The Care and Feeding of Ignorance

Survival of the Fittest is a cornerstone of Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory. It has also become our Ego’s presumed posture as our world begins to look a little like the game of Monopoly has somehow come to life. Can you picture it? The inhabitants of all those houses, hotels and railroads walked outside together and finally saw how one person was going to eventually wind up with everything – every single time. The ensuing undercurrent of unrest among these people has become a force to be reckoned with. Clearly formed by the ongoing practice of the have-nots losing ground and being shut out of opportunities, our Egos finally call bullshit on the criteria we are asked to meet if we want to appear normal (whatever unattainable standard that is). They are ready to redefine success so that more than one person can claim it for themselves. People simply don’t feel safe when someone else appears to have more power and control over their environment than they do. Never have and likely never will.

Sure, the Monopoly King can cut a deal to share, but that only happens at the very end of the game, once the victor realizes they will soon be alone unless they buy back a few friends. Cronyism sits at the core of most of our historic deals, which brings me to the point I’d like to make about survival and the fittest: We might think that we have a good enough understanding of our relationship with our environment to navigate our lives, but I believe that is a gross energetic miscalculation. That single belief keeps us separate from our most valuable resource, which is the power derived from our own independent, creative thought. Hands down.

Creation itself is both the space and the energy we use for connection, and its substance helps remind us that we are each a specifically unique expression of one single race - Humanity. The more we let that thought become part of our wholeness, the more we accept our ability to co-create our lives. At the Soul level, we are all working for the greater good and we all know it. There is no Soul who is not in on the secret, but that doesn’t translate directly to our Egos. They are just getting acquainted with that idea, and it’s hard for them to switch gears and stop protecting us from the things they have spent so long keeping at bay – our emotional and spiritual building blocks. Our Egos have the ability to support our Soul efforts, but they must first gain a sense of why they should matter. It’s quite contrary from what we’ve been taught and told, so that connection takes time.

We gather our accolades and highlights to support our self esteem, and we try pretty hard to keep it positive, believing that to be the ultimate goal. In some cases, we place a lot of value around our ability to avoid feelings altogether, and we still have a lot of humans walking around completely disconnected out of habit. We don’t even know we have missed the rich personal growth that comes with being curious and aware. We don’t remember that we are an active part of developing major creative solutions. Instead of constantly proving what we know or who we are, we are able to become producers of common creation simply by recognizing how little we each really know in relation to everything there is to know, and playing around with ideals about how it could all work together. 

 We are all living our lives and gathering our own personal experience and knowledge.  And so are 8 billion other people who believe their truths just as strongly as we cling to ours, even when they are in opposition. Our differences have formed from the exact same creative well, but instead of finding space to appreciate them, we have become afraid of things that aren’t easily relatable. Our ability to express ourselves creatively is wholly unlimited, but we have devalued this skill to the point that many of us are in denial that we have a creative bone at all. I assure you that we are all creators! If you give your memory a little prompt, you will be able to place yourself back into a moment in time where you were out in nature, and you felt some kind of connection to the world, however fleeting. This is where we start to remember who we were before we began trying to Monopolize the things around us, lest we be monopolized.

The rest of the game’s players, who eventually wind up hanging around the kitchen waiting for it to finally be over, have the power to go outside and play in the natural world. That always feels so good after the tight, constricting feelings that come with losing at Monopoly. The people who keep a hand in the game will continue to battle for the win at an all or nothing pace. Those players remain intently focused on retaining their money, while the losers must find a different pastime. We could be using that time for anything at all, but breathing, imagining and creating together opens up a lot of possibilities that promote growth.

When winning is off the table, our creativity and imagination have carte blanche to to run wild with inventive possibilities, and we are able to recognize that there is a different type of power in the world, too. It is Soulful in expression and increasingly aware of how one things affects another (and another and another, etc...). Our Souls are open to our individuality while staying concerned with the greater good in a way that our Egos doesn’t fully understand enough to trust – yet. Darwin’s claim has no choice but to play the long game when it comes to Nature, and our Soul Energies have agreed to play along as they seeks to reunite our personal expression and the awareness that we are all connected, too. It may take a while to reach us all, but the awareness is growing with no signs of slowing. It’s vibration is constant and strong, whether we are able to feel it or not.

Globally, how many people do we think are still in a position to be playing a real life version of Monopoly right now? I say less than 100, but that’s a completely uneducated guess. I’m so far removed from that stage of the game, it hardly means anything to me. Like billions to trillions, my mind doesn’t differentiate that much. But to most of those guys still playing, those particulars are a large part of what defines them, and so far they aren’t willing to give up the majority of their share to support the greater good. They will create foundations and charities to do what they can to help those less fortunate, but tax breaks are generally the driving forces here. I don’t question their desire to be philanthropic, just the order of its value overall. We are ignorant to think we understand the heart of someone else when we haven’t fully explored our own.

This is exactly what has kept us playing the same game by the same awful rules, since 1903. Fun fact: Monopoly was invented to show the tragic effects of land-grabbing. That part didn’t make it into the marketing plan Parker Brothers used when they started selling the game in 1935, but I think we can all understand why they changed the objective. As the game continues to maintain popularity, we reinforce the idea that one winner is customary, keeping us from asking “what if?” on behalf of everyone else. If we care, let’s start asking our minds for creative solutions!

As a species, we don’t make it a priority that all of us have access to water or nutrition every day, but we really come together well in contempt of Ignorance. I’m not exactly sure how we got here, but I know it matters that we find a way past this trigger that has us all feeling like we do. We have each worn specific internal brain pathways by repeatedly cherry-picking the beliefs that serve us, leaving the beliefs that serve all of us for a later focus. It’s not that we don’t intend to get back to it at some point; more so that we are inundated with additional stimuli and we do not make it a regular habit to look back and connect the dots. But that’s what we must do if we want to redesign the balance of power.

For a lot of us, Darwin’s credo seems like a basic truth, and we notice how this pattern has crept into our history, our Nature, and our family game nights. Our Egos are meant to protect us and they are skilled warriors, ready for each challenge. They are also only as good as the information they have. Therein lies the paradox of ignorance. We are unable to use information we don’t know, but we are rendered useless when we believe we know enough to successfully dominate other human beings for the long-term. What can we do with our collective thought to change it? I don’t have a solid solution right now, but I know it lies on the other side of the cloud of Ignorance that floats in our way.