I realized a frightening thing yesterday as I was riding home. My father and I were passing the Turkey Creek area when it hit me that nearly every single car was on the road because of money, one way or another. They were driving either to spend money, make money, or save money. I immediately felt resentful and on the brink of nausea. Every day, an assembly line of vehicles filters in and out of a system of man-made oppression. Traffic ALWAYS becomes heavy at the same times and lightens on an identical schedule. I was profoundly saddened by the realization that our lives are so confined by a materialistic construct that gives so much power to so few and kills so many.

How can we all not collectively come to the understanding that money just isn't important enough to destroy lives, take away freedom, and impose hunger? Hunger is the one from that list that haunts me the most. Western culture dictates that society will be better if we consume everything in excess and in turn put more cash into an economic system that fails so many.

In Zimbabwe, the inflation rate has reached 231,000,000 percent, with no foreseeable decline. A $10 billion bill was recently introduced, a piece of PAPER that temporarily guarantees about 20 loaves of bread. How can this be? The people of Zimbabwe are suffering from starvation, disease, and overall devastation; all that is done is the printing of a $10 billion bill. Now is the time to forget about money, even if just for a short while. These PEOPLE need to EAT. They need basic supplies to LIVE. Anyone who has the luxury of ever reading this note does not understand the hunger and devastation of water-borne disease that these people experience every day, including myself. How can we expect these people to worry or care about the ridiculousness of politics and economics when they are hungry? I obviously cannot claim to know this suffering or remotely understand it, but I do realize that we cannot let PEOPLE suffer because we have this notion that excessive consumption is the right thing for our economy. What a bunch of garbage. I'm as guilty as anyone, and it hurts my mind, heart, and soul every day.

I have this terrible feeling that people do not do anything anymore if there is not a monetary motivation behind it. Most people go to school to prepare for a career, instead of actually stimulating and expanding their minds. Practically nobody learns just to learn anymore. Reading, writing, and creating have become avenues to more money instead of a sharing of consciousness. The evolution of the human race has become something of a horrible nightmare in which we are all required to participate.

I have this scary, recurring feeling that not one thing in life can guarantee the equality of all people, aside from death. Morbid yes, but I truly fear the only equalizer is death. Think about money in the context of death for one moment, and you would realize (or at least I have) how irrelevant it becomes. These greedy executives who ruthlessly fire hard-working people in favor of maintaining a seven or eight figure salary die, too. They do not live forever because they have money. That's because money is fake. It isn't real. Their fortunes are spent, sold, and saved by other people after they die. Things that are truly human live forever: art, philosophy, thinking, belief, compassion, etc.

The sad thing is, all of these and more have been compromised by the most unnecessary evil ever imagined: money. I could go on and on, but I'll let a legendary man summarize it for you...

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

~ John Lennon