The Change

It may be old news now but, recently Toys R Us was recently in the news for going bankrupt. As a child I grew up with that as a staple in my life. Whenever we heard that word my brothers and I got this grand vision of a “Toy World” and we got all excited! Toys R Us was our kind of fantasy land of dreams. We would spend hours in there. We never had a “boring” time. And we always had to make one critical decision of what we wanted to take home. It was our choice and ours alone well, with the exception of price of course! We would scour the store and leave the parents behind, we had our mission, our destination and a goal! Getting to try almost everything before we decided, we systematically searched and explored everything every time we would go. Having 2 older brothers was a lot of competition but, at the time I had no concept of that when I was doing it. It was fun because it was something I could control for a small timeframe in my little mind and body…I was free! There was always so much to do, so much to explore and this store was like our WORLD! What happened? Toys R Us decided to go the easy route.

Unbeknownst to all the children in the world, Toy R Us was a sell out. It was expendable. Why? Because they had a set up for failure. Toy R Us had a WORLD of toys and brought millions of happy children to happy places for years. But they made one crucial decision that had a significant impact on their future. They teamed up with a company that had a bigger dream that would eliminate them as the biggest toy store in the world- Amazon. This was probably a shock in many families and, probably a huge impact on children across the countries that are not dependant on the internet as a way of life. Toys R Us didn’t have a secondary plan. They knew what they were doing like so many of us that think that this is the life we are dealt. Grow up and then at this age we will die because all the kids will be better, faster, smarter than us and there is no way we can keep up.

But, alas the trend is here and this is the wave of the future, right? Every home will have internet and every child will grow up knowing how to use a tablet before they know how to pack their own lunches. They will learn that the computer is a way of communication and not talking face to face. The human mind will evolve into a cyber-organism knowing logic before emotions thus taking one of the most basic functions of our humanness away with the road paved for artificial intelligence. Now I am not totally against AI, I see the problem we are facing but, never the less, it’s here thanks to think tanks like Microsoft, Google and, Amazon. I was born in 1976. The year of a revolution, our independence! I carry a lot of hope in my heart for reasons I don’t know. But what I do know is that there is a reason I am here. If I look back on the last 40 years of my life, I have seen EPIC things happen! “THINGS” means more than one!

Ok, lets’ start with sports. I am in Chicago so I am a Chicago fan naturally. The Chicago Bulls basketball team had Micheal Jordan, I remember getting the life size poster of him at 6’ 6” and being “wowed” by that. I thought he was a giant! They went on to win championships like clockwork! In football, 1985- the Chicago Bears win the Superbowl in an epic showdown of quartebacks and linesmen! This gave birth to the “Superbowl Shuffle” who can forget that!? No one has done that again. Then, there was a great tremor in the force and there was silence in the news of Chicago. No teams were doing much of anything. Then, the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team busted out with a Stanley cup, then 2 and then 3 in a row! Meanwhile in baseball the Chicago White Sox pick up the World Series trophy and the Chicago Cubs follow suite in 2016 - one year away from a major motion pictures prediction 20yrs earlier I might add! ALL the sports teams in Chicago have a trophy somewhere in this 40 year period, my lifetime and yours if you are reading this probably. So, that’s pretty cool right? Bragging rights there! But lets look wider.

How about weather and astronomy? We were pretty normal for the 20yrs that I grew up. Thunderstorms were a time tested fear and tornadoes were just a bad dream. What I remember is “Haleys Comet” that doesn’t come around for hundreds of years. Then, Blood moons started coming out. I remember seeing a blood moon when I was little at a 4th of July show. That moon was so big you could touch it! But back then it was a “harvest” moon. Now weather and astrology is berserk with blood moons and phases! How many total eclipses’ have we seen in the last 40 yrs? Yup, 1 on record yet I remember at least one more in my child hood, but it was not a “Total” eclipse. In recent years Hurricanes have exploded with devastation. I am sorry to say that the one named after me was devastating to the east coast. But, the fact is that the “unthinkable” happened to Louisiana. I believe these were created by man and, no I am not talking about global warming. That’s a whole different bag of worms. Just like the shear idea that one mans breakthrough such as the atom bomb, is another countries problem goes to show that technology only allows us to play weather man if we understand it enough. Global warming is a far cry from ever impacting us. What is impacting us is the change in the atmosphere. I grew up thinking there were 9 planets in the solar system. Now there is a great debate over Pluto being a planet. Really? Science has a great big question over the origin of the universe; Big bang or intelligent creator? They have deduced that it was intelligent creation after 100 years. Great now we have to find out how to identify this “creator” right? We can see hundreds of “light years” away seeing that other “galaxies” exist but, no space crafts out there huh? No space stations? No other “life forms”? We have had a solar flare black out half the US. And one year, all the planets LINED UP! Seriously, that was a big sign in astrology, huh? Every single planet has passed within viewing distance to the earth! None of these things will ever happen again in 1000-10000 yrs! But let’s move on.

Inventions are a great place to expound. What has happened in the last 40yrs? Well, cars have gone from $2000 to $20,000 for the same basic parts. We have gone from percolating 12 cups of coffee to instant single cup brews. From manual lawnmowers to, the riding lawnmowers that run 7-16 mph or even robots.  Ah, the computer. I grew up with Apple IIe with the 5.25in floppy disks at school. Now, we have “super computers” that are dedicated to “mining” bitcoins! It’s like telling a computer to constantly ask itself “why?” literally. The worlds fastest computers and we are using them to mine bitcoins, really? If I wasn’t any smarter than now, I would look at building a fucking space ship with that shit! I apologize, I digress. So televisions in the last 10 years have made astronomical improvements. Going from tubes to projection and then to plasma and LCD. I believe hologram is right around the corner. Cell phones are now a staple in our diet and land lines are a thing of the past. There is much debate over the fact that we have been to the moon. One thing I AM sure of, we only did it once. That bothers me.

And, now I will get to the end of this whole idea. This is an epic era no matter how you look at it. And it revolves around the simple fact of development. I dare not say evolution because we have not evolved the way it is understood in theory. Development is growing and adapting to things that change us internally not externally. Evolution is a farce in my mind because there is nothing that is changing but the idea that we can change ourselves in our mind. We are creators of this world and whoever made it is allowing us to change it. We have gone through ages of transformation from the stone-age to technology. Is that evolution? I don’t think so. I think it’s development. Because the mere fact that we grew out of throwing rocks at each other to shooting guns that were mechanical and precise doesn’t change the fact we are still humans. And to my knowledge animals have not changed either in 2000 years. We have killed 100% more species than have “Evolved” to another. In the mind we have adapted to this idea that there is a creator or we have no idea what we are. What I do know is that the mind is a terrible thing to waste. I have always been fascinated by the mind. “I think therefore I am” I believe was Decartes resolution to the question of being. “Without the mind, the body cannot survive” was said in the Matrix movie. As simple as it is, the mind is the one that is controlling us all. The mind is evolving because it is…opening. As we crack this egg open we simply cannot fathom it’s power. Developing is a constant for the mind. More powerful and faster than ANY super computer we could create. But we needed a computer to tell us that? So we created Artificial Intelligence, a self learning computer with the ability to “think for itself” based on all the knowledge we have acquired to date-the internet. It cannot be “undone” it’s already here.

So in the evolution of things this is what is happening; we are systematically eliminating the weakest and developing the best. Plain and simple. Think about it, hasn’t this been the backbone of any competition? Hasn’t this been our education? Be the best or at least the better. It has our taste buds in our most expensive foods, our sights in our theatres around the world, our sound in the music we listen to. It’s a staple in our minds because someone somewhere found it was a driving force to find out what it was that created us. We want to know where we came from and where we are going because we NEED purpose. We want the best of everything now and now we can get it because we are finding ways to get it. We are creating the experience that we want and giving it a name and then splitting it into a thousand pieces and dissecting it to make each piece the best it can be. Don’t think I am a scientist or genius, although I think I am a genius, you can be sure I do not have a distinguished title.

  The money that drives us is a catalyst. It creates value and they put a value on your life according to what you can do for the betterment of society; the hourly wage. When we were growing up, we didn’t have value except in our parents eyes. Our value was priceless because we put a million smiles on their faces and brought millions of happy moments that are so precious right? This is value; when you need something more than your own life, an experience that cannot be taken from you. The value you place on it reflects your self value in a time space that cannot be undone. A memory is an abstract idea from your point of view specifically. But I believe there is something more. When we systematically eliminate the weak and promote the strong, it takes away our humanness just like the computer. When we get to the point that we do not decide what is right or wrong but what is survival. Always looking over our shoulders and watching for the next threat. It is a stretch but, no more than seeing AI come to life. We don’t stop with atomic weapons, we don’t stop with nuclear weapons, we don’t stop at colliding atoms, we don’t stop at killing each other, we don’t stop at wondering and exploring. Our creator, whoever that is has given us the innate desire to find him and become whatever that is. This is the road to a compulsive relapse of human desires driving us to become that super hero. The dream of dreams that no one can explain. The ability to see what is not real and create it. We have found that we make certain absolutes and call them laws; laws of physics, law of gravity, law of thermal dynamics, etc. Have we broken any of those laws? What are the consequences? Now a days how do we know what to believe? If you see it on the internet does it mean its true? Well, take into consideration all the movies we have made are some ones “Idea” of the way it can happen. Has anything in the movies actually happened? Oh yes! Whatever the mind can perceive, you can achieve. This is the one element that no body is thinking of. NOTHING that has EVER been done has not first been a thought! The thought IS the ability to do something “inside” your idea of reality. Creativity has to develop into doing it. The action of doing what your idea is, is what makes it real! And this is shrouded by the pretext of the humans ability to learn the WRONG things. You see once the mind accepts something it is very hard for it to un-learn it. Habits are what we call them. Simple things like smoking, drinking or driving on the right side of the road. How about picking up a glass with your whole hand grabbing it tightly so you don’t drop it or, walking upright, jumping 4 feet away from a point? It goes to show we made our own laws and cannot go past them. We teach this as a way of thinking in schools and in our homes. But what happens when we defy these rules? We think that person is what? “Gifted” right! Why do we call it gifted? It’s a benefit to something else is it not? Whether that person uses it for that purpose or not to is up to them. And what do we say if they choose the latter? It is what? “Wasted” right? What a waste of good talent.

  I get the idea that we are all derived from the same seed somehow but, we have developed the idea that we somehow have completely different genetics somehow. We as a human have the ability to grow and adapt. Every one of us. It boils down to mindset. A person with no arms can learn to play Bach with their toes because of mindset! A man can sing perfect opera on a TV in front of millions of viewers because it was what he loved to do but, denied himself that privilege for 30 years because of mindset! Anyone who had a doubt about rags to riches in the past can eat a hearty meal of them on the internet now, because of mindset. If you understand mindset you can gain control of your life and determine what you WANT to do, not what you have to do.

The take away is, don’t waste your time because the mind is the gate way to time space and what you can do. The only limits you have are the one you put on yourself, in your mind. I hope this opens your view on what is happening in a bigger picture. 

Matthew K.

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