Last Saturday our daughter was married and we had the most amazing and fun wedding ever, at least according to all the attendees. After the smoke had cleared and the bottles and glasses picked up, after the hotel keys were found and the sprained ankles looked at, the horn was drained, the birds were singing and the world awoke to a new dawn, a new age. This, of course, means that my sweet wife and I are Old News. Over the hill, gone beyond Now into History. If I have learned anything about history it is that every mans history is another’s future. Each time I note another new age spot, a new ache, I see the joy in her eyes as she said “I will” and the look in his eyes was so similar to one i had when I told my new bride how beautiful she was. Now what do we have to look forward to? Gee, I suppose we could see a grandchild, but these days nothing is assured. How could two intelligent people bring a child into a world filled with fascists, nationalists, “religious” extremism? In our globalized world no armed clash is local, especially when your government is fond of selling weapons to people. But, and it’s a big but, we have a small group of disconnected idiots trying to squeeze the last drops from an old era and they are in charge of things as they are now. Increasingly we know that governments are installed by money for the defense of money, and rarely concern themselves with the lives of the people. Consider a reductio ad absurdum : two humans left on the planet, and one has all the money. The other has a stone. The first one wants the stone badly, so they offer up some of the money, but the second does not wish to sell. The price war advances until finally the owner of the stone sells it for all of the money. Now there is a new stone owner and a new rich person, so this is an economy, yes? but does it create or advance humanity in any way? No. So, economies by themselves are not life supporting. Exchanging goods and services for money gets you nothing. Now, suppose we have a half dozen people and one has the money, one has a stone, one has grown wheat and one has nothing but sexual organs and a willingness to use them. The rich person gives all of his money for the stone. The new rich man gives part of his money for the stick, some for sex and the rest he places in a hole beneath his sleeping area. The man with wheat trades wheat for sex and the female agrees to help him steal the money to buy a stone…. and so forth. Now, the economy moves along with many more people and trade goods, but the money per se is not the main factor here. Suppose two of the people get married and merge their fortunes and goods? This is not an economy exactly, but what is exchanged results in an increase of what is held to be valuable. Each feels rewarded, loved, protected, respected etc and no money, no stone or stick passes hands. Sex, sure, but not as a trade but as an expression of love. So: an economy based on love and respect does more good than an economy based on exchanges of material goods. Barter rather than profit, and consensus rather than bargaining. In the marriage ceremony both partners promise to do that which they already have willingly been doing: love, honor, respect and care for the other. If humanity married humanity there could be no wars. If we loved the gestalt of life the way we love our partners, there could be no wars. It would be nice if all our marriage ceremonies included the promise to “take care of the Earth, to respect Life and those within the Sphere of Life…” because after all, if a marriage were to result in children, how much nicer a world it would be dedicated to love and devotion rather than profit making, wars and distrust.
