Consume Some Knowledge

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children with strong reading comprehension skills.  I return briefly to the real world today after an extended stay in my preferred fantasy realms to attempt to dissuade you from your rampant consumerism.  I know it's been done a million times before in a million different ways, but I'd like to do it through promoting a different set of values which can replace the emptiness of body image and ownership obsessions.  I'm here today to tell you why intelligence and strong, self-realized ethical values are vastly superior.

So here it is:  You are not your possessions.  The clothes you wear, cars you drive, homes that you don't really own are not a part of you.  Not even your effortless weight loss, miraculous hair growth, or discreet penis length increase is you.  You're not who you vote for, or how many Facebook friends you have.  There is only one thing which can accurately be labeled as "you," and that is your mind.

Your personality, your experiences, and how you interact with the world around you is what defines you.  You could be the richest most attractive person in the world and still be a terrible person.  In fact, most of the richest and most attractive people are also the worst people.  When all is said and done, your money and your possessions and your physical image will be gone, but the person you were will still live on.  That's what a legacy is.

Kings, queens, presidents, and dictators are ultimately judged in the same light as poor, nameless peasants: for their actions.  The only difference is the level of influence each life has, but influence is not always measured in power, wealth, and fame.  Every one of us is shaped by those that came before, be they our teachers, family, or communities, we our all constantly pushed and pulled in all directions by countless influences.  Some are naturally stronger than others.  Family supersedes most influences, especially early in life, and we live in an age of tremendous monetary, media, and societal influences, but strongest, most lasting influences are those of free thought and self-realization.

If society were to collapse overnight and it was left to a handful of survivors to rebuild the world, the civilizations that their efforts would create would bear little resemblance to ours.  Except in one aspect: their principles of science, logic, reason, and discovery would be nearly identical to our own if left unchecked.  These are things which cannot truly be forgotten because they are not truly taught, they are discovered, invented, innovated.  The sun will set tomorrow for the same reason it set yesterday, and if this reason is ever forgotten, it can be rediscovered.

But if we all do our parts there's no need for society to crumble.  This isn't done through supporting your local economies through consumerism, it's achievable simply by being ethical and passing this idea along.  And I don't mean ethical in a religious or governmental sense.  I mean the strong kind of ethics that come from seeing a good deed have a good effect on a person.  The type of ethics which come from feeling bad and not wanting others to feel the same.  No threats of damnation, imprisonment, or even death can replace these ethics if properly passed along.  Nothing can take away your ability to do a good deed, to see it's effect, and to feel it in your heart, just as nothing can stop the force of discovery and progress.  These things can only be halted for a time, for they are universal.

So where are your efforts in life truly best spent?  In building knowledge, character, empathy, and understanding, and then passing these things along to others.  If you put your time to these, people will remember you and how you affected their lives and they will do the same.  Your legacy could burn bright then fade out, or consume the lives of others, but the best legacies are those which spark in others and lead them to their own understanding.  This is the unstoppable force greater than economy and government combined.

Hellfire

So thoroughly they burn,
Stilling, killing, willing
All to ashes filling urns.
The flames so bright
They stir the dead,
And frighten souls interred.
And each one has its turn.

None

Solitary, I
Watch the duality
Of the Triumvirate play
Out before my weary eyes,
Their pent up rage boiling over
As if hexed.  How they fall to
Pieces like trees in September, though with less
Height, the simplest of breezes able to break them
Like a flimsy set of nine pins.  Fools!  Only the
Rarest of men may bask in the decadence of power uncorrupted.