Chapter 9
The Physical World

Pleasure and Pain

Our bodies are our limitations. So much can be enjoyed by existence through pleasure and yet there’s so much potential for pain. Survival of the fittest is a condition that we as humans share with the animals. We are going to suggest some of the basic factors that contribute to obstacles that must be overcome in our lives. Let’s develop a basic structure and description that can bring understanding and help offer the tools required to recognize and deal with obstacles effectively. These obstacles are derived from our environment and also from man’s invention. The environmental obstacles such as need for food, clothing and shelter are obvious and every living being faces them. The obstacles that we must face derived from man’s invention are much more multi-faceted and vast requiring ever increasing self-reliance to identify, understand and combat. There are two primary factors that make us prevalent over the animals; one is that we have the ability to nurture or exterminate all life and two is that man has the ability to fathom the infinite. Development of the conscious can lead to wisdom that can serve to the fathoming of the infinite. The lack of developed conscious cannot fully fathom the infinite. This results in a lesser ability to produce good for the common populace. Albert Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge. Imagining the infinite may be a difficult concept to grasp and even more difficult to relate to others, but the riches that can be derived from it and the good that can bestowed upon mankind far surpasses knowledge.

When peace is available to us, many people take the time to enjoy what they have and place that foremost in the make-up of who they are and how they relate to others. We would like to show a dividing line that more clearly defines a secondary group to give a better understanding of the complex nature of what we are describing. Those in the secondary group, while most can enjoy pleasure, find themselves more concerned with preservation and dominance over their fellow man. These two groups of people represent those that enjoy pleasure predominantly and those that fear pain predominantly. Those that fear pain predominantly tend to be motivated towards positions of dominance over those who enjoy pleasure predominantly. One can see these physical manifestations and the way an individual reacts to them as one of the lowest common denominators that might be factored into a working understanding of what comprises good and evil in a man’s mind. But there is more to it than that.

If our bodies were not a consequence, we could neither suffer nor enjoy. No one knows what happens when our body dies. Many have suggested that, likewise as in life, additional pleasures to enjoy will be there or additional pains to endure will be there. So our vision of life and our vision of death is very similar. But one can be seen and known for sure and one cannot. The group that fears pain predominantly focus more on the one that cannot be seen for sure because it’s one of the tools they utilize to gain dominance over the other group.  The group that predominantly enjoys pleasure concentrates mostly on the things that can be known in this world and rejects being ruled by the unknown. These two factoring ideologies serve as the cornerstone of the two extremes that guide the way we live in this world. The group that predominantly fears pain devises techniques to insure that they will not experience pain even at the cost of providing pain to those they gain dominance over. All means of human imagination and ideas can be utilized by each group to control others and share the power with those people of a similar mindset necessary to maintain the control that they need in order to keep the other group at bay. The group that predominantly enjoys pleasure utilizes intellect and reason to combat the group that tries to rule according to ideologies based on unknown factors. It is not that those that predominantly enjoy pleasure do not also believe and validate the importance of unknown things but that they do not subscribe to the idea that the definition of the unknown as presented by the other group is a trustworthy concept on which to design our lives.

Through the course of time society’s rises and falls have maintained the same patterns but have gotten to the point where they take up a greater percentage of the planet, so there is more at stake than just civilization itself. Now the world is covered with people and development and it is not far off to suggest that we may be in the process of developing the final model now. This model may be developing into a global model, and when that falls, everything has the potential to fall with it.

The catalyst that may have begun the end in this final model was the discovery of America. This new world brought promise but also new responsibilities and challenges that the group that predominantly enjoys pleasure and the group that predominantly fear pain were not ready to face with joint purpose. The problem was that we had a whole new arena available to us but we entered into it with all the flaws and scars that remained from our upbringings which were founded in problematic and limited perspectives. We were not equipped to do things properly and in unison. We came emulating the example of that which we were running away from and didn’t even fully realize it. We came with an iron fist and now instead of being the oppressed, the immigrants took their places as the oppressors to oppress not only the orginal inhabitants of this new world but also each other. We were so anxious to escape religous restriction that we allowed the guidelines for the way this country was set up to be greatly influenced by the idealism of freedom and equality for all. All this existed despite the fact that the totality of the populace did not practice what they preached, and in fact, the foundation of this country was shrouded in the hypocrisy of what it stood for. What can best be described as a sheer act of idealism and a hope to produce ultimate good, the founders of the country felt they needed to pass these ideals into law.

The idea of equality for all in a country that has the capacity for individuals to gain great wealth and influence, and is thus guided by people with self-interests, hardly has a chance of gaining fruition. Still, the promoted ideal of “equality for all” has attracted genuine equality seekers, hopefuls from countries from all corners of the globe where opportunity to improve one’s lot in life is dismal. Due to the fact that many of the leaders of this country and those whose vested interests they served were among the wealthy and established few, their attempt to control the growing multitudes of the general populace was destined to be futile. What was bound to eventually happen was that in a country of freedom and democracy, the multitudes would eventually gain the power to rule just by their sheer number, something we are now witnessing more so than at any other time in America’s history. Today we’re experiencing problems that have come to fruition largely due to the effects of the devices that were utilized by the controlling minority that sought to gain and maintain their desires over and above the general populace. So in essence many of our problems have been caused by these leaders not conducting their leadership by the guidelines of the constitution that were structure to insure equality but by any guidelines they saw fit to insure their control and power flourish. Some of these devices utilized by this group has left lasting ramifications on our world today, many on a global perspective, so that we as a country are now faced with challenges and a heightened degree of responsibility as our country has never known. The resulting damage from legislation and a system corrupted by its party in power has resulted in a new era of change that this country has previously unseen. The dam that was so well maintained before has finally broken and the general populace have become discontent enough to finally have a voice that is being heard by lawmakers and those in power who quiver in fear that their kingdom is crumbling. Never before has the general populace had so much influence and ability to change the shape of our country. However, the devices created by the powerful and elite who have controlled our country thus has had its effect to the detriment of the general populace which is made up of many minorities that have been subjected to the many devices it implemented to maintain control. Just a few of these devices are lack of education, lack of opportunities to improve one’s lot in life, lack of civil rights; all of which kept intact a class system which for the most part maintained itself and kept the minority party in control. When the process of the transfer of power has reached its final stages, what will be found is that this new group which is unqualified to lead effectively will be inheriting one of the most problematic countries that has ever existed rather than the one that was originally discovered and had so much promise.

The structure of government is no longer tied to religion though the tools and implements of religion are still utilized. As no tool that is useful will be overlooked by these zealous controllers. So what continues to happen is that the weak is made to serve the strong. The strong originally gained and maintained their strength by the initial land grab and holdings of the tools that society required to insure the basic life existence and pleasures would keep the general populace satisfied enough and filled with hope for further positive growth. What has happened is that those who endured under the rule became very large due to the incredible efficiency that was gained by the rulers in their governing due to the overwhelming growth in power and wealth of this country. It took fewer rulers for a greater number of people that now came from all over the world to be kept in control than ever before. One of the things that motivated those that predominantly enjoyed pleasure was the idea that they were free and equal to all others. In order for this free world all those that were in power to dominate had to allow these people to continue this belief system. Herein lies the thorn in the side of our world today.

What those in power didn’t fully realize was that the dream had the potiential to become a nightmare. When those that had served for so long in their station in life as limited and oppressed people still increased in numbers their population swelled, their lack of education and higher level opportunities grew until the inevitable one day happened. These individuals, because of the freedom that they have, eventually achieved the numbers necessary to band together and rule. But their ruling is stunted in its positive outcome because of their limited backgrounds. During the period of time that this transition is taking place is where we are today. Those that have and still seek to control cannot hold back those that do not have because of their numbers. So the only hope of the leaders in control now is to continue to utilize the developed weapons they have from the past such as ignorance and control of economic resources until this too ultimately fails.

One of the byproducts that we observe today are the views of both sides as they continue to become more extreme in the push and pull battle to find solutions that will provide instantaneous delivery as our populace becomes ever more desirous of “quick fixes” and immediate gratification of wants and needs. We are at the point where the polarization of ideas is so extreme that when you couple it with the desperation of a largely uneducated society that desires the most immediate relief to their problems both sides find themselves lulled into a sense that they can still take control and gain everything they desire by enforcing their will over the rest of the collective populace at any consequence to them. The unfortunate result is that neither side any longer possesses a firm truth or can be beneficial to either themselves or the other side or anyone else because of the now desperate nature of their decisions and the compromises contained therein.

Today, we see the dangerous trend of, rather than both sides finding middle ground and working out their differences, both sides are moving down a path of further polarization and extremities of thoughts and ideas. As we continue moving down this path, we are moving farther and farther away from ever being able to find common ground with one another to resolve differences. The only logical result that can be obtained from the polarization created from such a scenario is that another entity will have to emerge from the ruins of our failed society that offers a solution that will seemingly serve all. Because both sides were not able to resolve their differences effectively they will be tempted to surrender control to this new entity out of desperation and nowhere else to turn. The ability to control both sides for the first time is greatly enhanced. Once this is accomplished the entity will be undefeatable because of the nature of its ability to be unrecognizable. Truth can only be found in the common search by all men for the good of all men. Because this new entity is a result formed from polarization man will have lost its ability to redirect itself back on the path of middle ground and where truth can be found. This entity is an entity not of people but of the totality of the systems that people have propogated. This propogation will have been a result of all the positive and negative things that society has ever brought forth into reality. This entity will take on a power and life and force of its own unbeknownst to us and to the surprise of many whose consciousness were oblivious to the higher level things that were going on all the time. This is one of your conscious’ highest level abilities - to not only safeguard yourself from these types of things but also to safeguard the entire human race from what has often been referred to the seemingly ambiguous and complex label of the beast.

How do we move forward? The new leaders must come from the middle rather than the extremes of both sides. The new leaders must see the flaws from both sides. If this new metamorphosis does not occur, the detriment to all may not be able to be overcome and this society’s fall will be inevitable. Additionally, our modern industrial and technological means have now stepped in to create additional complications to our struggle for peace. Our ability as a human race to understand these concepts and shift our focus to finding middle ground in order to maintain global peace and preservation of our global resources and ultimate love for our fellow man is vital to our very survival.