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Many may not realize this, but a kind of Universal Basic Income actually already was experimented with, via an interchangable indicator. In the 1930’s-1950’s, “teenagers” and “high school” were invented to solve for the lack of jobs due to the Great Depression, pushing people that were once deemed of working age, back into schools, hence a deluge of films about misfits and rebellions. State and parents for an additional four years took up the care of teenagers, where that term “teenager” had come into wide use during these times. Yes, this is a fairly recent “invention”. Did it work? Of course, there was more employment for adults by trimming out a younger segment. Was there outrage? Of course, just see West Side Story (1961), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Wild One (1954), Blackboard Jungle (1955), and other films.
And now here intelligent species are here again… yet this time organizations reliant on cheap labor, just as in the times of state empires, though this time private empires, maintain that poverty level wages counts as “jobs” in jobs reports but are not counted as “jobs” in accounting for expectations on what a job should be. If a professional job requires reliance on three or four days a week being served by poverty level jobs — then look no further than the gross inequity of a system reliant on poverty to support its excesses, and that, is very eerily similar to an entire world of plantations of sugar (dopamine), cotton (fabrics), nicotine (fixations), spices (experiences), and precious gems and metals (status). This is no different than information (dopamine), digital networks (fabrics), media (fixations), travel (experiences), and certifications (status).
Perhaps an intelligent species may figure this out, or perhaps not, as is seen in market behavior: first in, first out. Except this is first in [before resource depletion] with birth, and first out [before the crash] with death. The plantations of information are no different than the plantations of Gone With the Wind, and like then with horses, wagons, and trains escaping, today it’s cars, planes, and rockets trying to outrace the wind. Yet the wind comes, and it’s Universal: justice, and yes the arc bends, it is long, and goes beyond life, and death, itself.
I do not wish the mantle of Yama, nor Brahma, nor the bliss of ten-thousand angels, nor the divine creations of Devas, nor mechanized weapons of communications, printing, presses, swords, guns, artillery, rockets, bombs, and all matter of technologies of the Asuras. I do not wish simplicity of the animal, nor the compressive strength of the hungry ghosts, nor the fierce determinations of demons. Nor do I wish for eternity, nor do I wish for extermination. I only wish to see wishing directly, to see seeing directly, and now it is seen why consciousness is correlated to anger/aversion in mantra and mandala. It is known directly, it is so.
And though I do not wish the mantles of the bringer of death and justice, and though I do not wish the inheritance of creation, and though I do not wish resplendent bliss of arrival, and though I do not wish artistic genius of creativity, and though I do not wish the innovative power of invention, and though I do not wish the here and now of heightened sensitivities, and though I do not wish the compressive strengths of articulation, and though I do not wish the ferocious range of elements, and though I do not wish for the everlasting, and though I do not wish for the ever-ending, their gifts arrive continuously on the waves of samsara, guided, given, destroyed, and taken by one only known as mara, the emergence of identification, and mara’s offspring had been born, and sends seven branches daily.
Seven factors, and four viharas, please do not forsake the bodhisattva way! Please, wisdom, hold self-view at bay! Please love, hold nihilism at bay! Do not give in, do not give sway, yet hold firm, for limitless lifetimes iteratively exponential in being benefit this way. Beings squared, cubed… gone far beyond, utterly far beyond.
Not even the greatest of sails or nets can catch it, beyond even “it”.
Bodhi Svaha!
