the factor most easily observed, it is also the rarest and the one most coveted.

Social status is the next most observable factor and the one most closely related to physical beauty -- for wealthy individuals are often able to mate with beautiful partners. Wealthy individuals of the present generation are sought since they can be counted on to rear healthy offspring for generations to come.

Additionally, for generation upon generation, the wealthy are able to mate with the beautiful. As a result, the wealthy tend to become wealthier and more beautiful with each passing generation. _In this way, wealth is the second most important factor for two reasons -- possessing wealth attracts beautiful mates in the current generation, and mating with the beautiful across generations tends to make the wealthy more beautiful as well_.

The other three factors -- intelligence, personality, and psychology -- are far less important than the first two factors. In the majority of cases, intelligence is the third most important factor since intelligence often leads to rapid social advance. In turn, social advance will eventually fuel the engine of wealth and beauty for generations to come.

Though the personality and psychology of a particular mate are undervalued and sometimes completely overlooked, most often they are the two most important factors in whether or not a relationship will be a successful one.

Additionally, these five factors bear special relationships with one another. The most obvious symbiotic relationship is that of wealth and beauty. Other relationships include that of observations like why is it that the beautiful frequently treat others around them so poorly and are so quarrelsome? It is for the simple reason that they are so used to getting their way, on the off chance that they do not, they do not know how to handle this type of situation and lose control.

First of all, physical beauty is most often genetic -- originating at birth and remaining with an individual for years. Since beauty is so rare, the beautiful receive special treatment from the time that they are babies onward. Since _nearly everyone_ offers preferential treatment to the beautiful -- often acting as their servants -- the beautiful come to expect preferential treatment from _everyone_.

The beautiful also notice that regardless of how they _act_ , they will still receive preferential treatment from _nearly everyone_. Thus, no matter how poorly beautiful individuals treat others -- most often those who refuse to offer preferential treatment to beautiful individuals just because they are beautiful -- there is always an army of others waiting and willing to serve them.

When it comes to the mating game, the beautiful -- no matter how poor their intelligence, social status, personality, or psychology -- _always_ have the opportunity to receive sexual gratification from nearly any mate, since there always is a multitude willing to overlook or even to refuse to acknowledge the character flaws the beautiful individual possesses.

It is quite possible for some individuals to live without thought, or at least with very few thoughts. Beautiful individuals -- both male and female -- know this and have little need for enhancing their intelligence to succeed in the mating game. In fact, they thrive regardless of how well developed the other four mating factors are in their particular case.

_The not-as-beautiful compensate by becoming wealthy, educated, and developing wonderful personalities and psychological types_. Only the not-as-beautiful _need_ to develop their intelligence -- for intelligence offers an alternative to beauty. It is often clever individuals who eventually lay claim to the most wealth, which often attracts the most beautiful of the opposite sex -- for any increase in an individual's social status increases his desirability as a mate. _In fact, any substantial endowment or increase in any of an individual's mating factors increases his desirability as a mate_.

Both of these relations are easily observable \-- how many scholars or doctors are beautiful? How many beautiful individuals are willing to devote the necessary effort to become scholars or doctors? Are there anything but a few examples of beautiful comedians, or telephone representatives, or radio personalities?

_Individuals who inherit beauty have already won the game of life_ , while the not-as-beautiful struggle their entire lives to enhance their overall attractiveness to make themselves as sexually desirable as possible in the absence of wondrous physical beauty.

_Physical beauty_ is universal and as a result is _not_ in the eye of the beholder; however, the overall _attractiveness_ of a potential mate is. _In effect, beauty trumps all while the four other factors serve as alternative ways of compensating for shortcomings in physical beauty_.

During the mating game matching process, every individual selects from four groups of potential mates -- by far the largest group is that of unattractive mates. The second largest group is the one seen with the eyes -- that of _beautiful_ mates. The third largest group is the one seen with the heart -- that of _attractive_ mates. The fourth and smallest group is the one seen with the mind -- that of attractive lifelong partners. Only on rare occasions are individuals lucky enough to find _one_ mate who satisfies their eyes, heart, and mind. In this rare case, an individual would have to be crazy not to pursue and to marry this potential lifelong partner.

On the way to finding a partner with whom to mate, individuals seek sexual pleasure. How do individuals manage their sex drives? All of the following mating strategies apply equally to males and females. The beautiful have their pick of _everyone_ , and can then own, command, and exploit _anyone_ they choose. The not-as-beautiful want as much as the beautiful to satisfy their sex drives.

When a relationship is reduced to the actual act of sexual intercourse, the gap between the beautiful and the not-as-beautiful narrows considerably to no difference at all in the dark. Though the feeling of ejaculation is nearly the same across _all_ individuals, the _cost_ of acquiring intercourse differs greatly between beautiful and not-as-beautiful partners, and most individuals assign far too much weight to the sex itself as they play the _mating_ game.

The _attractiveness_ of men and women is widely dispersed across humanity and varies from one individual to the next. Each male has his own relative standing on the scale of attractiveness -- depending on his beauty, wealth, intelligence, personality, and psychology.

Regardless of where any particular male lies on the distribution of men, he always has many women to choose from at or below his relative location. However, he must spend tremendous effort to lure a female that is _more attractive_ than himself. On the contrary, if he chooses to mate with an _equal or less attractive_ female, he can do so while expending far less energy.

As a result, the very attractive and beautiful can choose nearly any partner and can do so without expending effort. Not-as-attractive men can match with these attractive and beautiful women, but only by selling their souls to her. The chosen male partner will be forced to exert an excess of energy and effort just to _sustain_ the relationship. This excess exertion will come at the expense of satisfying his other drives, his leisure time, and quite possibly even his sanity. As a result, any male who tries to match with a more attractive female most often fails since it simply requires too much effort. The rest balance the effort they are willing to spend with the attractiveness of the female with whom they eventually mate. _As a result, most matches are of equally attractive males and females_.

All animals follow the path of least resistance -- including human beings. However, the more intelligent a person is, the more attentive he is to forward-looking possibilities. As he searches, he may recognize that to achieve the path of least resistance over his entire lifetime, he may have to exert tremendous effort over brief periods of time. For example, a man courting an attractive and wealthy female may expend the highest effort imaginable to close a marriage deal -- but only in return for the relaxation offered by residing within his spouse's wealth bubble for the rest of his life.

Mating matches most often lead to marriages; however, the keys to _successful_ mating matches are different than those of _successful_ relationships which are different from those of _successful_ marriages. Affairs most often demand a match in physical beauty, while relationships demand a match in personality and psychology types, while marriages demand a match in the long term plans of each partner, for example -- whether or not each wants to raise a family with the other.

Only those affairs where _each_ partner _continuously_ desires the other pass into the relationship phase. Each partner must continue to find the other attractive, especially physically. Also, there must be a healthy sex life, and the joint finances must be well managed. As simple as this formula sounds, it is extremely difficult to implement, which is why so many relationships fail.

Most individuals end up in relationships with the most physically beautiful mate they can find, and shortly thereafter pregnancy propels the relationship into a long term commitment. In these relatively random mating matches, at least one partner is stuck with a sexually desirable partner, but _not_ the one for an enduring relationship and certainly _not_ the one for a marriage that includes a family. _There are so many divorces in modern times because there is so little scrutiny involved in selecting a mate_.

_Marriage plays a vital role in the power game -- as each generation forms a family with which to pass on its genes, its environment, and its social status to the next generation and beyond_. Most individuals place too much emphasis on marrying the most _beautiful_ mate instead of the most _attractive_ mate possible. The correlations of attractiveness indicate that the beautiful often are _less_ desirable mates for long-term relationships. _Though many individuals opt to marry those with whom they want to have sex, successful marriages are most often between those who marry partners with whom they want to have children_.

_A marriage is worth as much as those that it joins together_. The _last_ reason people should get married is because they _want_ to get married. A successful marriage is _not_ the result of two people who want to have sex with each other or to throw a party. Another awful reason for getting married is because of pregnancy -- that pregnancy becomes the driver for marriage instead of vice versa. Another awful path to marriage is when shortsighted lovers are _in love_ \-- in these situations it often only requires a stronger pair of glasses to cure the lovers. _The lover who can picture the face of his partner twenty years older would perhaps pass through life undisturbed by love, romance, marriage, or the prospect of having children_.

It is for these reasons that the church is so adamantly opposed to pre-marital sex -- it is trying to eliminate marriages based on sex instead of love. The church instructs its members to stop seeing with their eyes and to start seeing with their hearts and minds.

If individuals were to abide by this well-meaning rule, there would be far fewer marriages based on random matching and far fewer overall marriages. Of the marriages that would remain, they would be based on individuals marrying mates they wanted to have a family with, not mates they wanted to have sex with.

The _first_ reason to get married is because a pair of individuals have found their mates for life and _both_ want to formalize the relationship -- mainly for the sake of their children. Successful marriages are often long conversations. When entering a marriage a man ought to ask himself if he will enjoy talking with this woman up into his old age. _Though everything else in a successful marriage is transitory, the conversation never ends_.

As a pair of sequoia trees merge and grow ever higher together, they gradually fill in the space between them at the trunk -- but only much later in their individual development. This image helps explain successful marriages well -- two people start separated, but when they merge together, they gradually and retrospectively fill in the space that had once been between them, while they continue to stretch ever higher as one being.

A marriage kills many birds with one stone when it becomes a family -- the desire for sexual gratification, the desire to procreate, the desire to rear children, and the desire to ensure that the children are healthy enough to procreate themselves. _A family is a cellular unit in which two people who want to live eternally pass themselves on through their children_.

III. THE FAMILY VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL

_The principle individual within any family is the child -- for a child is eternity incarnate_. Through their children, parents live eternally. However, with each successive generation, a particular individual's contribution to his offspring is cut in half. With each successive generation, half of the individual continues to disappear. An individual is only half of his child, a quarter of his grandchild, one-eighth of his great-grandchild, and so on. Only four generations out, an individual is reduced to a mere one sixteenth of that particular child. Still, so long as that particular child is born and chooses to procreate, the individual continues to live -- eternally.

Every procreation is a gamble, and every child is unique -- _for out of a child anything can grow_. Each child is an experiment, a unique combination of genetics, environment, and luck geared to perpetuate the species. The miracle of a child results in a unique individual, a human being who is both _of_ and _not of_ his parents.

During genetic recombination, genes that overtly appeared in the parents remain covert in the offspring and vice versa. Genetic recombination makes it possible for a child to look nothing like either parent. It is as if the life force itself let each child be a random draw from the entire human gene pool as a means of producing an endless series of entirely unique individuals. _Mixing together two random poker hands can form a straight flush, just as mixing together two straight flushes can form a random hand_.

Once born, environment takes the lead as each individual bounces around like a pinball through one event after another. Just as pinballs never follow the exact same trajectory, neither do individuals. At the same time, multiple individuals experience the exact same event. It is wonderful that the sum total of events making up the human condition have all been done before. Yet, each individual's participation in and particular path through these events is unique -- unlike anyone who has come before or anyone to follow.

Yet, before any child gets too excited about his uniqueness in the world, he must never forget that his freedom is finite -- _to talk of freedom, hah_.

No child chooses his own parents. He doesn't even choose to come into this world -- these decisions are made for him. A child does _not_ choose the relative social standing of his parents, the environment in which he is reared, or even his own name. _He will be bound to his own family legally, socially, and financially at least until adolescence and genetically bound throughout his life and the lifetimes of all of his progeny_.

His world view will remain forever entwined with that of his parents and siblings. Throughout life, most children remain more tightly bound to their parents than to any other two people -- if only in terms of their outlook on life.

Still, a child must never forget his uniqueness in the world. The magic of procreation offers enough freedom and separation from his parents to distinguish himself as the individual that he is. _He is not his father just as he is not his mother -- he can be something more than just a combination between the two_.

Each child is a unique mixture of beauty, wealth, intelligence, personality, and psychology. Depending on a variety of environmental factors -- with his parents' relative social standing as the most important -- a child can burst forth into the finest flowering or wither away and die.

The sooner a child starts actively controlling his environment, the sooner he will start blossoming instead of withering. For example, with a concentrated effort, a child can develop a personality and a psychology type totally different from either parent. Under favorable conditions that can sometimes verge on the miraculous, an individual can overleap a long succession of ancestors and within a single lifetime transform himself from a plebeian child into a member of the highest nobility.

IV. ROLE OF THE FAMILY IN MODERN TIMES

The idea that men are more promiscuous than women is broadly believed, though nothing could be further from the truth. After all, who are these promiscuous men having sex with -- themselves, each other, sheep, the one whore in the whole town? No, men are having sex with women -- that is simply how the game of life is played.

A more accurate idea is that _married_ men are more promiscuous than _married_ women. Why then are these married men so interested in women other than their own spouses? Who is responsible for this unfaithfulness -- their wives most of the time.

Remember, the mating game is asymmetric for males and females -- for men and women. Once a woman is married and with a child or children, she has already succeeded both genetically and biologically. Over time during a marriage, the married woman becomes the source of her own marital problems -- especially _sexual_ problems. Often the first thing a woman does when she becomes a wife is restrict or deny access to her private parts. The wife not only no longer wants to have sex with her husband, she no longer wants to have sex with any man. By closing off the outlet for the release of her husband's sex drive, the wife begs and drives him to search elsewhere for sexual gratification.

Who then are these married men having sex with? On rare occasions these extra-marital affairs are with married women, but most often they are with single women -- either eligible bachelorettes or prostitutes. This explains why so many women are prostitutes and so few men are. Again, the asymmetry in the mating game is why so many women are able to earn a living providing sexual gratification. Certain men demand and are willing and able to pay for sexual gratification because they are not able to acquire it elsewhere -- often not even in their own homes.

The only way one type of woman is _willing_ and _able_

to make a living providing sexual gratification is if there is another type of woman that is unwilling to provide sexual gratification. After all, millions of years of evolution are congealed in the genes of women to get them to accept genes from as few men as possible. This _asymmetry_ amongst _women_ explains why prostitution is the oldest and still one of the most successful and lucrative professions.

On the other hand, there is _symmetry_ amongst men in desiring sexual gratification -- _for all men desire sex all the time_. After all, millions of years of evolution are congealed in the genes of men to get them to spread their genes across as many women as possible. This is _not_ to say that _any_ man will have sex with _any_ woman -- mating and matching apply equally as much in the case of unfaithful husbands as they do in the cases of faithful ones and eligible bachelors.

Why then is there an asymmetry in prostitution between women and men -- why are there so many more female prostitutes than male? The reason is simple -- _for all men are prostitutes_. Under the right set of circumstances, any man will have sex with an attractive enough woman. Though the man is unfaithful to his current mate in these extra-marital affairs, he remains faithful to the forces of life flowing through him.

In fact, so many men are willing to have sex with so many women that any particular woman can _always_ find a man willing to have sex with her. In effect, the overabundance of male prostitutes drives the wage for male prostitution down to zero. In these cases of women seeking men, the man chosen is not only happy to provide sexual gratification free of charge, he sees it as an opportunity to save money on dinner and a movie while still being able to have sex.

The plethora of male prostitutes also explains why so few men are able to make a living as prostitutes. For the few men who are able to make a living providing sexual gratification to women, they are extremely physically beautiful and, on average, much better looking than female prostitutes. Since any particular woman has so many men to choose from and can have sex with any of them for free, only the not-as-beautiful women are forced to pay to have sex with these beautiful male prostitutes.

There are many promiscuous women in the world \-- they are just far more subtle in their approach to affairs than men. In the typical affair, the man is likely to brag or at least to leak information about the affair while the woman is likely to keep it a secret. The fact that men are encouraged to be proud of their sexual encounters while women are encouraged to keep them secrets is yet another example of asymmetry between the sexes. As a result, married men are just more likely _to get caught_ having an affair. _The point is that it take two to tango, and men and women are equally promiscuous on the whole_.

Faithfulness -- this peculiar trait that solely applies to human beings -- is demanded amongst those who agree to enter the _bonds_ of marriage. However, the demand of faithfulness lies in direct opposition with the life force itself.

Well, many men and women are incapable of remaining in faithful fetters throughout the entire course of a marriage. During the struggle to remain faithful, the desire to mate with multiple partners turns inward, requiring incredible willpower to combat man's most natural instinct. As a result, many fail.

Infidelity destroys many marriages. These affairs are often perceived by their spouses as direct, personal attacks -- though most often they are nothing of the sort. If anything, it is exactly the opposite -- affairs are the result of men and women naturally and innocently letting the forces of life flow through them.

The point is this -- if either spouse demands faithfulness from a partner, then the spouse needs to remain attractive so that the partner keeps choosing the spouse as the _sole_ source of sexual gratification.

In fact, the _rarest_ type of marriage is one in which both spouses remain faithful to one another for their entire lives. Another rare type is one in which both spouses renegotiate the terms of their marriage to align better with the life forces flowing through them -- that is to say they each eventually agree to have extra-marital affairs. The most frequent type of marriage is one that involves affairs -- perhaps on the part of each spouse -- but they are both able to keep their secrets well and successfully. The second most frequent type of marriage is one that involves affairs -- but affairs that eventually become common knowledge -- and end up being resented by the faithful spouse. Most often, these relationships had long been over _before_ the affairs began.

In the aftermath of these affairs, the spouse who remained faithful -- or least the one that never got caught having an affair -- most often demands some form of retribution. This retribution, this revenge, often takes the form of divorce.

Why has divorce become so prevalent and so socially acceptable? Does anyone win from divorce? It appears that both spouses get to have their cake and eat it too -- to have children and to get momentary reprieves from raising them. Each parent returns to a bachelor lifestyle, and most often one of them \-- usually the husband -- no longer plays the role of protector. He gets a total reprieve from rearing the children even though he still plays the role of provider.

Though the parents appear to win, this is not the case -- _every family member loses from divorce_. _All_ of the centripetal forces of marriage reverse their polarity and become centrifugal.

The biggest losers are the voiceless ones -- the children. Not only are they forced to endure the spousal politics during the divorce, they are forced to live like pinballs thereafter -- bouncing back and forth between mother and father.

Divorced parents are no longer able to take advantage of the specialization that marriage offers, and their roles become muddled. As with any scenario in which responsibilities are not clearly defined, required tasks stop getting performed. The mother often becomes both the rearer and the protector of the children, while the father's role is reduced to that of provider only. The mother has little room left for love, and, except for financial support, the father is no longer around to offer anything at all.

_At the level of the family, divorce is suicide_. Divorce destroys all the gains that marriage promises. For the children, their parents are divided in half, their one large home is condensed into two small apartments, the family's assets are split in half, the chance of pursuing advanced education \-- which is often the way out of the madness for the children of divorced families -- is cut in half, and their futures are mortgaged.

Though no one wishes spouses with irreconcilable differences to remain together, everyone wishes that people would only marry those with whom they wish to be and to remain with -- at least as long as it takes for the children to mature enough to take care of themselves. If parents could at least maintain some basic relationship until their youngest child reaches adolescence, then the damage from divorce would be minimized. During this critical phase, adolescents begin the healthy process of divorcing themselves from their parents on their way to becoming independent adults.

However, the younger the children, the more destructive the impact of divorce. _Those with the most to say against the divorce are the least able to speak_.

Among young children, not only will they experience the reduction in the quality of their present and future lives, they may suffer psychological damage as well. Just as the parents involved in a healthy marriage most often succeed in rearing healthy children, the parents of divorced families most often rear children along a path of misdevelopment. These children are likely to come to the conclusion that their parents' joint decision to divorce serves as a signal that society has given up on them. In turn, these victims of divorce often rebel against society rather than contribute to it.

Another broadly believed notion is the idea that society is always getting worse. Every generation embraces the idea that it is the worst of all time. However, there is evidence that our generation may in fact be the first to claim this and be correct.

Crime committing -- drug abuse, violence, and other anti-social behavior -- is at an all-time high and continuing to get worse. Soothing the pains of existence -- psychiatric counseling and using legal forms of medication -- are more popular than ever. Do these trends merely coincide with the trend that the divorce rate is at an all-time high and continuing to climb or is this a causal relationship?

It was only a couple of generations ago that both the church and the state made it _far more difficult_ to get a divorce. At that time, there must have been many failed marriages artificially held together because divorce was not permitted. Now, we have the exact opposite case -- marriages are failing everywhere. Also, since it is easier to get a divorce now, there is far less incentive to be picky in choosing a mate. Rather than choosing a mate for life, men and women appear to be choosing to mate with their most recent sexual encounter. _As a result, humanity is producing children in record numbers and rearing them with unprecedented irresponsibility_.

The harm from divorce to society does _not_ originate from the choice that these overgrown adolescents make to return to their bachelor lifestyles, the harm comes one generation later -- when the children of these overgrown adolescents become adults. Most often, these lost children fail to behave as human beings and behave instead as mere humans -- that is to say just like their parents. These victims of divorce are much more prone to become psychologically abused social orphans and crime committers.

So, is society getting worse from one generation to the next? Yes, but there are ways to reverse these trends. The key is to attack the forces that lead to divorce -- to encourage abortion in the case of unfit parents, to offer financial incentives to married couples, to make the legal costs of divorce exorbitant, to change social tastes back to where divorce is socially unacceptable, and, most importantly of all, to educate and encourage individuals to marry their lifelong mate instead of their most recent fling.

As it now stands, it may well be that if some form of certification -- _any_ form of certification -- were _required_ to have children, then at least one-third of humanity would fail the test. The academy may very well be the estate that holds the key to a solution.

A _useful_ course could be offered in the upper level of the lower tier that explains how to compare the _attractiveness_ \-- not just the beauty -- of potential mates. _Given that this decision is the single most important decision that individuals who wish to have a family will ever make -- a decision that needs to be made with the proper head -- providing guidance in how to make this decision is in their and society's best interests_.

V. ROLE OF THE FAMILY IN THE POWER GAME

_Though humanity is not concerned with which individuals procreate, each individual is solely concerned with procreating himself_. This creation of new life ushers in the future -- of himself and of our species. Even before the dawn of civilization, individuals began forming families to consolidate their earthly power and to procreate their _particular_ genes. Each family uses the promise of more and better procreation opportunities as weapons in the battle with other families for supremacy over fellow men -- in perpetuity.

_First and foremost, humanity is composed of families_. Each of these families competes with the others, using the other four estates in its battle for dominance. Though the roles of the church, the economy, the state, and the academy have all changed over the ages, the role of the family -- the oldest, the most important, the most sacred, and the most eternal estate -- has remained the same. _As a result, the power game that individuals in each generation play is not so much about their individual success, it is about the success of their genes and their families for generations to come_.

_All_ the games that man has ever invented for himself are linked to helping families produce as many of the _healthiest_ and the _most beautiful_ offspring as possible. All four of the other estates were created to aid families as much as possible in achieving this ultimate goal. For example, though at first it appears that individuals play the game of relative social standing in service to the economy, it is really in service to their own families -- to their own offspring and to their most distant progeny.

In general, men dominate the estates of the church, the economy, the state, and the academy as they fulfill the provider part of their duty as husbands and fathers. On the other hand, as women fulfill their roles as bearer-rearers, wives and mothers dominate the estate of the family. Through this specialization of parental roles, neither husband or wife nor father or mother is more powerful than the other. In this way, each household is able to maximize its power both _within_ and _beyond_ the family.

At first, every individual plays the game of relative social standing to acquire as much social status as he can to lure the best possible mate for himself. After finding a mate, he then generates additional wealth to rear his offspring to healthy adults.

Often individuals do not stop playing the game here -- some continue working once they have attained a comfortable standard of living for themselves and their immediate families. These individuals are the ones interested in rapid relative social advance. Once they advance enough along the social spectrum, they will be able to _accumulate_ wealth, which will not only help their offspring, it will help their offspring unite with beautiful mates.

A family that starts accumulating wealth usually continues to accumulate wealth. Once a particular family's engine of wealth accumulation finds fuel, that family's success is assured for generations -- both _socially_ for the current generation but even more importantly _genetically_ for generations to come.

Once a family acquires enough wealth, it becomes a member of the ruling class. Among the ruling class, marriages are alliances, veritable machines for consolidating wealth from one generation to the next. Members of the ruling class either do not get divorced or only enter into the bonds of marriage under the caveats of prenuptial agreements.

At the most basic level, every family brings together a male and a female human being to create offspring and to remain together to raise those offspring to healthy adults, who in turn are given the chance to create healthy offspring. However, through the institution of marriage, each family not only aims to pass on its genes, it aims to pass on its environment and to improve the relative social standing of the next generation -- _eternally_.

_The power game that each generation plays via the path of technological innovations is just one round of the eternal power game that our genes have been playing for thousands of generations via the path of procreation. In effect, our genes use us as they play the eternal power game -- simultaneously increasing their own and humanity's survivability. In this way, each family satisfies its aim, the ruling class satisfies its aim, our species satisfies its aim, and life satisfies its aim -- the cycles circulate_.

Chapter 10: The Power Game

The one and only goal of life is to perpetuate itself. Those of us who contribute to our survivability do so either via procreation or via technological innovations.

As for _you_ , nature doesn't care; life doesn't care; our ancestors don't care; humanity doesn't care; the church doesn't care; the economy doesn't care; the state doesn't care; the academy doesn't care; and the family doesn't care -- _you are the only one who cares about you_.

If nature doesn't dispense of you in some mishap; if life doesn't nip you in the bud; if your ancestors don't rob you of any chance of success; if humanity doesn't clip your wings; if the church doesn't dull your passion for life; if the economy doesn't consume your energy; if the state doesn't confiscate your freedom; if the academy doesn't crush your spirit; and if the family doesn't force you into an unwanted relationship, then you have the chance to master yourself and your life. _Onward to_ _The Power Game Volume II_.

THE END

Examining the dual Table of Contents below shows that The Power Game Volume I and The Power Game Volume II have been designed like a ladder: a reader could read the usual way -- starting with the first volume and reading sequentially through the end of the second volume. The innovation in writing these two volumes is that a reader could also read across the two titles in the matching chapters, for example: reading chapter 3 in Volume I entitled "Human" and the corresponding chapter 3 in Volume II entitled "Being," so that across the two books the chapters can be read as "Human Being."

About the author

Jeff Katzman is the founder of Prometheus Enterprises and has been working on The Prometheus Project for over 25 years. Jeff has been a writer, a public speaker, a Vice President of Operations, a professor, and an economist. His motto is read classics and travel. Jeff authored the companion volume to this book – The Power Game Volume II. He is also the author of the first two volumes of the Prometheus Trilogy \-- Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound. He is currently working on Part III of The Prometheus Trilogy -- Prometheus Triumphs.

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