I once heard a story about a man who considered purchasing a mule from a stranger. After talking about the mule's merits, the seller noted that it should be treated gently for best performance. Money changed hands and the new owner attempted to lead the mule away without success. It would not move. The new owner expressed dissatisfaction to the seller, whereupon the seller picked up a large piece of wood and smashed it over the mule's nose. The mule became most cooperative. The buyer, however, was confused. "I thought you told me to be gentle with the mule," he said. The seller replied, "Yes, you should be gentle, but first you have to get the mule's attention."

So it is with any attempt to capture a person's interest in any subject. One must first get their attention. Comments on the Human Condition is a reality check on human behavior and it is not complimentary. It is a backdrop or foundation for you to understand why the remainder of Destiny was written. The amount of material to consider is relatively large, so it has been divided into six parts to assist the reader in digesting the overall discussion.

Part I - Our Pursuit of Knowledge

Philosophers study the nature of knowledge and reality, specifically in the interest of defining what means humans have for the acquisition and use of knowledge. They attempt to define consistent and complete conditions of truth about each major area of human life. They then attempt to synthesize the whole of life from the parts. That is a laudable endeavor to the extent we are given axioms and postulates as frames of reference to guide us in our search to understand the cosmos and our role in it. Unfortunately, philosophers disagree with each other in ways that contradict each other's axioms, and that confound our efforts to gain a firm and consistent foundation for developing and using our knowledge. Why? The answer is that philosophers, like the rest of us, struggle to identify essential implications about reality from insufficient information, inadequate experience and limited intellect. They cannot be expected to be consistent with each other, as they do not have a uniform set of guidelines, adequate intellect or broad life experiences given to them from which to develop the "axioms" and "postulates" and other "truths" that they provide to us.

When you live in the domain of the uncertain, anybody can vote, and it takes valuable time from facile minds just to counter or debunk the sheer volume of proposed drivel from the past to the present. Yet, we all must start somewhere, so it is necessary to understand our past, and to determine as best we can how to separate the valuable philosophical essentials from the knowledge base, religion and politics of the originating location and period of history.

Our starting point in reflecting on the Human Condition is thus tainted. As long as you choose to read Destiny, you are subjected to my educational, experiential, metaphysical and epistemological shortcomings as well as to any valid insights I may have to share. I am a non-resident USA citizen, but many of my early experiences, and therefore many of my examples, come from the USA. Be aware of my limitations and those of all the sources from which you have obtained your knowledge up to this moment in your life. Mix curiosity and doubt in equal parts as you read on, for the former provides you incentive to learn and the latter a basis for critical evaluation of what you read. You are, ultimately, responsible for your development. You have the unenviable task of being adult in the most demanding sense. You also have the freedom to seek truth and to act on your discoveries, for your benefit, likely far more than you realize.

Part II - The Reality of Our Ignorance

My first observation is that ignorance is intolerable. Individuals and entire societies from the beginning of recorded history have made this point obvious by their incessant search for knowledge and its application to improve their living conditions, and to give them a limited sense of control over their existence. Early on, people pressed to explain the many cosmic unknowns just to have a sense of comfort about the very fact of existence. The "where did we come from?" question has been answered in every age and civilization, albeit weakly and differently. Similarly, the "what happens when we die?" question has underwritten the consumption of a large share of human toil, either directly on the part of maintaining religious institutions and tribal "religious" wars or indirectly in the funds donated for the maintenance and furthering of the various religions. Simply consider the many years of labor and premium materials used to build the great cathedrals in Europe.

Our species certainly does attempt to pave the way for entry into the unknown. And for many, the apparent unfairness of our short and brutal life experiences is justified only by adhering to beliefs about an afterlife that rights all the apparent wrongs experienced in this life. Consider, however, the political value of religion to anyone exerting power over people who suffer due to natural or manmade disasters or, especially, poor economic and environmental conditions.

We do not like to be ignorant and we especially dislike being considered ignorant. We will do whatever is necessary in the age we live to make ourselves and others believe that we know what life is about. That is an understatement. Our intense need to shape and frame the unknown, and our fear and actual ignorance of what might be true, are the reasons we engage in fully delusional thought processes, rationalizations and peculiar, ritualistic behaviors. We demonstrate the extent of our delusional thinking by the intensity and rabidity of our proclamations that our mostly inherited way must be the right way. This is the scariest part of the Human Condition. Having formed a cosmic view, we defend it to death instead of seeking or remaining open to new information.

Imagine if you told your carpenter that he had to use hand tools as they existed in 20 AD to build an addition to your home. He would make a hasty exit. Consider also what modern conveniences and medical procedures we have and that they would not exist if scientists did not continually push the limits of our knowledge and discard older theories in the face of newer, reliably demonstrable facts. You can turn to medical science to find new vaccines for new viruses, but you cannot readily open people's minds to question the "wisdom of their forefathers" in the areas of philosophy, religion and government.

Why do the so-called "great" tomes from religions born in the Middle East; Christianity, Islam and Judaism, focus on the end of human life/existence instead of it's progress? The simple and accurate answer is that the writers did not have a clue about human destiny, so they framed their ignorance in "desirable" and vague proclamations about life after death, with dire consequences forecasted for non-believers, or, infidels. In short, the worst role of religion has been to convince individuals that they are helpless and born guilty, and that only a life of servitude and obedience is acceptable. Such recording of the progress of life of ancient tribes as was done is basically nothing more than a chronology of reproduction, migration and war, with occasional individual efforts to understand and improve human life. Ultimately you must ask yourself, whose purposes are served by your assigned guilt and helplessness and the requirement of your unquestioning obedience? How is it that mere humans of radically different religious persuasions usurp the prerogative of a God to punish those who do not profess to believe what they profess to believe?

Now ask yourself, is there really any example out of history where the knowledge of a currently useful subject was better in any earlier age than it is now? Are subjects like the method of construction of Egyptian pyramids or embalming Pharaohs relevant to anything more than momentary curiosity? Are the relics at Stonehenge or Easter Island anything more than interesting examples of how our ancestors attempted to understand and control life? If your actual origin, beliefs and values stem from something different from what you have believed for most of your life, does that devalue the meaning of your existence now? No.

Your ability to evolve beyond your ancestors, whatever or whomever they were, is entirely dependent on your willingness to explore, to discover and absorb new, relevant facts and discard the outdated beliefs and concepts that were the best our predecessors could develop during their period of history. At a gut level, we all recognize that we move from ignorance to knowledge based on experience. To assume great human knowledge in our distant past is irrational, based on the absence of hard evidence to support that conjecture and the presence of hard evidence that shows one way progression in our working knowledge. Yes, there was a historical period in Europe known as the Dark Ages, in which the most advanced human knowledge in the western world was barely retained by clergy or, in some instances, possibly lost. Of course, China, Japan and the countries of the Middle East were not part of that situation. What was lost? Does it matter today?

Part III - The Symptoms of Chronic Ignorance

If you reflect on what we humans actually do, with regard to government, religion and other cultural practices, you will recognize that we are stuck in the mud. We are looking backward in time for insights and immortal truths to feel comfortable about our existence, and to show us how to solve current social problems. We also are seeking answers on how to control the scary and rapid rate of change in our lives in the latter 20th century, which has come about by the confluence of global commerce and applied technology.

We associate existential meaning with cultural and physical heredity, and use that as a self-definition and a philosophical basis for avoiding change. That demonstrates our fear for our security, physically and epistemologically. Thus, we can expect human progress to be dismally slow because of our reluctance to grow.

In action, it means that once an activity or practice is started, and becomes fundamental to our understanding of reality, that we no longer want to question it's validity. It is as if the function of the form is more important than the function itself, for we do not want to have to think about it. The unfortunate truth is that social creations of humans frequently fail to evolve, or, they evolve into directions that reflect human weakness instead of strength. We do have to acknowledge that multiple civilizations have risen and later declined or perished, essentially because they became locked into historical practices and beliefs and did not think to adapt to changing conditions. A few examples of our foibles will illustrate that point below.

Were you as amused as I when the Vatican decided to declare Galileo as okay, hundreds of years after his death? His sin, it seems, was first to vocally support his scientist-ancestor Copernicus, who believed that the earth was not the center of the universe, as was taught by the church based on the conjectures of Ptolemy. Secondly, Galileo questioned the authority of the church to refute his own scientific findings. He was excommunicated and imprisoned during the Inquisition, which short of immediate execution was the strongest statement the church could make to punish him for independent thinking. Galileo was right to support Copernicus' view regarding the earth, though Copernicus himself wrongly believed our sun to be the center of the universe. Does the recent action by the Vatican re Galileo's soul mean anything at all to Galileo? Does it mean anything to us? Is this not a fine example of institutional arrogance? It is the foible of irrational assumption of correctness, compounded by notions of permanent relevance, and it is based on a static view of life, under the name orthodoxy.

Is adamant orthodoxy in the religious context in any way useful to human progress? No. Yet, the example above is relatively harmless, though I doubt Galileo would have agreed during his persecution. You might also consider the Crusades, or the other lives destroyed by the Inquisition, or, more recently, the "confusion" of the Amish parents whose children were arrested for drug dealing. Think about the continued Orthodox Jewish pork prohibition, or the Islamic death threats to author Salmon Rushdie for "blasphemy." Note that blasphemy, stripped to its essentials, is simply an empty word used as an excuse to persecute anyone who vocally rejects our cosmic view. Ideas that were "good for the time" when they were first conceived are demonstrably foolish today. Like the papal encyclical a few decades ago that defined the use of birth control devices as sin. It is the foible of living in the past, i.e. refusing to grow or adapt to the reality of changing conditions.

Recently, a FBI forensic scientist, Frederic Whitehurst, brought to our attention that the national icon of justice in the USA, the FBI, willfully and repeatedly provided fallacious "expert" testimony in various criminal trials. He was, of course, fired for his public statements in that regard. Is nothing sacred? Is it possible that the USA's best organized defense against crime has evolved into something we don't want to believe about our government, due to our unwillingness to question our cultural heredity and how our institutions have actually evolved? Can we be so naïve as to believe that the answer to the FBI problem consists of simply identifying a couple bad guys within the organization and either firing or demoting them?

Science and politics do not mix. The FBI used its scientific reputation to lie, multiple times, to effect political results. What is worse, it is likely that less than 1% of FBI employees routinely suffer ethical or moral lapses of judgment. Yet, of those who do, a sufficient number are apparently high enough in the hierarchy to do significant damage to the credibility of the overall organization. Therefore, they are dangerous to us directly and through their instructions to underlings. The foible would be less damaging if the management of the organization was not involved, so we find ourselves with a serious issue regarding the ascent of unscrupulous people within most any organization. It is not only the FBI. Our foible is failure to identify and correct regressive evolution.

Is it any wonder that our societies find themselves ill prepared to cope with technological and social changes that did not exist at the time our social institutions were formed? Do you believe that the acquisition of knowledge as we move forward in time is merely "icing on the cake," that it only supplements fundamental truths discovered by our ancestors? Could you entertain the idea that some of our "best" ideas from our ancestors should be willfully discarded? Is it possible that a future view, combined with direct steps to discard outdated concepts and practices is essential to progress in virtually all areas of life?

The main point about our self-limiting behaviors is that we grow with great difficulty and frequently repeat most of the mistakes of our ancestors. In terms of action, our leaders, and those led, have almost never taken a future view until their lives became so intolerable that the leaders incited those led to make war, physical or economic. And even then the future view was nothing more than a short term plan for stealing that which they were unable or unwilling to develop for themselves by non-violent means. If you doubt the truth of this assertion, read Edward Rutherford's historical novel, London, or Howard Zinn's non-fiction, historical treatise, A People's History of the United States 1492 - Present.

Part IV - Thoughts About Change

Conquest for wealth and power define human behavior throughout our history, at the expense of the targeted people. Those behaviors demonstrate that our leaders have never been able to lead effectively for the comprehensive growth and development of the human race, or they repeatedly, consistently, chose not to do so.

Thus, it becomes evident that to change the course of history, the fundamental facts of human life must be changed, and in a manner that all can understand and want. Those who today represent the power elite in our societies, and who simply repeat what previous leaders have done in exploiting their wealth and aptitudes and the labor of the less fortunate, must be changed by removing their motivation to continue those practices. Is this possible? Nothing in our history would so indicate. The Human Condition, the so-called facts of life that all of us have experienced since early civilizations were formed, seems to be invariant. Nothing points to fundamental change in human behaviors in our future, unless there is a cataclysmic change in the nature of human reality.

Welcome to the nasty truth about leaders in all periods of history in virtually every geographic area. The pursuit of power and the act of using it through conquest and oppression results in a brutal life for many humans, especially in terms of how each person could enjoy life. It is a part of the Human Condition that betrays the fact that we do not plan intelligently to become inherently more capable in directing and living our lives. The bulk of us are unwitting slaves, or, unintentionally blind straw bosses to slave masters.

As a species, we typically repeat what our recent ancestors did for survival, so our civilizations and successive generations of people are like a serial recycling process, differing only in geography, time, specific individuals and in the technology used to wage war, either actual physical conflict or, more recently, economic.

Do we see anything redeeming in human activities to evolve from our history of applied power behaviors on behalf of developing a better world for all of us? Yes, we do. However, we also see repetition of mistakes as described below.

Part V - Current Symptoms and Efforts to Change

Consider the bald stupidity of India and Pakistan in their development and testing of nuclear weapons. Have they learned nothing from the Soviet and USA experiences from the 1940's through the 1980's? Are India and Pakistan forever sentenced to regressive thinking, as evidenced by their continued and outdated population practices, and now by the nuclear weapon game? Are we simply seeing proof of the point regarding serial, cyclic human behaviors?

We are told by news media analysts that the underlying reason for India in developing nuclear capability was that they would have real voting power in global events only if they proved they could defend themselves, presumably from China and Pakistan, but who knows? One might suppose that a world of smaller, nuclear-armed nations would somehow be exempt from the nuclear winter scenario that finally precipitated sensible fear on the part of the Soviets and the USA. In any event, the dull-witted choice of conventional nuclear weapons and missiles completely ignores the fact that satellite and aircraft-based tracking and space-based and ground-based laser weapons will rapidly obsolete missile delivery systems. Can they not think ahead?

India, Pakistan, and a number of other nations are reacting to the reality of dominance behaviors by the larger "nuclear" powers, so their actions are understandable and worthless. The correct action of pulling the teeth from the tigers, i.e. the USA, Russia, Great Britain, The Peoples Republic of China and France, via a newly formed United Nations, has yet to be acted upon. Meanwhile, what are we common people doing of value to assist our growth?

When did you last read a book about the next fifty years of our future that demonstrated an orderly progression from ignorance and poverty to increased knowledge and good health? It is unlikely that you have. More likely, you have encountered the drivel from publishers who sell sensational proclamations about our past, present and future, "divined" by some supposed super prophet in our past, like Nostradamus! What do you actually ingest via television, radio, novels and newspapers? Frankly, you ingest almost nothing that transcends the superficial or the trivial. This wastes your time on things you can do little about, gives you the illusion of being informed, and leads you away from useful human endeavor.

Do you routinely promote your self-development by watching some of the better programs on educational television or reading serious texts about human development or extend your knowledge through continuing your formal education? Do you exist as an observer of bunk or are you active in growing yourself and others? What parts of your personality formation and your other life experiences have kept you from focusing on personal achievement? Is there some truth to the idea that "I am what I do?"

Yet we do see examples of humans working together to advance our knowledge and to provide us with a better life during our time. We harness technical and social knowledge to improve our existence, and that aspect of Humanity is a sign of our potential. Having become aware of each other globally through positive growth in transportation and through negative events like war we are taking steps to stabilize the conditions that all of us depend on for our collective future. However, numerous, fundamental problem areas related to human psychology, metaphysical and epistemological ignorance hamper our best efforts. Consider, for example, latter 20th century international trade initiatives.

Do USA global efforts in maintaining peace, expanding democracies and Western Hemisphere economic dominance at this time in history, via loans and trade, mark a significant departure from the distant past (pre 1850)? Yes, they do, thanks to the capabilities and largess of technology applied via war and then business, ever since our crude efforts in that area began with the expansionist Mexican and Spanish American wars in the 1800's. Will those types of behaviors work for the next 20 to 50 years? No, they will not. We are in the midst of a global economic and social experiment to use mutually beneficial trade to help eliminate war, and to assure our economic security. The fundamental assumption is that economic and material interdependency will lead to negotiated solutions across trading nations instead of war, and that internationalism will break down extreme nationalism.

This is an extremely important evolutionary requirement for our species to proceed successfully into the future, but it is not likely to succeed as other cultures are keenly aware of our dominance behaviors and are not materially dependent on us. Both the European Union and the area of greater China represent huge populations and huge markets that are essentially not dependent on the USA. They have every reason to mimic our behavior and to seek economic dominance, and the means to do so. Though in the interim, for example, China needs technology and investment dollars to kick start a first world economy, and they will appear to be cooperative, but that is only temporary.

Recall George Orwell's book, 1984, and in particular the three global partitions (Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceana), and you will quickly grasp the actual direction of global change wrought by USA global trade initiatives at a political level. Later, you will read about the attempted change to that direction by the formation of global monopolies, which are designed to reform the world into one pool of dominant economic organizations independent of geographical or political boundaries. Similar to physical war, you are wounded, economically, by that conflict.

The ethnic, racial and cultural aspects of extreme nationalism must be diminished considerably, in order for us to proceed as a species towards a far better future. Is that likely to happen? Does our history anywhere in the world demonstrate any appreciation of diversity outside of foods and art forms like folk dances? No. Each "tribe" is and always has been specifically concerned with personal advancement at the expense of all other tribes. Remember that most of the warriors in history were opportunists, not leaders of hungry people looking for trade. How hungry were the followers of Caesar, Alexander and Genghis? What humanitarian component can we find in the campaigns of Napoleon? Hitler? Saddam Hussein? Slobodan Milosevic? The calculated and implemented policies of a number of famous and past USA presidents to destroy the American Indians puts us in the same company of opportunists and destroyers. Manifest Destiny was and is a disgusting concept, for it is simply an excuse to steal, based on the survival of the fittest, which simply means those who have evolved weapons superior to those they decide to attack. This includes economic and psychological weapons.

Financial opportunism will be practiced going forward and it will lead to repetitive wars, economic and/or physical. This will happen because of perceptions of real and imagined unfair trade practices. There will be political fallout from populations that have a poor outlook for prosperity, particularly if they have enjoyed prosperity before, like the shrunken middle class in the USA. Note that the younger adults in Germany are impatient with high unemployment, and they are blaming that problem on immigrants. This behavior is similar to that of the German population preceding World War II. They were content to allow their leaders to blame their economic problems on Jews.

Note that class struggles to improve economic status of lower income people are less likely to succeed in a global economy than a local economy. Businesses can frequently ignore workers demands for the combination of decent income and job security by shifting production or any other type of service requirement wherever they choose. This is the modern version of the old adage "divide and conquer." In short, the new global economy has become a superset of the old battles between the "haves" and the "have-nots," with serious diminishment of power of the already weak have-nots in developed nations.

Consider also the great disparity in consumption of natural resources like oil. Imagine the environmental consequences if the second and third world populations become empowered to use oil as we do. What will happen to air quality, carbon dioxide levels, etc.? Simply think about air pollution in Mexico City today.

Aside from natural conditions that make Mexico City prone to air pollution, think what it means to grow to a population of 20 million people in that type of economic environment. Consider the poor economy and the need to divert scarce financial resources to economic development by expedient means simply to hold the country together. Recognize that a second world economy does not allow for effective pollution control devices to be included in their economic development. Note that the only solution in place today is to shut businesses down on alternate days during periods of high pollution. Is that not self-defeating to the economy? What is the real problem?

Consider also our recent, undeniable discovery of rapidly rising ocean temperatures all over our planet and melting of glaciers. If our great global trade efforts succeed, we may experience severe symptoms from those problems and numerous others, for no one has an inherent right to consume and simultaneously deny consumption to others. We do have the "power" to kill our planet environmentally.

Efforts to control potential environmental disasters from excess resource consumption or destruction, e.g., rain forests in South America, are hampered by the fact that burgeoning populations want to enjoy applied technology and a good standard of living as we have. What ideological, philosophical or religious basis do we have to deny them that enjoyment? We have none, unless we ignore the concept of national sovereignty, i.e. the right to live life within one's country according to the choices of the inhabitants. Global development and trade will exacerbate the environmental problem by introducing consumptive behaviors to very large and growing populations.

Are we greedy? Are they greedy? Recognize that greed is simply hunger from a different reference point in the continuum of wealth. And recognize also that powerful humans are every bit as territorial in the protection of their security and their resources as any other species of animal, regardless of geographic location or culture or period of history. Acquisition and distribution of wealth is one of our ugliest problems, in terms of ruining the opportunities and thus, lives of our fellow humans. This is one of the most prominent, repeated examples of the Human Condition trait of survival at the expense of the weak.

The combined effects of territorialism, differing ideologies and backward religions will continue to haunt the best efforts to maintain world peace and to develop an integrated, highly civilized global society. The effects of all three must be nullified if we are to make significant, global, maintainable progress in promoting the development of the human race. So how does one group of nations cause that to happen by non-violent means?

The evolution of our efforts in that area up to this point in history is primarily concerned with developing nations agriculturally and industrially through education, trade and loans. The hope is that national boundary and ideological differences will blur as we become increasingly interdependent on and aware of each other globally and have a globally higher standard of living. Will this approach work?

Certain early aspects clearly do work, especially the use of loans to build industrial infrastructure in nations that are already close to the world powers (G7) in the general level of civilization. This is seen in their democratic constitutions, educational institutions and industrial development. For example, consider the experiences in growing Taiwan and Brazil. In some instances, groups of nations are joining forces economically. The formation of the European Union can provide economic security and opportunity for Europeans, unlike anything they have experienced in the past 2000 years. Consider also the highly successful post WW II rebuilding of the economies and industrial infrastructure of Germany and Japan.

Certain aspects of recent changes/efforts clearly do not work as well. Brazil is a time bomb due to the extreme class differences in wealth and a burgeoning population of the very poor and uneducated. The life of most of the people reflects the characteristics of the upper Amazon River regarding survival of the fittest, with a dangerously skewed wealth and power distribution curve. Taiwan is an environmental disaster in air quality and a constant, irritating reminder to the Peoples Republic of China that they have no dominion over an island (archipelago) that was, earlier in history, a part of China. China has too many people and has produced nothing of beneficial global consequence in the 20th century. They have demonstrated what happens when individuality is suppressed on behalf of the ideology known as communism. Chronic trade imbalances used to promote democracy and capitalism elsewhere, i.e. Japan and the Pacific Rim, undermined the financial future of the middle class in the USA. That aspect of our effort did more harm than good to the economic (job) security and progress of the general population within the USA.

What is fundamentally wrong with the above aspects of globalization? In short, the efforts are literally directed toward the wrong goals. There is no added value to developing more second or third world countries to feed and house ten billion humans instead of containing the present world population to five plus billion people. Is that the price of peace? Why is that so? Greater numbers of individuals with limited contributory ability stress the planetary resources to provide them a quality life while they do not make a high value contribution to our present or our future. That is the real problem in our contemporary models for peace through loans and/or trade. All members of the animal kingdom, including us, eat and reproduce until the food supply and other resources will no longer support the population, e.g., the Mayans. Political stability and economic development must be accomplished by an altogether different approach.

A second serious flaw in our present methods of world development is that we have failed to consider the elimination of checks and balances that have existed, however imperfectly, in local economies. We are developing a "World Class" case of the haves vs. the have-nots, with wealth concentration that has no national boundaries or responsibility and thus is not subject to any individual nation's laws or the voting powers of the people within an individual nation. Global monopolies are a disaster for all but the wealthy, and this power-amassing evolution is leading to a radically new and dangerous type of implemented ideology known as the business-state. It is simply an oligarchy with no conscience and no external checks and balances.

Part VI - Facing the Reality of Our Beliefs and Behaviors

The underlying and most insidious problem is that we do not even acknowledge that there is a specific goal or destiny for the human race, except for the weak and delusional preaching of various religions concerning an afterlife. Oh, yes, there are religions that value the existence of life itself, in any form, accepting whatever happens as destiny beyond our understanding or right to develop. Thus, we do not seek destiny beyond the immediate period or direct resources to defining and achieving it. At least we do not see such efforts advertised publicly.

Such advances as we have seen from science and applied technology have been viewed, incorrectly, as proven by our behaviors, only as means to perpetuate the fundamental activities of working, eating, making shelter and reproducing in somewhat better physical comfort than our ancestors experienced. You may also note that any technological advance that could be directed to military advantage, for economic or ideological goals, has been; for example, spears, bows and arrows, gunpowder, poison gas, nuclear energy, bacteria and viruses and now, lasers. If your lack of knowledge or experience in that area causes you to doubt the "strategic" military capability represented by global positioning satellites and laser weaponry, you would be wise to rethink your position.

Why do we do that? The answer is we have avoided the effort to define destiny because in each age and generation the individual has been unable to answer, even feebly, the questions surrounding our origin, why we are here, the painful reality of death and the unknown after death. Remember that we do not like to be ignorant, so we do whatever is necessary to convince ourselves that we do know what life is about. Moreover, we limit our focus to the past and the present to perpetuate our individual, ethnic and national illusions about our "knowledge" and our "culture."

We choose not to look at the implications of what we do to sustain and enhance our lives on future generations. We live as if our time here is the last play of the game. Simply consider industrial pollution and individual generation of garbage. Think about the massive amounts of carbon dioxide that we produce and the effect regarding global warming. We are negatively affecting our present and especially our future and potentially destroying our world through our "development" efforts.

That is the Human Condition. We are unwilling to face cosmic reality squarely. We have a propensity to mimic our fellow animals in irrational reproductive practices, which serve only to destroy the environment and further diminish our capabilities to grow and to enjoy the gift of life. Our most dominant characteristic is that we are animalistic in our destruction and enslavement of each other. We live according to the practice of survival of the fittest, as determined by wealth and the economic and military behaviors used to amass it at each other's expense. We appear to have no rational, holistic plan for developing the future of all of Humanity.

We are left with the question of what to do about the Human Condition. We are also left with the problem that, up to now, limited human abilities and marked disabilities perpetuate, seemingly without end. Has something fundamental changed? The coming chapters in Destiny are dedicated to answering various aspects of those issues and questions, but first, we will review Human Foibles and Human Successes to complete our introduction to understanding Humanity.