Corrupt
Corrupt, Inc. is a civilization watchdog built on the premise that when humans form a mental image of the world that does not correspond to reality, they become corrupt and destroy themselves. Our goal is to look for this cognitive dissonance and to point it out with research, intelligence reports, pranks and political activism. We believe in a better human future by embracing reality and not silly bureaucratic, academic or emotional abstractions. Our goal is to point human civilization away from these irrelevancies and get us back on track toward dealing with our actual problems, which receive 68.6% less media coverage than transient or tangential issues.
"Corrupt" means a loss of direction. To prefer the convenient or the self-enriching to what must be done, to take immediate rewards over doing what is right in the larger view. It can even mean to imagine that the worlds inside our minds take precedence over reality. When we lose sight of the workings of the world around us, we become isolated in our minds, and our actions become corrupt.
The last century has shown us an acceleration of decay. Abusive governments, pollution, overpopulation, a proliferation of destruction weapons. Worst of all, in the supposed luxury of industrialized countries, our lives have descended into rigid competition for the ability to afford a life apart from violent dirty cities and predatory, perverse, parasitic fellow citizens. We are trying to outrun our own corruption.
We cannot rely on our political or economic systems to provide answers. The most destructive facet of corruption is that it pervades our assumptions of what is good and what is bad. When our illusions outweigh reality, we seek them in a desperate attempt to avoid the bad, but we create the bad because what we consider good is unrealistic. Corruption comes from within and cannot be isolated in a category.
 It is far too easy to deny the decay. We buckle down and focus on our jobs, our hobbies, our television screens. We rent that luxury apartment or buy a house in the nicer neighborhood. But then, as we are relaxing into thinking we have outrun the nightmare, incidents happen. A few, then more. And soon we are moving on again. The talking figures on our television screen act as if this is unfortunate but, shrugging, they suggest it is natural. It is just how it is. "Human nature," even.
Soon there are two realities in which we live: the socially-accepted theory, and the experience of daily life. With enough money, we can isolate ourselves from the latter, sort of. Since corruption comes from within, however, it re-emerges not locally but globally, and we find our climate changing, or unstable political situations manipulating us, or even a lack of option for a sensible life. Since most people accept the theory, they act according to it, and thus minimize the impetus toward a better way of life.
It is like a disease. We cannot speak of it in public, or someone loudly shouts us down with the theory, ignoring reality. Worse, to peer behind the curtain and see life as it actually is can alienate us from peers and from the jobs we need to avoid becoming hopeless ghetto-dwellers. Reality has become a planet far away. And the ultimate corruption is that we insist our theory can be real, because we prefer it to be so, even as evidence mounts to the contrary.
We are taught -- by our favorite celebrities, by politicians, by our peers -- that modern society will provide each individual freedom of choice, a good life, and even meaningful activities. The theory is that if each individual has liberty and wealth, life will be good and problems will decrease. History and experience teach us the opposite. The further we go into empires of the individual, the more selfishness and greed and paranoia wrack us as a society. We cannot machine-process people into ideal beings through external force. We must tackle what is within.
 This focus on the external, denying the inner world, is what defines modern society. We conquered nature with the internal combustion engine, the assembly line, interchangeable parts, and now digital electronics. We assume that humans act like these devices as well. We assume that democracy, individual freedoms, humanism, and material comfort will make us into ideal people like metal poured into a mold, stamped and assembled by machines. Yet machines do not have personality or the different mental abilities that define human individuals.
Our society judges us not by who we are, but by what roles we play. It rewards not higher behavior but obedience and conformity, and a willingness to respond in Pavlovian twitches to the rewards of money and social prestige. This is the false reality created by our theory; it is what our best thinkers call thin or partial intelligence, which is the ability to focus well on details while being ignorant of the system at large.
This system at large cannot be perceived by attention to details, or even context, but can be analyzed by its design: how the whole fits together so that it functions. To look at civilization on the level of design is to see its actual motivations, behind the facade of smiling faces on television or grand speeches full of positive-sounding words like "freedom" and "progress." When we look at design, we see that by denying our inner world, we have made the external world a cloak for corruption at our core.
We were taught to fear 1984-style dictatorship, but no one mentioned authoritarianism enforced by the bad choices of individuals, by selfishness and short-sightedness. We were told to fear bad kings, but no one mentioned that bad choices by voters could have a more destructive effect. Uncountable voices command us to fear those with fanatical or extremist direction, but only a few warn us that a lack of direction can spread corruption more widely than any single choice.
If we proceed according to the course we have chosen, our future will be one of slow decay. Maybe we can avoid it, as individuals, except that our air will soon be poisonous and our climate forbidding. The gated community and private schools for our kids cannot protect them from a world of bad options. The process of corruption is gradual, but inevitable: at some point it will triumph. History shows us other civilizations that have gone down this path, essentially regressing in evolution to leave behind clueless, empty people and the ruins of once-great cities.
To avoid corruption, we must re-assess our assumptions. We must re-interpret our basic values. And where do we start? With reality, and the design of our physical world. We require air, water and living space, but even more, we need a model of how our universe functions so that we can work with it for our own betterment. Natural law, like our inner worlds, cannot be controlled externally. It is part of us and it controls us, even if we can get away with denying it through theory for a few centuries.
Philosophy
 The most basic level of human thought, the programming of our assumptions, is discussed through philosophy. This mode of analysis grapples with not only the abstract but the whole of design, such that no detail is detached from the world in which it operates as thin intelligences tend to do. When we look at the philosophy of modern society, we see that it is confined to the material comfort of individuals.
Our societies do not assess direction as a whole; they defer to what the voters want. The voters are told to want what enhances their own material comfort, and so they see only details, not the whole. Almost all of them have no knowledge of politics, and most of them lack the insight to make intelligent decisions in this field. They view society as something which will never change and will always provide for them.
The philosophy behind this individualism is utilitarian: it assumes that if you can make most people think what happens benefits them materially, all will be well. But what about the direction of the whole? It does not consider that. And what about our inner worlds, what were once called our souls but might also be called our personalities, which make us unique? The modern individualism does not address this.
What is our purpose? What do we hope to accomplish, as individuals or collectively? Our modern world is mute in this regard. Our theory is that we can create a society which gives every person a job, a television, and a vote. Our theory thinks no deeper than that. While most of our brightest people see this is an illusion, there is no public recognition of this failing, only a stream of propaganda extolling its virtues and exhorting us to combat "problems," without mentioning that our assumptions create these problems.
 A society based upon the pursuit of individual pleasure and wealth is destined to be selfish. Selfishness is a form of corruption: instead of doing what is right for the overall direction of society, we do what is convenient for ourselves. This convenience creates side effects that ultimately we will all have to face, but since we can put them off, we do, like drunks on a bender. Enjoy the wealth now and let future generations face the consequences.
Predictably, that future has arrived. The philosophies that have gotten us into this mess can now be seen as erroneous assumptions. We must pick different philosophies that do not cause these problems. But philosophy has many meanings: it is both a type of thing, as in "a philosophy of convenience," and a language for discussing philosophies. Armed with this logical tool, we can pick apart the modern philosophy and see where it errs.
Together
As a species we will face the consequences of our actions. If our actions are realistic, the consequences will be positive. If our actions are delusional, they will be negative. This is no different than drunks waking up after a bender to find they are still impoverished and miserable, thus necessitating more alcohol, while diligent people wake up to functional homes and growing families. What is it to which we awake?
 The biggest threat to humanity is itself, or rather, its own growth. Right now we have seven billion people on the planet; the friendly distracting voices on your television would rather you think about right now, and not what this implies for the future. Most people, especially our poorest, breed above replacement rates, so seven billion becomes nine billion and then twelve and then twenty. "Education" does not work; almost all of them are not intellectually capable of grasping the consequences of their overbreeding. In first world nations, breeding has slowed, but what this means is that our smarter people die out while hordes of people who could not develop first world wealth swell. We are not only overpopulating, but we are breeding from the lower strata of our intelligences.
Each person in this new world is going to require a certain amount of resources to survive and, if given the chance, will work for unlimited personal wealth. They want cars. They want TVs. They want comfortable first-world apartments. All of this consumes energy and generates waste, much of which will not break down and become safe for several thousand years. Time and time again, these new people have demonstrated that despite "education" they are not interested in checking their numbers, or recycling, or living simply. They want it all and they want it now. (In the first world, we are breeding obedient thin intelligences by rewarding them with easy jobs which would bore any first-rate intelligence to tears.)
The comforting voices on our television would like you to believe that global climate change just happened, and there were no warnings. That is incorrect. Scientists and philosophers have been warning us about this consequence for centuries, but it was an unpopular message. No one wanted to hear that they could not have it all and have it now; they wanted to hear that everything was OK. Pollution, crime, disease, and climate change were predicted by our science. But the message that we cannot each have our own personal reality and pursuit of pleasure will never be popular, and thus will not sell newspapers or get votes.
Individual
There are two questions in life: what we desire, and how to survive. Often the two conflict, like a child wanting ice cream instead of nutritious food. To reconcile the two, we must understand the rationality behind the mechanism of our survival, and adapt our desires to it. When the child grows, it understands that nutrition furthers healthy life, and for that reason is more important than ice cream, which is a temporary joy which has its place but cannot replace planning for life as a whole.
We do not like to face nature "red in tooth and claw," as it has often been described. Natural selection is threatening to us because it suggests that we are not in control of our personal mortality, and if we are found lacking, we can become prey and not predator. Further, like any competition, it reminds us of where we are strong and where we fail, and that we are ranked according to ability with some higher and some lower in all areas.
Our tendency is to deny this condition of nature by categorizing it as "bad," and categorizing all that denies it as "good." People are equal, we insist. All death should be outlawed. Even competition, or noting that one person is a better swimmer or writer than another, becomes taboo. We stop using words like fat, retarded, ugly, short, incompetent and begin speaking in a patois of euphemism and political categories. This leads to a state where certain ideas are as much Thoughtcrime, and the penalties as dire (denial of livelihood and social acceptance), as those in any Stalinist state.
 Denial perpetuates illusion, because it requires us to not recognize an aspect of reality as fundamental as our own existence. It forces us to separate the real world from theory, and by making our theory, corrupting our assumptions. Nature is defined by survival of the fittest. Accidents happen and there is no justice in the world. Power comes from the barrel of the gun. We refer to the acceptance of this literal tendency to physical reality as "nihilism," because we refute all values except reality. Nihilism, or as some call it, Zen, is a state of recognizing the mechanistic function of nature without passing judgment over it.
The opposition of nihilism is delusion. Delusion requires that we make human categories like "good" and "evil" into which we sort the world, and thus try to control each other and reality through these mental constructs. But these rapidly run into contradiction. We say murder is bad, but we have to murder murderers if they attack us. We say inequality is bad, but we have to pick someone who is "more equal" to lead or we become incompetent. We pretend all people are the same, but all of us know some we consider to be stupid or parasitic.
Worst of all, delusion requires vigorous defense because it is contrary to reality, and this means constant retribution upon those who point out the obvious -- that reality exists, that truth can be determined, and that human theory does not supercede the physical and natural world. This is why we either bring our theory in line with reality, or create corruption through a theory that is essentially delusional in contrast to reality.
Realism can also create a false concept of our world: if we focus too much on the physical, we start to fear it and fall back into our materialistic ways, doing whatever we can to avoid discomfort, inconvenience and death. As a consequence, after going through the process of nihilism and removing all value, we can build it back up -- based on the design of reality. Philosophers call this idealism, or a recognition that designs/thoughts are more important than immediate tangibles; this is not the same as the vernacular "idealism," which refers to the shallow categorical morality before the nihilistic process.
Nihilism is a reduction of false value; idealism is a study of how nature, and thoughts, both speak a language of logic that connects all of reality together. Idealism also means that we place achievement of important values above our physical comfort or survival. Sometimes, idealism is called heroism, in that we are willing to suffer or die for what we believe to be more realistic than the option, including our betterment of ourselves and the world. Realism tells us that our world is transacted in physical acts, and idealism shows us the structure behind reality. According to idealistic principle, we act in accord with that structure to better ourselves. The first idealism was humans learning to make fire because they understood the principles by which fire could be created and made useful, even if it was less convenient (more work) than lounging about in the cold.
The dual processes of nihilism and idealism let us remove unrealistic values and replace them with better ones. This mental event also thrusts us past the problems of "good" and "evil." When we see the overall design of nature, we see how predation and death are equally necessary to consumption and life, and how natural selection makes us more adapted to our reality and thus more capable within it. Like the ancient Gnostics, we see how good necessarily births evil to keep it in balance. Good and evil work together to create a "meta-good," or reality itself, which never runs into a state of stagnation or delusion because of this balance.
 This returns to us an answer to the fundamental question of spiritual belief: is God in the physical world, or outside of it? If we choose God within the world, God is both "good" and "evil" as a means of perpetuation of reality. If we choose god outside the world, we have to invent imaginary dimensions which operate according to rules which make no sense in reality, and we start to create a delusional theory which we try to project over our real world. To see God as a property of our world, both nihilistic (evil) and realistic (good), is to accept life for what it is and to work with it toward higher states of mind and being.
We call this process transcendence, which means that by understanding our world and appreciating its methods, we can see a reason for our suffering and mortality, and thus be less bothered by it. Transcendence is naturally holistic because it requires us to see the whole of natural design, or structure, in order to appreciate it. It is also "immanent" in that it is an emergent property of our world and does not require a fantasy world or unrealistic theory to help us. Holistic immanent transcendence is the process of finding good in the balance of good and bad that makes up reality.
In the great epic stories of nearly all cultures, the hero undergoes a similar process through experience. Setting out on a quest, the hero discovers a battle in the self that parallels the quest in the outside world. Finding the task impossible, the hero is lowered to despair, and with nothing left to lose, is able to see past illusion to find what is necessary and do it. Returning to the quest with newfound purpose, the hero is then able to triumph, but the achievement of the physical quest is secondary to the philosophical and spiritual purification the hero undergoes.
When we understand the philosophy of individuals in such clear terms, we no longer have a need for delusional theory that contradicts reality -- and thus we have also undergone this purification of intent.
Direction
 For us to survive as a species, we must undertake such learning and apply it. Not all people will understand it, but humanity as a whole would benefit from living under it. The problem with government by popularity -- voters in a democracy, buyers selecting products, the popularity of certain faces on TV screens -- is that it makes truth an option. Which "truth" would you prefer? The overwhelming majority of humans, attentive to detail but blind to holistic consequence, prefer pleasant "truths": work for your own comfort, accumulate your own wealth, let no aspect of reality bind you. When we can pick which "truth" we want, we opt for illusion because we are able to consider it as truth instead of wishful thinking or preference.
This is the major crisis of modern times. The modern philosophy arose from the preference of individuals for selective truths, and was empowered by utilitarianism because our thinking had been conditioned by technology toward a linear, mechanical interpretation of humanity. We see a field of corn and know that if we dump fertilizer and pesticides on it, we get a 36% higher yield. We see metal and oil and know if we combine them through a machine, we get cars. We need an audience to purchase these products, and since not all products are of great quality, we need them to be able to act on preference -- not logical function -- so they can buy on whim, or for novelty, or for emotional reasons. Modernity was not designed, but occurred because individuals strove toward profit, paying attention to details but not the whole.
The problem with this modern view is that by making "truth" a preference, it eliminates common sense and also collective direction. We each do what we desire, and the overall goal of society is adapted to fit this non-decision. Perhaps we come together on some things, but aside from large decisions (wars, disease, famine) we are unable to reach accord and battle it out daily over our contrary values. We select our values by preference, not logic. It is more sensible to recognize that we live in the same world and the same basic values apply to us all, although there will be variations according to local factors.
 Popularity defines what is popular, not what is correct. There are those among us who would like to believe that we can each choose the "truth" we desire, but this is not so: we must adapt to the same world. There is individual preference, and as no two individuals are the same, many paths to this same truth. However, much like the sun and rain and gravity and mortality, it remains ineffable (should we through science prolong our lives, we will still be able to be killed). When we choose systems like democracy and capitalism, we pick popularity and not reality; it is a distributed (having many uniform parts) version of a dictator, who selects what is popular only to him or herself. People buy what they want to believe.
How, then, do we lead? The best leadership is that which is least required: when there is social accord as to what is important, leaders apply those values to the benefit of the population. These values were in past times called culture, in that they represented the shared language, traditions and philosophy of a nation. Culture has for the most part been replaced by monetary motivators and mass media. This can be reversed when we perceive that popularity does not equal "right" any more than profit does. Dictatorship of the popular is opposed to culture, but culture gives meaning to life that earnings and comfort cannot: it gives everyone in society a place, a role and confidence in the sensibility of what they are doing.
Culture creates a flexible set of values that can be reached by many paths. In this way, there is a collective goal but room in it for individual achievement and flexibility. This common set of values -- things preferred by the civilization over another -- establishes a goalset against which any idea can be compared. Where money rewards the popular, culture rewards what is healthy for a population as a whole. Monetary motivation tears down civilizations, but culture resurrects them. In culture there is a sense of both past and future.
Often culture is referred to as "tradition," because it is the result of what has worked over time. The simplest examples are the cultural methods for survival, including food preparation and setting up of households, that have enabled peoples to thrive in their local environment. Tradition creates a framework for society that gives everyone a place according to their actions. Those who further the goals of a culture, or simply perform their role well, are valued; this measures their inner abilities and the nobility of their character instead of their ability to execute tasks for money. Culture values the individual, where commerce values obedience.
 There is no single culture that is preeminent. Each nation has evolved historically as distinct from all others and has a local culture that still exists and can be nurtured as a means of replacing soulless economics and popularity contests. Within each nation, there will also be variations. Culture is a means of localization, or letting humanity work in parallel by tackling the problem of survival with different methods. Each method is a culture or variant of a larger culture, generally breaking down in a containership arrangement of continent/nation/locality. By respecting culture in all nations, we each get a unique place where we belong and a way of doing things that is right for us and beyond criticism from others.
However, all cultures share in common a desire to adapt to the world and survive. Tradition is what is eternally true by the nature of being conscious beings, but there are many ways of expressing this. Many paths lead to the same truth. When we speak of "tradition" and "culture," we mean these paths that vary from nation and locality, but aim toward the same goal: finding a way of living in the design of nature that allows us to build an ever-greater civilization and to refine ourselves as individuals. Striving, and self-betterment, defines our satisfaction with life more than material goods or popularity (imagine being in a hospital with death hours away: what do you value most about the life that will soon pass?). When we find such a basis for organizing life as culture, we spare our citizens the task of patching together belief systems from scratch. We give them a vocabulary for individual values.
Great thinkers in every culture affirm the truths laid out in this document, and the passage from fear of nature to acceptance of nihilism to a form of idealistic realism. Christian and Muslim, Jew and Buddhist, Agnostic and New Ager are united in this, as are those of every political persuasion. This is not a right/left or up/down type of mechanical political decision, but a philosophical position that describes how our world works and a smart way to adapt to it. By finding this idea common to all thinking beings, we are able to see each religion and political system in the context of it, and thus focus on what we have in common instead of our differences.
 To use a cliché, "we are all in this together." We live in the same world and our fates are conjoined. If we pollute our world, we all breathe the toxins. If we start a nuclear war, we all suffer the fallout and cancers. The best way to live together is to respect our differences. If we can agree on the basics, such as putting culture before money and popularity, each society will be able to adapt its local rules accordingly.
Politics
The philosophy of what is sensible must also be applied to a political platform for it to take action. There is no party for this platform; becauses its values are shared among all parties, it can be applied through any political system or viewpoint. It is simply what is sensible.
- Population Currently, natural land has been reduced to approximately ten percent of usable land. This eliminates species, ruins natural regulatory processes including the production of oxygen, and ensures resource depletion. To reverse this process, we must reduce humanity to at least half its current population and thus land consumption. This places people in cities, where over half of the population currently resides. Were we to want a planet where every person could own a house, we would have to reduce our population to one-half billion. Further, we want to ensure that the smarter people in all cultures worldwide breed instead of the slower ones. We do not trust bureaucratic government to apply this policy. What makes more sense is to reduce all foreign aid from the first world, and to cease all outsourcing of labor and services from the first world. This will shrink the world economy and stop reckless growth. In addition, if we adapt a policy of putting culture before money, we can reward people for their inner qualities including intelligence and nobility of character, and therefore breed better quality people.
- Leadership Democratic leaders do not lead. They listen to polls and propose nice-sounding but impractical plans. We need strong leaders who are willing to do what is unpopular if it is the right thing to do. Banning SUVs or destructive plastic products will generate cries of "oppression," but if all of humanity benefits, it is a freedom from oppression. No one can make a decision for a society at large without stepping on some toes, but as most individuals are inclined to see detail and not the whole, their desires are often inappropriate. Among our people there are those who lead intelligently, nobly and compassionately. Rigorous education in history and philosophy can round these people out, and we can start them out as local leaders and promote those that do the best job. Further, we should breed them in a special category of people, or "caste," so that we pass on the genes that produce great leaders.
- Freedom The best freedom is a working society without a plethora of threats (crime, filth, parasites, predators) in which one can do anything that is not destructive. Government should stay out of regulating such things, as it should be left up to the local community to determine who they accept as a member of their community. If a citizen is acting in dischord to the values of the local community, it is not terrible that they be asked to leave and to find a place more appropriate to their values. This will lead to the creation of subcultural localities, like cities devoted to subcultures (drugs, homosexuality, heavy metal, cannibalism) that are not acceptable to others. This guarantees each the freedom they need and the freedom from having to support people with whose choices they do not agree. It eliminates endless debates over abortion, drug legalization, sodomy laws, and so forth, as each local community can define its standards without interference from an overbearing central government.
- Reward When we assert culture over money, we begin looking at the inward qualities of people again. Each local area can reward what it deems important. This does not need to come in the form of money, but can be grants of land or shares in the agriculture or manufactured products of a region. Furthermore, the people we find to be of higher quality should be encouraged to breed at higher than replacement rates. This ensures that all of us will have offspring who have a chance to mate with people of higher quality.
- Parasites Manipulative liars, schemers, hoaxers, thieves, perverts, leeches, and people who abuse power are part of life. Because in each generation, variation is introduced by both the recombinant factors of genetics and natural mutation, there will be people of every new batch who are fundamentally inclined toward destructive behaviors. Where in the past we spent huge amounts of money to try to "rehabilitate" many, with a high rate of failure, in the future we should not shy away from removing them. People who mean badly and intend to parasitize others will never change and the rest of society should not be penalized for their dysfunction.
- Clean up Our future is our environment. With a combination of tax credits and social encouragement, we can make it feasible for businesses and individuals to remove garbage, pollution, derelict buildings, and unnecessary plastic.
- Isolation There should be no foreign aid of any kind, and no international programs to reduce hunger or disease. Each locality must stand on its own and, if destroyed by natural forces, should be considered to have been a civilization not destined to survive.
- Ethnic self-determination Each local culture is tied to a group by heritage, and no two groups can exist in the same place. For this reason, local cultures can decide who or who not to accept on any basis they desire, including heritage and culture. We believe this will prevent the crass and destructive racism that is a consequence of two or more populations competing for cultural and economic dominance in the same area.
- Existential A future consideration for human beings should be the way we spend our time. Most of our jobs can be done in a quarter of the time we spend on them, should we be willing to adopt more efficient methods and worry less about who is offended. Committees and multiple layers of management do not increase efficiency, but are there to protect the incompetent from recognition. It is more humane to send the incompetent to a different job than it is to make all of us adapt to the lowest common denominator. When economics is not the primary measure of an individual's worth, the stigma of moving to a different job becomes far less.
These are hard truths and will be opposed by many people. We must ask, however, what their motivation is. What do they fear? The above will make life better for all of us and change our path from a sure progression to overpopulation, internal mediocrity and tedium. It will give less power to the incompetent, the parasitic, and the manipulative. Those who fear these hard truths are afraid that they will not meet the standards of a more rigorous, more serious time. However, the above will give everyone a place, even if less dramatic and profitable ones than could be had in a less functional time.
Corrupt
 No matter how hard the truth, the reality of the situation is that obtaining and using truth is a more effective strategy than delusion. Delusion is more psychologically acceptable and thus in a time of individual preferences, it is accepted as truth, but the result has been a number of longstanding problems that have slowly come to a head with disastrous consequences. Unless we as a species get our population under control, and get some kind of value besides money, we will breed ourselves into a permanent third world state worldwide.
This organization is dedicated to collective action through personal recognition of reality and ideal as the same: design. Through design principles, we will construct a better reality. This may be offensive to some, but those who stand in the way of what is real and right are parasitic and manipulative and will ultimately destroy us. When truth is opposed, one must ask why, and those who oppose truth should be known as people who favor delusion -- even with its eventual destructive outcome -- for their own shallow reasons. They are, by definition, corrupt.
To love life is to recognize the wisdom of its methods, the "meta-good" including goods and bads. When we overcome our fears of death and suffering and other bads, we can remove illusion and see life as it really is, and thus appreciate its design. This is a form of reverence that all great spiritual and philosophical strains of thought share in common: the satori of Zen, the great jihad of Islam, Nietzsche's "pragmatic idealism," Schopenhauer's inner quietus, the vision of the Shaman and Seer alike, even the meditative tradition in Christianity and the kaneh bosem trances of Jewish mystics. It is the highest state of the human mind and the position from which we can see what needs to be done.
As we have been taught morality, the materialist-humanist version of Judeo-Christian thought, it is a sin to tell anyone they cannot live as they desire or to take a life. But if the option to taking lives was that all would die, should we not reconsider this? Might we instead invent a morality of the whole... including individuals, the human collective, and the collective of humanity and nature? Our dictatorship of the proletariat, our authoritarian government of the democratic crowd, is not able to make such decisions. Yet they are upon us.
 Ultimately there is no way to escape the human condition as having to face these decisions. If we blow them off, we slowly decline until we are left at a pre-technological state, having bred out our finest thinkers like the ruined republics of Rome and Greece and ancient India and the Americas did. When all the oil is consumed, the climate is wrecked, and we are overpopulated, we will not have the luxury of choosing who survives... only the very wealthy will, and they will be confined to technologically-managed sealed housing to keep out the toxic air and wasteland dwellers. Is this a future we desire?
Should we choose to make these difficult decisions now, and end our leaderless modern time and get back on track toward a positive future, we stand a chance of achieving greater things both on personal and technological levels. A healthy humanity will be able to produce better people, and eventually, take on spaceflight to escape a planet doomed by the shortening lifespan of its sun. In the meantime, we would live more meaningful and less deluded lives. But another consideration is that we cannot escape natural selection. It is possible that much as there are natural hurdles to any species, such as limiting its population, every technological species faces a challenge: will it use up its fossil fuels, mine all its metals, and deplete its store of genius people before it gets off its home planet? Immortality may await in the skies, if we choose it. If not, it's possible that -- natural selection again -- the honor will go to some other species that is more disciplined than we.
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