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A Parallel Universe

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 30 November 2008
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Un/Employment Daveparts

By David Glenn Cox

The scientists toil in their laboratories and build billion-dollar super colliders under the Earth’s crust looking for the secrets of the universe. The heirs of Einstein tell us with confidence that other universes exist, other dimensions where our rules and means of existence simply do not apply. It’s fun to think about such things as a mental exercise, as cranial gymnastics, but if you had to do that type of work all day every day most of us would be dead within a month.

But over Thanksgiving dinner I discovered a parallel universe. I know, it’s hard to believe but it’s true! A universe that co-exists with our own but one with different meanings and laws. The question was asked if I thought that Obama’s job program would work and I answered, “I don’t think it’s big enough, two and a half million jobs over two years won’t cut it since we’ve already lost 1.75 million jobs this year alone and we’re adding 300,000 unemployed a month.”

My brother-in-law, an engineer by trade who is seeking his Master’s degree added, “It might do some good but too much will just be a waste.”

“Look,” I said, “we’ve got to get these people back to work. We can bail out banks and insurance companies to the tune of billions of dollars but if we don’t get these people to work, and soon, they won’t eat.”

“You can bail out the auto companies,” he explained, “but they’re not competitive in the global market place.”

Feeling my blood pressure rise along with the tone of my voice I added, “The Germans can pay their workers $34.00 an hour and the Japanese can pay thiers $25.00 but we’re not competitive? Why is it that Toyota can give their Japanese employees a $20,000 bonus and their American counterparts get nothing?”

“All I’m saying,” he answered, “is that the Germans and Japanese can artificially pay their employees high wages if they want to but sooner or later they’re going to have to join the global economy and pay the prevailing wage worldwide.”

I was flooded with emotion; it was as if the sky had cracked open. It was like Pharaoh’s proclamation on the first born son and Kristallnacht all rolled into one. The sense of callousness mixed with unfeeling barbarism coming from such an educated man. I suddenly felt like Galileo trying to explain the universe, or Pythagoras the right triangle.

This man lives in a parallel universe of upper-class privilege. His wages and benefits have not been affected by downsizing or outsourcing so it was as if those people didn’t really exist. In his universe they were merely numbers on a page, columns to be added or subtracted as needed and we wonder how Auschwitz could ever come into being!

I’m not saying he’s a Nazi, but that he lives in a separate world where those people’s problems and crises don’t touch him. The answers are easy to him and not complicated; he is educated to accept these things. He is taught that these events are unavoidable and must be accepted if we are to build a better world. As my head swam in this ocean of eugenic goo I wondered how many times this same conversation had been carried on in German railroad stations. “They are relocating the Jews and it really is for their own good, you know.”

Here is this educated man condemning tens of millions to a life of misery, hardship and struggle for the sake of an academic dogma. No feelings of remorse for him, it is just a matter of course, just as the sun sets in the west and rises in the east. No pity or hate for the Untermenschen, just a benign acceptance of their fate. Were it to happen that some too tall Arab were to attack this country that he loves and serves, then no measure should be spared to eradicate this pestilence that would disturb the greatness of America, but the eugenics of globalism mustn’t be disturbed.

Are his palace walls high enough and thick enough to protect himself and his family? It is easy to believe in the game when you’re winning, winners never challenge the dealers deal. But somewhere in the educational process something went terribly wrong. Socrates taught us that the first step towards wisdom is to know that you are not wise, to question everything you are told, be it from a peasant or mortarboard professor. That truth and knowledge is loosed in the world at random and not hidden in one place. Nor is it the providence of only the rich and its tuition can be easily wasted on a fool.

This economic dogma of globalism appears to me to promote not the rise of man but his demise. A funeral service, an Irish wake where we the Untermenschen will be buried so that others may live. Crucified on the wooden cross of democracy and capitalism where crudely made third world nails are driven through our wrists and ankles with a certainty that it’s all for the best in the long run and must be done in his name, amen.

As I snapped back to my own reality, I remembered where I was. It was Thanksgiving dinner and I could not educate the educated. I saw that my world was far different than his; I’m trying to keep my electricity on and he’s planning for a brighter tomorrow. But I couldn’t help but think, what if Pharoah commanded his firstborn son be put to death. Would he then be so accepting of Pharoah’s wisdom? Would he accept his own relocation as a matter of course and sound policy?

These things are incomprehensible between us; he’s living in his engineering universe with its mathematics and formulas and I’m living in my universe of people and hurt and hungry emotion and compassion. My course of study has been history and history tells me that those of us who are about to die will not salute you but take you with us. So it was in the beginning and ever shall be, amen.

And so it was in 1927 that Henry Ford was named the greatest man in all history, behind Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte, and by 1932 his house was ringed with machine gun positions. You see, despite what science tells us, two universes cannot take up the same space. One will overcome the other and one will pass away. It will come suddenly and stealthily and they never see it coming until it hits them square between the eyes. You can hold people under for an idea but you cannot hold them under water for long before it becomes a struggle to the death. History shows us that those with the numbers win out every time. So it was and so shall it ever be.

http://theservantsofpilate.com

Forum posts

  • Something did go terribly wrong with our educational system, and our political system, and our financial system, and every other system: they are victims of the deification of greed.

    When the only thing that matters is profits, then naturally, frivolous concerns, such as whether people are earning a wage that they can live on, fall by the wayside.

    There used to be more balance between the need for profits and moral obligations. Profits and morality can coexist, and in fact, when they do we have a better society, a far better one than we have today.

    What surprises me is that religious people are always harping about moral issues. Where is their moralistic zeal regarding our unfettered, rapacious, greed-centered economy?

    Dave
    http://daveeriqat.wordpress.com/