THE HUMAN MISSION

Introduction

DEVELOPING THE HUMAN MISSION

Purpose

Man's favorite pastime is the game of speculation. We like to wonder, to guess, suppose, postulate, and play "what if" with just about everything. It doesn’t matter what the subject is; sports, politics, religion or how the crops are going to do this year, we are going to speculate about the outcome and the cause. We want to try and guess what's going to happen, why it happened, and what might have happened if things had gone differently. Horse races, football games, every manner of sport has speculation at its foundation. It's the life's blood of radio and TV talk shows. Financial deals, stock trades, and real estate ventures are all speculative activities. We are curious as cats, and life is one big guessing game to us. But the one thing we have speculated about most is the question "What are we doing here"? We’ve wondered about that for ages, and are no closer to an answer than we were when we lived in caves and drew magic pictures on the walls. And, after all that time, we’ve conditioned ourselves not to really expect an answer. No one actually expects that question to be definitively answered, but we keep on asking it. Why?

When we ask that question, it’s our way of asking for guidance. Humans have wondered about the purpose of existence for thousands of years and, lacking a clear explanation, keep on living generation upon generation without a focus on what path we should take. "What are we doing here?" It is the question at the back of everyone’s mind. It is the magic formula that will make sense of everything and finally free us from all the doubt and fear that living can generate. When we discover it, we will be happy and wise, and live in peace and harmony. At least that is what we think will happen. There will be no more hate, no more fear, no greed, no boredom, no crime and no war. Everyone will have spiritual fulfillment and live in harmony. If only we could figure it out. Then we’d know what to do, and we’d be happy. If we could just answer the question, "What are we doing here?"

A better way to ask the question might be: "What should we be doing here?" Because it’s pretty obvious what we are doing here. Just have a look around. We’re fighting and killing each other and destroying the planet, and in our spare time we watch television and play games and have sex and eat and sleep. There are people who devote their lives to great works, to study the universe, to fight world hunger, or to cure disease, but most of us don’t do anything like that with our time on earth. We admire those who do take a leap of conviction and try to do something meaningful with their lives. And we all would like to have something that we felt strongly enough about to devote ourselves toward accomplishing. We would especially like for our children to feel they can have great aspirations, instead of resigning themselves to spending their free time "hanging out" looking for something interesting to do. They should have something interesting to do and something to feel good about. They should have a mission to be part of as well. Life affords a great opportunity for us all, but an opportunity to do what? Does your current life look like a long series of "work, eat, play, rest, repeat until dead?" Is that the life your kids have to look forward to also? If that doesn’t seem like enough; if that’s not what you think life is all about, then you have to ask yourself what should it be about? What are we supposed to do with our lives? What is our purpose? However you want to phrase it, the intent of the question is the same. So, what’s the answer?

We don't spend every waking moment thinking about it, but we do have a curiosity about the nature and purpose of our existence, and would like to have some affirmation that the way we live our lives is correct. We mostly go about our daily activities not focused on any particular mission beyond satisfying our short-term needs, instead of being motivated by some more universal human purpose. What is immediate to us always takes priority in our agenda over what is remote, even though we know the remote eventually becomes the immediate. We need to get to the office, pick up our dry cleaning and get dinner ready. There are chores and homework and yard work to be done. There’s just no time for philosophy in our lives, and no pressing reason to make time for it. So, if we seem not to be concerned with the "big picture," there’s a very good reason. We do not have a big picture concept to motivate us and provide focus in our lives, or at least not one that we can all agree on. Essentially we have no mission.

More than likely, whether you work for a giant multinational corporation or a local small business, you have what's known as a mission statement. The mission statement is intended to be a clear summation of the organization's purpose for existence. It expresses the organization's fundamental philosophy, stating the nature of the business, its corporate identity and target customers, its general method of operation and social responsibilities, and its goals for the future, all in measurable form. Sort of a "who we are, what we do, why we do it, how we do it, and what we're going to do next" kind of thing. The mission statement keeps the company on track; focused on the criteria that makes the business a success.

Membership in a club, whether it’s sporting, social or otherwise, will usually carry with it certain tenets that exist to further the interests of the group. Neighborhoods and nations also use mission statements to define themselves. A community may have a set of by-laws that focus on the quality of life of the residents. Countries have constitutions to structure the method of government operation, maintain a national philosophy or endow certain liberties to their citizens. Spiritual and religious doctrines exist as guides for those who are members of the faith. These sorts of organizational policies generally are full of restrictions but sometimes lack a clear goal to serve as a focus for their efforts. A mission must have a goal. The one area of our lives where a mission statement is noticeably absent is in our global identity as the human race. When people ask the questions, "Why are we here?" and "What is our purpose on Earth?" they are looking for a mission to be a part of, thereby a goal to participate in achieving. And, until they get one, people will continue to live and die without really feeling there is a point to it all.

We have self-determination on our side, above anything else. Deciding that there will be a point to it all creates a point to it all. That we have the ability to make decisions is, in itself, an impetus to play out the string, to see what it is we are capable of. That we have pulled ourselves up from the dirt to the point where we can explore the universe should rally us to the cause of continuing to learn and grow. Our attitudes about what we do are at the core of our sense of value as people. We want to feel as though what we do is important. We perform a task better when we think it matters. Our motivation for performing an activity will dictate the care and the effort we put into it. We just enjoy our work more when we have a reason to want to do it. And we also get more done, and more easily, when we think we are all working as a team, and can count on each other’s help. A mission statement can clarify the motivation we have for our actions, and help us enjoy what we do and feel positive about it. We generally become whatever we believe we will become, but define ourselves mostly by what we do. And what we need to do is have a mission.

So, beyond encouraging good feelings about our work, and ourselves why do we need a mission statement? The process of developing a mission statement can be more beneficial to the organization than the statement itself. It focuses our attention on our needs, our motivation, and our philosophy. It makes us think objectively about what we are actually trying to accomplish, allow us to formulate some goals and a strategy for achieving them. We should want to develop a human mission statement to help us define what we want to do, and figure out how best to do it. Putting a mission statement into practice launches an organization in a chosen direction, and toward a desired destination. The haphazard way we operate, if our species were a company, call it "HumanCorp," we would be struggling to stay in business. We have no clear goals, no strategy for achieving them, and are moving in all directions at once. Our energies often go toward destructive competition with each other instead of working together to accomplish something for the good of the entire organization. There is no opportunity for progress there, except of an accidental sort. We can achieve more with a focus and a strategy than we ever will the way we operate presently. And we will continue to waste time, effort and resources until we find some real direction.

In order to formulate our mission it helps to have what is called "buy-in". We should be committed to the process, acknowledging that we have a stake in the result. Whatever condition the world is in, that is where we live and where our children and their children will live. The key to any success we hope to have will be acknowledging that we are all in this together, and what benefits the organization will ultimately benefit us all, since we are all part of this organization we call humanity. The continued absence of a mission is a statement to the effect that we do not care what state the world is in, nor do we care if anything ever gets done about it. I don’t think that is the way we think of ourselves. Each of us wants to live in a better world, and leave a better world behind us, not only for our selves and our children, but for all people and all children. We are a global community, and can function as a global organization with a little effort in that direction. After all, if large corporations can grow and prosper globally, without being part of our human community or having any stake in our condition, how much more could we accomplish who are actually part of this organization and care about its future?

No matter how much obvious benefit there might be in a human mission, we won’t get complete buy-in from our fellow humans, and that does not matter in the slightest. The point is not to have total commitment to a goal; it is to have a rational goal available for any of us who wish to pursue one. If there is progress along the way, everyone will share its benefits. One important point is that, although we are all in this together, each of us in charge of his or her actions. You cannot force people to help you build a bridge, and you cannot stop them from using it once it is built. The rewards are not only for the active participants, but for everyone. We will all gain from having a mission, and have nothing lost, no matter what our individual philosophies. The mission cannot be exclusionary. No one’s rights can be abridged in its pursuit, and no one can be left outside of its benefits. To think otherwise is to miss the point of organizational health entirely.

What connects us as people is stronger than what divides us. Whether we consider ourselves belonging to a neighborhood or a nation, we ultimately belong to each other. We are considerably more than our ideologies and our territories. First we are people and we have common needs and hopes. All of us, all over the world, want to be safe and sheltered, have enough to eat, be able to think for ourselves, and live and raise children in a healthy environment. Most of us are not all able to do that now. We are obviously doing something wrong, and a mission statement could help us figure out what that is, and how we can fix it.

Needs

Developing a mission statement requires asking questions to clarify who or what it is we want to become and why, and who or what it is we think we are now. What are our hopes for the future? What are some possible goals we could reach for? What are we doing now to get there? What could prevent us from reaching those goals? The way we view our actions can tell us a lot about our motives for those actions, and defining our motives will help us clarify our goals. That will indicate what direction we think would be beneficial to take. Examining some of our core values can help us more clearly see who it is we think we are, and give us an indication of what we’re trying to become, or at least where we’re heading. It helps to ask the simplest questions, and bring the answers out in the open. What are our good traits, and our bad ones? Do we value cooperation more than competition? What holds our progress back the most? Questions like these are answered by consensus. My answers will not all look the same as yours, but there will be agreement on enough things that we can get some sense of where we would like to go from here.

Before we consider our desires, we should look at our needs. We have always seen ourselves as the smartest animal on the planet, at least as far as we know. We have declared ownership of the world and have assumed control of managing its resources, those things of the Earth that we use and depend on. Considering we have the same physical needs as every other animal, an important part of our mission is to secure the basic requirements to stay alive; food, shelter, and whatever other modern conveniences we consider necessities. Obviously, the most critical thing to our mission is our basic survival. That is why the first priority has to be addressing our critical survival elements. It is the bedrock foundation of our organizational well being. What can keep us from surviving? Starvation, disease, war, and natural disaster are the most prolific killers. These things should be continuously attacked until they are no longer threats to anyone. We have to consider the long-term health of our organization in our plans. Conditions that pose a threat to our survival, whether imminent or remote, must be changed, and never ignored. The remote will eventually become the imminent, after all.

We do try and address these dangerous conditions, just not with the whole-hearted commitment that we could generate. As an example of how our efforts come up short, I heard a statistic that worldwide, some 30,000 children die each day from a lack of clean water. That’s unbelievable. Life-threatening issues like this should have priority over anything else we could involve ourselves with. Another statistic, that 24,000 people die each day from starvation, shows that our efforts are far less effective than they need to be. We have disease and poor health conditions in the world not receiving the attention they should have. If we are doing the absolute best we can, we need to figure out ways to improve. There are organizations trying very hard to solve these problems, but focusing our concerted effort on them would surely yield better results. Solving multiple problems is first a matter of prioritizing them. The highest priorities should be placed on those things that immediately affect the most of us, and in the most severe ways. What is most important to us? It should be the critical survival elements. No matter where you may live, there is someone hungry closer than you think, and there is someone without proper health care that is in need of treatment. There are towns in the path of some impending natural disaster and there are conflicts that, unresolved, could lead people into war.

While we can address hunger and disease much better than we have, there is only so much we can do about natural disasters, other than make the best preparations we can. There are certain places where the likelihood of a natural disaster occurring makes them questionable choices of places to live. Short of banning residence in these areas, planning for an eventual flood, tornado, or earthquake is the best insurance we can have against the wholesale loss of life and property. We plan our survival strategies knowing that some disasters will overcome our best efforts, but still think it is worth trying. We should be willing to likewise try and address war as a major threat to our existence, even though some may thwart our best efforts to prevent them. Wars are born of either greed or intolerance, in every case. Someone wants what someone else has, or someone will not accept anothers views. We need to address those conditions preventatively. War will seek an absolute resolution, where there is only victory and defeat. We must be willing to accept a less than absolute resolution to disputes, if we are to prevent wars. Right and wrong are not at issue in war, but the expulsion of the weaker side's position. Their outcomes do not validate one position over the other, with right being always victorious, like in the movies. Very often the winning side is the one in error. Whatever the beginnings of wars, they inevitably end. There are resolutions and adjustments made and we move on from that point. For us to consider ourselves an evolved society, war should not only be seen as a last resort, it should be seen as what it is; the abandonment of reason.

To make some real lasting progress toward insuring our future, imagine what could happen if all nations agreed, by an act of worldwide solidarity, to put all other issues on hold until our most critical survival elements were addressed? We may have a conflict with another country, but we will not resolve it today, so let’s agree to put it in its proper timeframe, and concentrate on something we can resolve today. When we let our priorities get confused, problems requiring long-term solutions can take our attention away from working on bigger problems that may have easier solutions. We can resume our marathon at any point; some of the sprints require our immediate attention. We could be concentrating our efforts on eliminating hunger in one area of the world, or getting one disease under control. Let’s put our best, most concerted effort into it, until it is done. Then we can move on to tackling disease, and getting everyone clean water. Afterward, we can resume our long-term conflicts, although I suspect that some of those would have been solved or lessened by these other efforts. Prioritizing our issues will pay the most benefits, overall. Without doing that, we will stay mired in unending lower priority conflicts and may never get to address the real critical issues that are destroying our organization.

Unity

Many people like to live by the "golden rule" which says we should do unto others what we would like done to ourselves. It is also known as the ethic of reciprocity, if you’re interested. That is a good value to have, and a rational way to behave. After all, if you and another person were to cooperate and share and respect one another’s needs, it would be more mutually beneficial than trying to dominate each other and keep everything for yourself at the other’s expense. "Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes," the saying goes. The universally understood "Golden Rule," that reminds us to treat others as we want to be treated, is a good basis for developing a human mission statement. The Christian scriptures state "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you..." which reflects Islam's wisdom that "No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself." The Hindus believe that "This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you." Likewise the Taoists advise us to "Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss." Buddhism teaches us to "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful," and Judaism similarly states "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman."

Would believing in the interconnectedness of all of us give us a better sense of direction, and help us chart our mission's course? It is critical to our sense of purpose to establish how strong we feel our human bond to be, and what our responsibility to each other is. The philosophical divide between those who accept the idea of our interdependence and those who only "look out for number one" is an abyss that will confound any real social progress. Not that everybody absolutely must work together in harmony to achieve anything, but knowing we can count on one another for help and support lays a firm foundation for our advancement. Integrity is something we value, and is fundamental to positive growth as a society. The idea of integrity is based on a concept of establishing and maintaining mutual trust between people relying on ethical principles to promote a common well being. Those who are only self-interested, and unconcerned with the condition or needs of others has no integrity within our organization, and cannot be trusted to be part of the team effort. They may, in fact, willingly sabotage the team effort in order to further their own interests.

People we like to call "team players" usually convey a sense of integrity. We feel we can trust them to do what’s right, especially for the good of the organization as a whole. Integrity is a spiritual trait, and stands as a reflection of a person’s investment in the goals of our society. Take, for example, Joe and Jim, two people stranded together on an island. If each of them works separately, they can build a shelter, collect firewood and find food and water. But working together they can do more work and complete more tasks. Their cooperation will result in a shelter neither of them could have built alone and quicker completion of the other tasks by dividing the work. They help each other to survive. Now, if Joe and Jim were offered a deal whereby they could compete for all of the food and water that the island can provide, the winner having everything and the loser having nothing at all, what would they do? It’s hard to image anyone willing to participate in that competition. But that does seem to be just the sort of mad competition going on in the world today, where some of us want to take all we can and leave others wanting, even dying.

The consequence of selfish or intolerant behavior is to make conditions worse for everyone. Some people just do not want to be part of any team effort but, because we are interconnected, socially and spiritually, there is no complete removal of one person from the group condition. Everything you take for yourself, whether possessions or liberties, you take from everyone else, even your own children and their children, in the long term. Whatever the commodity, when someone has too much, someone else has too little. We don’t live forever, sometimes not very long at all, and it’s quite ridiculous to see someone spending his life in an orgy of acquisition as if he were a Pharaoh thinking his wealth would accompany him to the afterlife. We die just as we are born, taking a solo trip with no possessions beyond our own thoughts. The best thing to leave behind is a better world. We may never have a Utopia, but we can always improve the world for those who come after us. Any harm we cause while we live, whether to the body of the earth or to the spirit of man, is left for others to try and repair, if they can.

The same reciprocity applies to fundamental liberties. Whenever a right is abridged, it is so for everyone and for as long as it remains uncorrected. That’s where the "golden rule" comes into play. Whatever we do to others, we do to ourselves and to all our posterity as well. Whatever change we make in the world, it is changed for us all. There is no isolation from the consequences of our behavior. If you don’t want your children to live under a totalitarian regime, don’t promote the existence of one. Do not encourage a culture where anyone can be disadvantaged or discriminated against because, at some point in the near or distant future, someone you know and love will be on the wrong side of injustice, guaranteed. I suppose that if someone had no children, and had no particular interest in the condition of the world past his own lifetime, he might justify becoming a sociopath, thinking only of his own interests and no one else’s. But that person would have to have no spirituality guiding his thoughts and no religion guiding his actions.

Religion and spirituality play important parts in our self-image, as our beliefs define who we are and how we act. They can be the strongest motivators for our behaviors, and provide us with a sort of moral compass to follow. The great majority of people consider themselves to be religious, and most of us believe in some higher power or creator of all things, including ourselves. This shows that we think there is more to our existence than our physical form, and that there may be underlying purpose to it all. One positive thing you have to say about religions is that they can have the effect of bringing people in line with a common purpose. This at least shows us that we are able to get together on some issues. The worst thing about religions is when different ones have irreconcilable beliefs and are also intolerant of one another. Then it’s much the same as arguing over what color is best for a sports car. It is primarily subjective, and open to interpretation. No one’s religious dogma is empirical. Facts are just whatever we agree on, and we have to let other people have their own opinions. Religion as a topic generates more varied opinions than all of our other areas of speculation combined.

Spirituality is a simpler thing than religion, as it has no dogma and no ritual. A religious person will have a particular brand of faith that he subscribes to, and adjusts his thinking and behavior to that of the organization. A spiritual person will be one who just accepts the idea that there are areas beyond the physical, and is able to be more tolerant of different ideas. There is no shortage of different ideas when, even within a particular religion, individual interpretations abound. You could take two members of any faith, interview them separately, and find substantial differences in their beliefs, owing to the variation of depth in each individual’s theology. We are not a society of religious scholars. Most of us are so unfamiliar with the faiths we are supposed adherents of that we fill in the blanks in our knowledge with theology born from our own imaginations. It’s doubtful that anyone’s religion is exactly the same as another’s. And, although religion is supposed to be a positive influence in the world, we have seen religious intolerance leading to some of the worst results. Since it seems unlikely for us to completely agree on religion, it would be less divisive to allow the broad concept of spirituality to exist as a guiding force in our mission. In pursuit of the greater good, we need to let the intolerance go and focus on the positive spiritual aspects of all our religions.

Some people will wonder if we need to endorse or condone religion and spirituality at all in a human mission? Couldn’t we just continue wandering about the planet, looking to satisfy our physical appetites, without any sort of higher cause to aspire to? In the US, at least, we are Constitutionally bound to have a separation of church and state, after all. Defining those terms "church" and "state" as spirituality and civilization, respectively, puts a different face on the problem. Do we even have a civilized society without the ethical center that spirituality provides? Our laws, our objective morality, our sense of duty and propriety, all stem from the basic "golden rule" philosophy, that what is good for one is good for all. That we set down written rules to follow and are often guided by unwritten ones is testament to the fundamental belief we have that it’s generally better for us to cooperate than compete. That is where spirituality and religion enter the picture. They are placeholders for the existential questions we ask about the nature and purpose of life, the string around the finger that reminds us how little we know about it all. It is far too easy to forget we even have questions unanswered, as distracted as we are by everything going on around us.

The world as we know it is not making any religious or spiritual demands of us. Our day to day existence is one that requires no spirituality to accomplish its goals. Its demands will accommodate the lowest common denominator of spiritual activity. The tasks of daily living consume most all our thoughts and energies, and there is little time or place for reflection on other realities. We can generally get through our nine to five without the slightest nod toward anything on a higher plane. But is that the way we want our world to be? Do we want to consider our physical life to be something distinct and separate from anything spiritual, or would we prefer to see it as something having an inherent spiritual nature, and live in a way that affirms it? There is a clear and obvious distinction between those two paths we could travel. Even though our normal physical life does not force us to explore our spiritual nature, some of us consider, or at least hope, that there is a next phase of existence awaiting us. When we pass from this mortal coil, do we really anticipate anything beyond? Do we believe in an afterlife, and do we live by a moral code that we think following will allow us to pass some higher judgement? These are the questions that examine our thoughts about the nature of our existence, and can help us get closer to what we think the purpose of it might be, if any. Are we only physical beings, physical beings possessing a spiritual nature, spiritual beings manifesting a physical nature, or something as yet indefinable?

Is it even possible for us to make a hard distinction between the physical and spiritual? If we actually see ourselves as being created by a spiritual force, is it something we are no longer connected to? Can we say there is a concrete and immutable nature to our physical world that is wholly separate from the spiritual realm in which we envision our creator inhabiting? The fact that most of us do believe we owe our existence to some sort of spiritual activity, and that we regularly ask for divine intervention in earthly matters, tells us that we feel a continuous connection exists between the two. In developing our mission statement we should consider whether we think there could be intention or meaning behind our creation and how that might influence our behavior and actions. It seems clear that, if we did not think there was some sort of thought, rationale, or intelligence behind our creation, we would not be attempting to communicate with a higher power as we do through prayer and meditation and other means. The question of intention isn’t whether there is one, because our actions clearly show we believe one exists, but what we think that intention might be. And that leads us right back to the question whose answer has always been the El Dorado of life’s mysteries. "What are we doing here?"

The Wall

If I told you that nothing exists but the solid, concrete world we live in, no God, no ghosts, no angels, no ESP, nothing psychic or spiritual like that, I think you would say I’m talking crazy. Most of us believe in something past what we can see and taste, and accept the spiritual or magical side of existence as being possible, if not outright certain. If you truly do not believe in anything religious, spiritual or magical, and think of yourself as just a smart animal, you are in the minority. We have experiences all the time that might be considered as spiritual activity, but we usually just call them luck or coincidence. We haven’t come close to explaining all the natural events that make up our world, and don’t usually give a second thought to the out of the ordinary events we sometimes experience. Science marches boldly on in the quest for understanding, but the nature of our existence remains mostly unexplained. No matter how much we discover about nature, most of us do think there is more to us and to our universe than what is obvious, and practice some form of religion as a way to connect with the spiritual side of existence.

That’s why our houses of worship are full each week. Whatever we believe caused the universe to come into being, we generally concede there was a force at work outside of our normal experience. But, for all we profess to accept about the spiritual aspect of life, and all the worship services we attend, and all the bumper stickers we put on our cars proclaiming our faith, we often behave as though we don’t believe any of it. When all our trust is placed in our physical senses, we have a hard time accepting any other kind of awareness as having value. We are in a trap of our limited human perception, where our experience is what our physical senses are able to show us, and reality becomes what we can see, hear, taste and touch. We put up a mental wall to repel any perceptions that might shake our belief in an absolute state of reality, and go through our days like this. We like to think we make a fair attempt to live by our beliefs, as we understand them, and often are successful. There is often an enormous contradiction, though, between what we claim to believe and what we act like we believe.

Even while spiritual origination may be widely embraced, spiritual activity is widely rejected. It complicates our world too much. It’s something that we can’t seem to put to work for us, so we set it aside to figure out later, like a Rubik’s Cube. We want useful, practical life tools. Meditation won’t help us land the Johnson account. We also need to have a convenient time and place to acknowledge our spiritual nature, certainly not during business hours. A brief prayer may precede the evening meal and bedtime in some households, but that is usually the only overt sign of spirituality. The rest of our time is taken up by work, school, lawn care and soccer practice. Wait for the weekend, when there may be an hour or so we can devote to it, when we can travel to our place of worship. That we have designated places of worship creates an interesting symbolism that has stayed with us through the ages. Intentionally or not, it implies that only at certain locations and even at certain times are we able to commune with our creator. The natural human reaction would be one of feeling less responsible for our behavior when we are away from the church, temple or mosque. There is an unfortunate ebb and flow of religious focus created by that situation.

Socially responsible behavior is not dependent upon one’s having religion. Many people lead perfectly responsible and well-behaved lives without having any religious affiliations. Being aware of one’s social responsibilities is enough guidance. And, while some people may not accept the concept of God, most have no objections if you do. There are hard-core atheists who consider religion as a social evil and would prefer it did not exist, but that is unlikely to ever occur. Tolerance is the best bridge to understanding. We have to be open-minded in order to learn and grow. For those who don’t see any evidence of a spiritual power at work, it’s not that they are wrong in what they perceive, but that their perceptions are based on the wrong expectations. If you are only looking for an all-powerful figure separate from us that has control over our lives, you are going to be disappointed, and call yourself agnostic at least. But if you look within us all to see the connection we have to each other and to everything around us, you will find it easily. This is because all together we have the power that some people look only outside of us for. You won’t find it there. Our quest for an outer realm of spiritual influence leads us away from its true source. That is where we have the power to become whatever we want to be.

Real Magic

Theories about the nature and purpose of creation have been around as long as man began to think about the subject. As humans, we like to nail things down, to have control, develop formulas and set definite rules about how everything works. Our beliefs are a subject of the same analysis. We want to solve the great mystery that will give our lives meaning and show us the true path to enlightenment. We have yet to do that, however. And I think the reason is that, as a whole, we do not truly accept what we claim to believe. Our thinking has always been limited by the perception we have of our reality being an entirely separate state from that of the creator, however we may conceive it. The inconsistency of the concept is where we see the creation, ourselves, as being completely divorced from the creator. We envision the world as if somehow it has attained a material substance that is impervious to the spiritual influence that we believe created it. If we view reality as a manifestation of a creator, it would not cease to be so at some point. As physical beings we are separated from the mind of God, and have very little awareness of that greater reality while we are immersed in this earthly condition. We are in a trap of our limited human perception, where our experience is what our physical senses are able to show us, and reality becomes what we can see, hear, taste and touch. But there is a great deal more.

A lot of things can be explained, and a lot of things can’t. The term "magic" refers to events caused by mysterious influence or unexplained power. There are magical things all around us. I could define magic as something that acts outside my knowledge of how things work, but it might not be considered magic by someone with more knowledge. We take invisible solid objects for granted in our lives, even though the idea of such a thing as glass would be unbelievable if it didn’t exist. Most of the forces of the natural world might thereby be considered magic. The phenomenon of light is one example. Even though someone can explain its principles and properties, the existence, the event of light is magical. Electricity is a magical event, as well as magnetism, and other mysterious forces that occur in nature. The fact that there is existence at all validates the concept of magic. Whether you subscribe to a "big bang" origination, a "let there be light" genesis, or are somewhere in between, there is a something-from-nothing aspect to our existence that is mysterious, unexplained, and thus inherently magical.

The notion of "intelligent design" is one that has a following in some religious circles. It suggests that many systems of nature appear too well structured to be the result of natural selection alone. This is generally seen as being a contradiction of the evolutionary science we have come to accept as fact. But, in a system where we supply the intelligence and effect our own reality by our group will, "intelligent design" would seem to be an apt description of that process. In this system, wherever we achieve a consensus of the mind that something will be so, it will be so. Just as non-survival characteristics are challenged in the physical world, non-survival concepts are challenged in the spiritual world. Evolution and Intelligent Design would amount to different influences over the same process, change.

There is no actual separation of man and God, but there is a preoccupation of our awareness that makes there appear to be a separation. The separation is of attention, of focus. The aspect of God’s mind that is occupied with presenting reality would have to see through it's own illusion. We are too aware of ourselves as individuals to be aware of ourselves as parts of God. People meditate, do sensory deprivation and otherwise alter their consciousness to try and loosen the firm grip reality has on the mind. The reality that occupies all our senses is not a great illusion, nor is it anything apart from us. It is an interpretation of ideas, a symbolic representation of God’s thoughts. It is a translation of spiritual language into something we can touch and see and hear and a simulation to operate within. The same way an abstract idea can be translated into words, then to binary code or performed on stage and recorded as magnetic sectors on tape, God’s concept is translated as our world and ourselves. We are God’s dream, and while we are somehow vaguely aware of it, we cannot break the spell of it.

People have a hard time with that concept, and small wonder. Evidence to the contrary is all around us. Since reality is all so detailed and complex and vast, how can it be a simulation? Well, it is not a simulation in the sense that it is unreal, because it certainly is as real as we are, but it is a manifested reality, built from our own, God’s, immense consciousness. Imagine God as the ultimate computer program, capable of infinite calculations, generating a reality complex enough to allow each of us to maintain a separate identity even while we remain part of the greater program and contribute to its functioning. Surely the vast mind of God is capable of this and more. Even though we are only a few generations removed from seeing radio as high technology, our modern computer programs are able to generate an interactive environment that can be difficult to distinguish from the real world. We use these simulated realities to play games for our amusement. The capability shown there is miniscule by comparison with what we imagine an all-powerful God must possess.

At the pace our technology is progressing, we will soon get to the point of having all our information available to everyone, at any time. Technology is becoming less mechanical and more organic, as well. We’ve gone from mechanical to electronic to magnetic and more. Look what we have done in the last hundred years, and imagine what we might do in the next hundred, or thousand years. Is it too difficult to imagine that our destiny is to become what we imagine God to be? Has God manifested a reality whose purpose is to create God from scratch? Is that the beginning and the end; a circular path where our abilities and our knowledge are so vast that we become the one true God, and manifest our own creation? Has that happened before? If you can accept the notion of our being self-realized, that we have imagined ourselves into existence, then all manifestations that follow can be attributed to the same origin.

Change

We determine what things will be possible by our group will. When we all decide to make a change, there will be a change. There are self-help writers who profess the idea that individuals have the power to influence the cosmic events around them. I don’t think there is enough power in the individual separated mind to influence much of consequence. Strange little events can seemingly be influenced, or manifested, though. For example, one day I was in the grocery store and had finished my shopping list when I realized I had forgotten bread. The bread was all the way across the store, and I did not feel like going after it. But, since I really needed to get some, I turned to head back to the other side of the store. As soon as I did, right there in front of me was a loaf of bread, sitting on a display of potato chips where it had no business being. What’s more, it was the exact same brand I was going to buy. My rational brain tells me that someone likely picked it up, then changed their mind later and sat it down where I found it, and the rest is coincidence. That is a logical explanation for an unlikely event. My spiritual side considers the possibility that a small manifestation had occurred, and I can’t entirely discount the possibility, nor should I want to. I have no vested interest in supporting the conventional thinking that events like that cannot occur. They seem to happen all the time, to everyone. What is the benefit in denying the possibility of magical activity? If small events in individual lives can be influenced for our benefit, larger things can be manifested by the group will. Even though individually we have very little control over what is real, if you as an individual were to become truly convinced that an alteration in the nature of reality was beneficial, that conviction might spread and have reverberations in the larger sphere of our consciousness.

I wouldn’t want to have to depend on daily manifestations occurring, but don’t want to ignore them when they do. Have you ever been thinking about or looking for some item and had it appear? Or find it where it really should not have been? Has someone called you on the phone right after you were thinking about that person? Have you ever sensed when someone is looking at you? Have you stopped backing up the car for no reason and then had a kid on a bike go past? Things like this happen all the time, and we don’t think too much about it. We take a lot of our day to day spiritual awareness for granted. We depend on it, use it, but do not like to acknowledge it, because we can’t control it and therefore don’t trust it. In fact, we can enable it more than control it, by not thinking in the way we are used to doing. This sort of manifestation occurs, not when we make it happen, but when we allow it to happen. When we are open to the possibility of it happening and will accept it and move on, this is when manifestations are most likely. Now, if you know for certain that there’s no catsup in the cupboard, you’re not likely to find any. But, if you need some and are not absolutely positive you’re out of it, you may find it when you look. Manifesting reality has a lot to do with your preconceptions and attitude. We are able to manifest small events in the world, things we may call coincidences, luck, or flukes, like a hole-in-one on a golf course, often because we believe it is possible. When it happens, although it is ridiculously unlikely, it is what you wished to happen. People who can actually perform psychic feats are manifesting events. Things like crop circles and UFOs may turn out to be our own unconscious manifestations as well.

The perception we have of an immutable structured universe is an idea we have created ourselves. The laws of physics are what we believe them to be. These things change when our concept of them changes, when that concept develops in the larger consciousness. Scientific breakthroughs are not always discoveries; often they are manifestations. We have just decided to change the rules, to make things work differently. Are these things revealed that were already there, or are they manifestations that did not exist before we conceived of them? Do we have the ability to alter the basic properties of matter and change the rules that the universe operates by? Things come into existence when we want them to exist, because we develop an explanation that requires a cause. The mind of God, which is collectively our own, is powerful enough that it can effortlessly manifest whatever it wishes reality to be. No detail is too minute to be overlooked. No concept too strange not to plant its seed. We are directing our collective dream all the while we are living it. Although the whole of our consciousness has primary control over the events and nature of life, even as individuals we have some ability to influence reality, and should be careful with what we wish for. Even the smallest ripple travels far across the pond.

An individual can make errors in judgement much worse than a group could possibly make. That is because there are checks and balances within group dynamics that preclude devastatingly poor decisions from being made, while individual decisions can be totally flawed in their premises. A single deer may run off the edge of a cliff thinking it was the crest of a small hill, but an entire herd of deer will not make such a mistake. The group decision will always err on the side of caution, and the group learns from the mistakes of individuals. This is how evolution works. Decisions with fatal consequences are made less and less often, and physical attributes not conducive to survival are seen less and less often. They are bred out of the species simply because they are non-survival characteristics. In any species, humans included, the group direction will always prevail. It works the same way in the greater consciousness that we are all part of. We control reality by our group will and our instinct for what will be beneficial to us all, not by the desires of any individual. This is why there is no need to fear the bad elements of humanity taking over the world. They may gain power for a time, but it can never last. The group mind will not allow a genuine threat to our survival to endure. We will always manifest a remedy. Individual desires can be influential, especially if they create powerful concepts, but in nature, the group will has the final say. One bird in a flock may veer off in a new direction, but it is only when most of the birds choose the same direction that the entire flock will move. In the spiritual plane of existence, our group will acts the same way. What path we all choose is the one we will follow, and what changes we all choose to have in the physical world are those that will occur there. When we truly want peace on earth, it will come.

The vast consciousness that we are all part of has absolute power over events, from traffic jams to sunsets, although no intentions in the way we usually think of them. Everything that occurs, obvious and subtle, is our creation, our invention. Reality is the manifestation of our collective consciousness, the entity we call God. It is a means for us to interact with ourselves and experiment, test, learn, and recreate. It becomes both laboratory and vacation. We create this stage, cast ourselves as individual entities for a time, to experiment, to play, to exist apart from the whole, as a random generator of sorts. We could think of ourselves as our own imaginary friends. Our great combined mind uses interaction to explore ideas. And we compartmentalize our group consciousness to create separation, somewhat like partitioning a computer's hard drive. What we experience here, in our physical laboratory, becomes knowledge in the greater reality. Concepts requiring interaction come into analytical focus when we become separate beings and put them to the test. Becoming an individual, even with the inherent physical limitations, brings with it the liberating experience of facing the unknown. Life becomes a collection of minimal information problems, with all answers unknown and many questions yet unasked.

By manifesting such an imposing reality, the perfect mind trap has been created. There is every reason to be intimidated by it. The walls of this trap are made of the most impenetrable force imaginable: our own beliefs. That we have developed a convincing reality, and are so certain of the substance it possesses, is a self-sustaining belief. I experience it; therefore it clearly must be so. The world was once flat, with defined edges. Everyone knew this to be true; there was no question of that fact. All we could see was all that there was. The trap of perceived reality is that, even when we may catch a glimpse the true nature of our existence, we think we have to explain it according to previously set rules, and make it fit our limited notion of how things function. That things have to work according to physical laws is in itself a false perception. While what we perceive as reality functions as we believe it should, it does so because we believe that it should. All together, believing in concert, reality becomes whatever we desire. It unfolds like a communal dream, where our moods and impulses have as much influence as our thoughts. Take the spectacle that is a sunset, for example. The greatest painter, composer or author could not describe the drama and nuance that unfolds there. Natural phenomena reflect our group state of mind set in motion, more than being carefully considered designs. Every juxtaposition of form, direction of motion, or sense of mass is a statement, some bold and some subtle. They are physical representations of ideas not fully realized, communicating the way abstract art does. To view the world as a collection of symbolic thoughts instead of static physical forms lets us interact with the mind of God in body as well as in spirit. There is information there, if we can manage to see it.

Mysteries

Everything is known or will be. All our mysteries and complex deceptions are as transparent and obvious as a baby’s game of peek-a-boo to the great communal mind we call God. Nothing can be hidden in the realm that exists beyond our limited human perceptions. Since all our memories and experiences are made part of the whole consciousness, everything is known that occurred in all our lives; everything that we saw, did, or thought is absorbed, shared, and learned from. The location of every buried treasure, the perpetrator of every crime, the solution to every mystery throughout the ages is already known. We all have information and experience that we continuously share with the larger consciousness we are all part of. There are no mysteries, and no secrets. All shall be revealed, as the saying goes, but this information flow is mainly a one way street. Why aren’t we able to tap into this great well of knowledge in our present state? Since we are isolated pieces of the whole while we live in our physical bodies, our access is limited by our capabilities. We cannot experience totality while we are apart from it. The parts cannot comprehend the whole any more than a grain of sand can experience the vastness of the desert. Even though a sense of our underlying unity is something we bring to our physical lives, we are isolated from the source of it.

Has someone ever said. "God is watching you?" Did you believe them? Well, you are watching you, which is essentially the same thing. Each of us is the eyes and ears of God. All that we experience will be part of God’s experience. The fact is that everything will be revealed. All your memories will be shared with the community. That time you ate the last cookie and blamed it on your brother and all the other little misdeeds throughout your life will be part of the experience of all of us. And the good as well as the bad will be revealed. When you helped the stranger push his car, and every time you avoided stepping on an insect, will all be known. So, realize that whatever you do today will be seen just as surely as if you had a video camera following you, because you are recording your own life for the rest of us to experience when we reconnect with the greater entity. God receives these memories, assimilates them, and we all learn and grow.

The mind of God is like a vast library, with all knowledge contained within. Each of us, during our lives, writes a new book, and contributes our experience to the whole. No matter how small, every detail of your life will become part of God’s knowledge, because you always remain part of God. You were before you existed in the physical world, you are right now, and you will always be. When your consciousness reconnects with the whole, you will have the same awareness of everything from everyone who ever lived. Any question you’ve ever had will be answered. Everyone who ever existed still exists, in the mind of God. Every life is still present in the great consciousness we share. You will know all their billions of lives, and they will know yours. Even lives you previously lived will be known to you. Though we are all one great entity, each individual identity remains part of our shared mind, and all the experiences, thoughts and feelings remain as well. The mind of God has unlimited capacity, and unlimited curiosity. We learn and we change and we grow.

Each new person arriving in the world comes from the God of the present, not the past, and has brought new ideas to the table. Those things that we inherently know to be true are part of what we bring with us from having shared the experience of them. They will be slightly different truths than the previous generation held, because the mind of God is always evolving. We get smarter automatically. Every spoonful of God’s knowledge contains all of us together, and our individuality, our separation from the whole, starts when we are poured into a physical form. This physical existence is not the first one for any of us. Having been part of previous lives, we have experienced many things and these memories are part of all of us. Do you ever recognize people and places you’ve never seen before? It is because you have seen these things before, but in a different time and through different eyes. What we recognize in others is that part of God we share, and other lives we have experienced together. We recognize the spirit, especially in a familiar physical form.

Free Will

The spirit can be lost within the physical manifestation. Our culture is body-obsessed. So many products and services are something geared for the body. How to feed it, dress it, shape it, and make it feel good. Everyone wants to sell you something for your body, but so little of it is really needed. The spray-on tan, body glitter, hair removal, hair restoration, home gym and diet supplement world around us is catering to our fascination with the body. It’s obvious that our bodies run the show. Our physical bodies have enormous control of our actions in this world. The mind asks the questions, but the body makes the decisions. But what really defines a person, the mind or the body? While you’re reading this, do you have any sense of how tall you are, or what color your hair is? Probably not, because your mind is currently engaged more than your body's senses are . For a moment, try and see yourself as the thoughtful, questioning mind, apart from the body's desires. You can probably feel some of the impulses of the body and brain, wanting this and that, trying to pull your attention toward some activity. The mind and body are more in conflict than cooperation. They want different things.

Your entire body is a machine, and it is in control much more than your mind is. The mind is contemplative and spiritual, and is mostly a passive guest of the active body. Our physical bodies assume the primary control of our lives. Their appetites, their chemical, emotional reactions, are what drive us. Even the brain is a self-willed organic machine, part of the same physical body, and programmed to react to stimulus. The mind doesn't get mad, but the body certainly does. Much of what we consider decision-making is just programmed instruction to the body and brain. The mind can give the brain a series of orders, such as "Drive to the grocery store, pick up milk and coffee, then come back home and mow the lawn," and the brain will direct the body to do these things. Or the mind could just provide a general order to "carry out the normal workday" and wait for detailed instructions. The brain can perform whatever calculations or skill sets are needed, like mapping a route, maintaining the speed limit and paying for groceries. If there are problems encountered with any tasks requiring new input or a complex decision, the brain will signal the mind to engage the task and clear up the trouble. Otherwise, the mind is free to do other things.

We don’t have to make that many actual decisions in the course of a day. Most of our normal routines do not greatly challenge the mind. When we have to focus on doing something unusual like changing a tire or something creative like writing music or studying, the mind is much more engaged than normal and the body’s ambitions don’t have their usual authority. The point is that it’s our containers, our bodies, where the real differences lie. They are the engines of our society, our reactors, chemical and electrical, that cause most of our actions. The mind in the body is like a passenger on a bus. If you recognize how much the body is in control, you can spot emotional triggers before they occur, and better influence the action it wants to take. The mind is not a physical thing. It is that part of God which is the true nature of every one of us. It resides with the body, but is not of the body.

Our minds are all of the same mind. Each one of us contains a piece if God. We are identical parts of the same thing. There is no difference until we are part of a physical body. We are all poured from the same bottle, just into different containers. I may be poured into a jelly glass, you into a beer stein, and the lady down the street into a delicate bone china cup. Our personalities, skills, emotional and mental facilities are all traits of our physical bodies. Each of our bodies, including the brain, has a unique set of abilities, disabilities, needs, reactions, and mental and physical processes. If we are fast or slow, clumsy or agile, we know those are our bodies’ physical attributes. But, similarly, if you are brilliant or dull-witted, quick tempered or laid back, kind or mean, you have your body to thank; not your mind. Even though we are, in the larger sense, spiritual entities, our physical bodies have an enormous influence over what we do and what we are. If we consider that our spirits are all cut from the same cloth, then our differences, our disagreements, our competitiveness, must come from our physical bodies, including our brains, which are part of the body, not the mind. Sometimes it seems like we have very little conscious control over our actions. We get hungry, get sleepy, get excited, get scared, and respond to all of these reactions without much conscious thought. Most of what we are doing is reacting to outside stimulus.

The emotions that trigger violence are from the body, not the mind. Our minds are all basically the same when considered separate from our bodies. It’s the physical composition of each of us that makes us different. We are chemically driven machines and are subject to the impulses that arise as we physically and emotionally react to our surroundings. Just realizing this can help control your emotional reactions to things that occur. When the sports fans in a town go on a rampage when the local team wins the big game, that is the chemical reaction boiling over. The way personal conflicts arise is usually a contest of emotions. If one person feels threatened or diminished in some way by another, the first impulse is to either escape or attack the other person. The rational mind is hard pressed to keep escalating emotions in check, and a fight can easily break out. Afterward, the participants may have a difficult time explaining how the altercation began, because it involved emotions, the brain and the body, not the mind.

The primary conflict of our human condition is that between mind and body. The body and mind have a tense relationship while they are living together. The body has hungers and drives, most of which are not conducive to a peaceful, contemplative life, which is the environment the mind prefers. There are people who give in to the body’s desires and impulses, and spend all their time indulging it. They do not own their bodies; their bodies own them. Our culture has turned away from the mind and toward the body. We embrace the sensory and ignore the conceptual. Because all our minds are connected, are parts of the same thing, there is no difference between any of us that is not caused by our physical bodies. God does not care if you are black or white, male or female, gay or straight, or prefer Mozart to Motley Crue. These are small distinctions created in the physical world, and only have meaning in that context. God is all these things because we are all these things. In the underlying realm of our unified consciousness, we are all the same. We are parts of the same thing.

MANAGING THE HUMAN MISSION

Waste

If we can agree that our organization needs some adjustment to get on track, we should try to find the flaws in our system and make any corrections that need to be made. Once we have identified our critical survival elements, we can look for inefficiency and waste in our organization, and examine our planning and risk management processes. We are such a large organization that the smallest inefficiency can have enormous costs. We have professionals in the areas of logistics and ergonomics that can identify where inefficient use of space, movement, and time exist. Most government agencies and private companies have policies in place to conserve power and to recycle materials. We have to learn to apply these lessons to the larger human organization. All of our resources need to be used effectively.

Any organization concerned with productivity should continually be on the lookout for waste. When waste is expected and becomes an accepted practice, it can grow and spread and destroy an organization’s effectiveness. The inefficient use of resources is a basic definition of waste. Whenever we are not getting the most out of our time, our materials, or our people, we have waste. There is overt waste, which we consciously commit. An example of that is buying more of a product than we can use, fully expecting to throw the remainder away. Negligent waste occurs when we are not concerned with correcting it, or don’t think we can do much about it. An automatic sprinkler system that runs during the pouring rain is one example seen all too frequently.

There is also the casual, everyday waste we inflict upon others. Consider a typical work commute by car, and try to remember the last time it went completely smoothly. There is always some sort of traffic tie-up caused by a disabled vehicle, road construction, poor traffic planning, or some other preventable cause. The waste of time and gasoline, the lost productivity from thousands of workers not at their jobs every time there is a traffic problem amounts to a huge cost. Recently, I was stuck in a hideously long afternoon backup on a major highway. After creeping along for the best part of an hour, I finally saw the difficulty; everyone was slowing down to look at a man playing with his dog in the field by the roadside. The drivers, as a group, could not keep their focus on the task at hand. When most of these people finally arrived home, they probably didn’t play with their own dogs.

Time is the one thing we waste more of, and in more ways, than any other resource. If I leave my jacket on the chair, and my wife has to pick it up, I’ve wasted her time. If I go to the grocery store without a list and have to go back later, I’ve wasted my own time. Good habits and good planning save time, and are conducive to a luxurious lifestyle. Most people equate luxury with comfort and ease, and believe they can buy their way into luxury with products. Comfort and ease are things that we can provide ourselves, just by the way we live our lives. A lot of what makes life difficult is of our own making. We don’t live efficiently, by and large. Our organization is made up of all our smaller divisions, until we reach the individual. That is the level on which we can best effect change. Changing our habits is key to achieving personal efficiency and what is saved is automatically contributed to the organization. For example, how much time is lost and aggravation caused by not being able to find something you’re looking for, whether it’s the car keys, the remote control, or your shoes. Put things where they belong, every time. Develop efficient habits. Every time you tell yourself, "I should have done it that way," start doing it that way. Are the things you use near the place where you use them? You can move the dishes nearer the dishwasher to save steps, start using rechargeable batteries and shop online when you can, to avoid making trips to the store, and color coordinate your wardrobe so everything matches everything else and getting dressed is a snap. Apply some organization and efficiency to your routine and you can develop a life of ease that very rich people would envy.

We even manage to find ways to waste our leisure time. Recreation is important to our health, and we all need an occasional break from those tasks we must endure just to get by. But some activities we choose such as watching television and reading comic books and eating junk food are merely escapes. They don’t actually qualify as recreation, as they don’t fulfill the recreational criteria of providing physical or mental refreshment or provide any therapeutic benefits. On the contrary, these sorts of diversions tend to stimulate and agitate the spirit rather than to calm and revive it. If your intention is to feel better, more healthy and relaxed, look for recreation in pastimes like playing a musical instrument, participating in a sport, reading a good book, or talking to your friends. These things have the potential for self-improvement, and can smarten and strengthen us. Some of the lessons our movies, television shows and computer games provide are that fighting is the ultimate solution to any problem, that sex will give your life meaning, and that no matter how stupidly one behaves, everything will be all right in the end. None of these are true. Find something else to do if you’re bored. Exercise, work on your car, learn a new language, go fishing, or do anything but let the mental junk food take even a moment of your time. What will make us all better is to each get smarter.

Learning

It would be comforting to think that we all want to learn and get smarter, but that’s not the case. In fact, a lot of us make a conscious choice to avoid learning at all. What we choose to read, to watch on television or at the movies, and to discuss with friends is too often trivial and repetitive, and devoid of any intellectual challenge. It’s possible to go long periods of time without learning anything if you will only expose yourself to things you already know about. Watching another car chase, gun battle, or love scene is not making you any smarter, and disparaging a friend’s taste in clothes or some actor’s marital problems is probably making you dumber. Learning can be quite entertaining in itself. New ideas are stimulating, and you never know what a difference some acquired piece of information might make in your life. The more you understand, the richer your daily experience becomes. Each of us functions as a small research and development lab within our group structure. We continuously test and evaluate ideas, procedures and products during the course of our lives. This information is used to improve the way we do things in our organization. In another context, not only the human organization benefits, but the spiritual organization we all share as well.

We make mission related decisions with the input each of us provides. Professionals in every field work diligently to uncover new information that might help us better understand the world around us, and improve our condition. When it comes time to make important decisions that affect us all, however, we tend to completely ignore those experts and let our political system work its magic. Many of our most crucial choices are made based on the opinions of individuals instead of on empirical facts. One wonders why anyone would spend his or her life pursuing knowledge for the benefit of mankind expecting that knowledge will likely be ignored when decisions need to be made. Biology, ecology, economics, history, psychology, geology, and a host of other professional fields have experts; experts who are little involved in the decision-making process we use. If opinions are needed, shouldn’t we get the most informed opinions available? The people we ultimately put in charge of making decisions are not our subject matter experts and are, in some cases, not even well informed The choices we make that affect us all are too important to be decided lightly. They need to be correct choices, not lucky guesses.

The important decisions we make that will affect our organization over the long term are those we must consider carefully. For example, we must have dependable energy sources at all times, or our technology will not function. But our choices about how to supply our energy needs have put us on a very unsure path. The environmental price we are paying for our dependence on fossil fuels, the hazards associated with nuclear energy, the fledgling state of alternative fuel technologies, and the reluctance to embrace passive energy sources like solar and wind power combine to endanger us on many levels. We have come to a place in our development where some changes must be made. In order to have any hope of long-term survival, we have to recognize that a lot of our policies need adjusting. Our resource management is very poor, and plans only for the short term.

One resource particularly mismanaged is our people. The physical health of every individual in the organization needs to be optimized. It is much less expensive to prevent illness than to cure it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. It is simply more cost-effective to keep people healthy. Maintaining a healthy workforce is vital to the functioning of our organization, and we must also make sure our people are safe. Workplace safety has to be looked at in the workplace of our world the same way as in any factory floor or construction site. There are obvious issues that have to be addressed. In our transportation system, for instance, a lot of highway deaths occur that are readily preventable. There are drivers on the road who have multiple prior convictions for drunk driving, and yet are still allowed to drive. They are a continuing danger to the safety of our workplace and our organizational efficiency, and should be removed from the roads. Drunk or sober, not everyone should have a driver’s license. Many do not have the skills or the temperament to properly operate a motor vehicle. This is one example of our risk management philosophy being not fundamentally sound.

We are willing to take too many chances with our organizational well being. Resources that appear to be unlimited should still be protected, and not carelessly managed. The way we manage risk as individuals is not the same as what we must do as a society. We take what are called "acceptable levels" of risk in our lives that are anything but acceptable when they affect others. You and I can take an acceptable risk to our own safety when crossing a busy street, but not when we are pushing the baby carriage. In years past, when we decided to build a backyard deck out of treated lumber, it was our business and our risk. But when that lumber eventually ended up in a landfill, leaching arsenic into the ground water supply, it became everyone’s business. We don’t always know how our actions might affect others, especially when we still have so many things to learn. Our mistakes can teach us, though, and we can try to minimize the risks to us all whenever we are able to learn from our errors.

Since information is so critical to our decision making, and so important in shaping our future, whatever direction our mission takes, it should encourage us all to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, to empower that thirst, and to use our knowledge well. Continuing to learn and share information is the key to progress. Ideally, everyone should have access to the same information, but that will require a huge change in the way we share knowledge, plus some technological leaps. There are places on Earth that don’t have a schoolteacher, much less internet access. It’s hard for most of us to imagine what it’s like to have a question and no way of finding the answer. Whether we live in a big city or in a remote village, we all have a desire for knowledge that needs to be satisfied. On our path to becoming omniscient, we must take the required small steps that will continually both expand and distribute our knowledge.

We can very creative in our pursuit of knowledge, and use our growing intellect to try out new ideas and invent new things. But are we using these abilities for the right purposes? To rephrase one of our initial mission questions, what are we trying to achieve? The inventions we seem to value most are those that increase either our capabilities or our comfort. Our ability to travel long distances quickly, to communicate instantly with others, and to maintain comfortable temperatures are examples of goals we set and later achieved. Entertainment falls into the comfort category, and we certainly spend enough of our energies devising new ways to entertain ourselves. That we get bored easily, and are always looking for the next new amusement, is one of our motivators for creativity. It is not always positive creativity, as we know. One of the best ways to keep people, especially kids, from destructive creativity, like drug use or crime, is to give them something positive to do. Being able to take even a small role in a constructive human mission would change their outlook on life and their ideas about their place in the world. Everyone likes to feel valuable, and want to think they are making a contribution.

Even though cooperation should be encouraged, we can see that competition plays a big part in our motivation to perform at our best. We like to win. And we like the other guy to lose. Our advantage is someone else’s disadvantage. But, in every arena of competition, today’s winner will be tomorrow’s loser. Everyone finds themselves on the losing side at some point. Is that the best way to get things done? A tug-o-war will only let us achieve so much. When we’re trying to attain the same goals, and it seems there can only be one winner, sometimes the goals need to change. It’s especially true in commerce, where the primary goal is to sell. It seems we spend a lot of our capacity figuring out new things to sell to each other. There is nothing really being accomplished, except one side taking a profit advantage from the other. Resources get consumed, time and energy is spent, and while improvements are made in products and processes, it’s only where they improve trade. Profit is the primary motivation, and any resultant benefit to mankind is incidental. Is commerce what we’re all about? Is that why we’re here, to sell things to each other? If making sales quotas is not a lofty enough goal for us to aspire to, what is? Cooperation often pays bigger dividends than competition. The "win-win" scenario is usually held up as a negotiation strategy that allows competitors to reap benefits from compromise, instead of fighting to corporate death. In business or in life, we can no longer afford to engage in wars of attrition.

Cooperation and competition are diametrically opposed strategies. In a civilized world, the only moral position is to share whatever resources are available, not just individually, but globally. Acquisition for it’s own sake does not serve one’s personal interests, as it does not address need, only greed. It’s a way of saying to everyone else, "I am more important than you." Selfishness is a childish trait, and shows a lack of emotional maturity, or character. When an individual seeks his own enrichment no matter what the cost to others and demonstrates no empathy for them, we term that person a sociopath. This disorder was called "moral insanity" in the last century. The obvious implication was that a distorted sense of morality existed in that person. The motives of sociopaths are always questionable, and they are not to be trusted, especially not with the welfare of others. While no one ever said the world would be fair, there is no way to reconcile the disparity between the rich and poor in the world other than to point to selfishness as a root cause. We must find a better way to share the world’s resources with our people everywhere. It must be part of our mission. The child in a foreign land looking for something to eat is part of the same God as you and I, and feels the same hunger we would feel. Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, as they are known, and it is what keeps some people from having enough, when others think they should have more.

Within our organization, unfortunately, there are those who have a sense of "entitlement," that they are somehow inherently the more deserving among us. Whenever someone is disposed to accumulating wealth at the expense of others, it’s worthwhile to reflect on who exactly those others are. In the long term, among those who are the victims of this behavior may include that person’s own children and grandchildren. There is no guarantee that the protective barrier of wealth can be maintained through generations. A bad financial decision, a stock crash, a personal crisis, or any number of other factors can quickly diminish the largest fortunes. That person’s descendants could find themselves on the disadvantaged side of an economic inequity, perhaps permanently, and witness to some future sociopath’s quest for personal acquisition. What can be done to others, can potentially be done to ourselves and our own. Harm, once loosed, has no friends. We must take great care that no policy is ever in place that limits one person’s opportunities in favor of another’s. And the same caution should be exercised when attempting to limit the freedoms of individuals, as it is not our children’s rights we want diminished.

Ethics

As we require ethical behavior in individual members, we also must require it in agencies that operate within our organization. Any business must exist for the benefit of the people, to provide goods and services that make our lives better. Some businesses have the idea that they can exist only to serve themselves, and disregard the public good in order to profit and grow as if they had a manifest destiny to do so. They can become insatiable predators, and the public can become their prey. When we are talking about auto repair or tax preparation or filmmaking, the ethics of those providing the services are not too large an issue. The damage they can cause is limited. But, when essential goods and services are involved, or especially when there is potential for real harm to the public good, we must be certain that ethical behavior is at work. If a company decided that it was worth creating a huge pollution problem to increase its profits slightly, we would be adamantly opposed to that. To negatively affect the life quality of most people to positively affect the bank accounts of a few people is unquestionably wrong, and should never be permitted. Should we allow anyone to make the world a worse place, to harm our organization, and also make money doing it? The answer should be clear.

This is why our mission statement has to clearly state that essential goods and services must never be privatized. The potential for disaster is too great. If we allowed essentials such as food, power or communications to be controlled by potentially unethical providers, the public could be greatly disadvantaged. This would be especially true if the service was without competition. For an example, consider the highway system. We, the people, are in control of that, by way of the Department of Transportation. If that were to be privately controlled, there would be a real danger of abuse. We could see tollbooths on every mile of the road, with minimal maintenance or improvements occurring. Whenever we allow a private company to have control of any service, we have to have confidence in its ethics. Most companies perform ethically, but many do not. They do not reveal their character until given the opportunity to demonstrate it. Then it is too late. And that is a situation our organization cannot afford to be in. Then there is the matter of plain incompetence to consider, which is the cause of nearly half of business failures. We must always retain control of our own critical survival elements, and all essential goods and services.

Consider a mythical unethical corporation existing for the sole purpose of profit and growth. That is its mission. Being of service is incidental, although it makes an effort to appear that it is service-oriented. The public good is not a real consideration, only what revenue can be extracted from the public coffers. Anything that will show lower costs and increased profits is what this mythical unethical corporation will pursue. The insatiable entity it has become will enrich itself at the expense of the well being of the people and the planet. This corporation would want to be in control of every aspect of our lives where it could profit. We would be serving the corporation instead of it serving us. It would ultimately consume everything and cease to function, as would we. The critical question to ask when dealing with any business is, "Does this company operate for or against the public interest?" When it operates only in it’s own interest it stops being our partner and becomes our adversary. Our organization cannot nurture it’s own adversaries.

Our organization is more important than any agency operating within its ranks. Our subordinate corporations must serve us – we must not serve them. They exist to provide services to our organization, not the other way around. Our mission statement should embody the principle that a business can make itself more efficient, more productive and profitable using every means at it's disposal up to, but not including, the point at which it starts to have a negative impact on the public good, as we define it. If the company’s practices negatively affect the public’s quality of life, whether by putting the environment at risk, disadvantaging it’s employees, or defrauding the consumer, the offending practices will absolutely not be allowed. Weighing advantages against disadvantages, public interest must always outweigh private interest. The human organization has it's overall health to consider when making choices, not any benefit to special interests with divergent goals.

When we consider the idea of a human mission, what is at stake is the future. Choices we make now will affect the organization later. If our existence were to end, might not God's purpose end as well? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Our organization comprises both God and man, in symbiosis. All that we have learned intellectually and spiritually should guide us as we consider a new course. Wherever our path takes us, we cannot leave the lessons of the past behind. Preserving the abstract concepts of justice and liberty, continuing to honor truth and curiosity, and striving for peace and reason are goals we must always have. History shows us that contemporary wisdom is almost always wrong. Our ability to continually adjust our thinking and continue to learn, is one of our great strengths. There are unlimited possibilities in the small admission that we always have more to learn. As we learn, God learns. As God learns, our world changes. As our world changes, we learn some more. The mind expands, and the universe expands. Our mission after all may only be to continue to learn, and that would be a very good mission to have.

Conclusion

It should be evident that we are all connected as parts of the mind of God and also as part of the global human organization. They are related entities, each very dependent on the other. Each gives the other meaning and provides purpose for its existence. Our human organization has been noticeably lacking in direction and sense of purpose. This holds back solving many of our problems. Our development has stalled at this point where we have developed great abilities but no vision as to what ends we are pursuing. We have stunted our spiritual growth to concentrate on creating and refining systems for social and economic commerce. Joining together in our physical world to reach for common goals the way we are joined in the spiritual world is the next step in our maturation process. With vision and cooperation, we can help our world be what it should be, a place where everyone has what they need, and where they can pursue dreams beyond their grasp. This should be our mission. To work toward creating a new Utopia where we can learn and grow together, and where our human organization can explore it’s potential in a multitude of directions. Once we start to break free of the stagnant and artificial systems we have created that regiment our lives and constrict our thoughts, we can direct our energies toward achieving true growth as an organization. If we can join together to pursue a positive mission, "Why are we here" is a question no one may need to ask again.