THE CHOICE

               Ever wondered, had our ancestors made some different choices along their way, our world would have been a very different place right now?  

So, if you know your history, you will know what you need to change about it. Of course it’s not possible overnight, also, who said history ever happened over night? There’s a purpose why history is called History. An event on its own cannot become history. A series of events leading to more events so that when you look back and join the dots, you realize it was a historic journey as if you planned just for it. 

Coming back to change of history, today is tomorrows history it seems. Have you thought what would happen if humans never learnt to talk or invent a language?  Before that, do you know how humans got the idea of talking? Using your mouth in certain way to make sounds … did the bells ring? Ding Ding … yes you are right, from other animals.

Basically when a first man or woman evolved on earth he/she dint know a thing. So how did we become most powerful animals? We looked around and witnessed various animals doing their own thing. We saw animals hunting, killing and eating their food and we followed. Either flee from or hunt others animals for survival. We saw them make sounds, like dogs bark, loins roar, horse neigh, cats meow etc and wondered what do WE do? And somehow we came up with certain sounds to recognize our species. If we go on like this, we will realize we do all the same things as animals do or did when earth was theirs, now we have captured it, don’t we? Of course yes with much more fancy decorations and unnecessary complications.

Then when did we start standing out from animal kingdom? Hmmm when we started owning mother earth as if we are living here forever. First man who claimed a piece of earth was his own, might have thought he is immortal. But when he realised he would die someday {of course when he saw other animals not moving forever, lay and rot lifeless – whatever he called death back then!}, he was devastated and not in terms to agree with it. He wanted to live on, even after he died {coz he dint have today’s technology which is making human species immortal… kind-of!}.

Do you wonder how human brains can create a virtual reality inside our mind, which doesn’t exist in reality?  Like ideas, concepts, fantasies, theories or philosophies – basically boundary lines. {Isn’t exactly why this blog is created for!?} And impose that on every other member of our species. So, the first man who owned earth wanted to live beyond death so he came up with things, ideas, theories and philosophies which would live on in his name even after he dies, and will be remembered forever by human species for how greatest of a human being he was! He dint think how it might influence coming generations he just wanted to be popular in life and in death. He dint bother if his inventions or ideas will be actually required by his off-springs or would just blindly follow The Great human being, just because it worked well for him. Now look at how elegantly disastrous world we are living in. Not being pessimistic, just saying.

Ok, now coming back to talking, first human or a group of humans decided on how we make sounds out of our mouths and guess what!? We dint get to have a say in that… Damn.! Had given a chance would he make a different choice of making sounds after looking at how we swear at each other? Would he? Historians say that humans were hunter-gatherers before they settled down in one place for agriculture, then after some years of growing crops and agriculture if they realised, hunting was easier, immediate food and very filling, would the hunter-gatherers then go back to hunting and eating wild fruits and vegetables?

Guess we will never know, because yes it took time, a lot of years to first transform our eating habits from hunting-gathering to growing, say a hundred generations passed by. Now people who plough and grow are not those who hunted once, long ago. These people have only a little idea on how life was of hunter-gatherers, they can’t even imagine going back to being hunters because they never were hunters, but yes, they could come up with something new. What I am trying to say is, we dint have an option of Trial and Error to decide or certify one perfect way of living life!!! Which we think we should be doing/living right now!

Do we really need only one way of life for everyone? How boring! But when we know something is not working right for us and also might go wrong for future generations to come, is it not our responsibility to take action and change our choices?

Would you want, if first men made a different choice, to imagine how different the entire history or our current world would be? Or would you want him to not identify hunger at all and die of starvation? Or would you want him to not invent clothes at all!? Or would you want him to not classify us into castes!? May be you would want him to rule out sex as optional and don’t produce off-spring at all!? Just kidding.

If God descends in front of you right now and gives you a chance to change one choice our ancestors made. What would you choose? Take time to think and tell me in comments below.

So… if I were given a chance… hold on tight, you know ;) just in case. Don’t tell me later that I dint warn ya :)

Can you value/measure/judge every human being only on one unit, at what speed they run? I don’t think so, and I know you all agree with me. So can you measure each and everything on earth in one unit? Of course not, you will be doing injustice to all things/life on earth. Well, doesn’t matter if you all agree with me in this or not, because the unit I am talking about is ruling human species! MONEY.

As we all know barter is the system of trade before invention of money. Let’s say for example, Tom, Dick and Harry are our heroes, Tom was occupied in agriculture-wheat, Dick in Garment-making and Harry in Building-contractor, let’s take huts for those times and not buildings.

When Tom wanted clothes to wear, for him and his family, he exchanged wheat for clothes from Dick, who had to build a cold storage for all the wheat he received from Tom. So Dick exchanged garments and winter wears for cold-storage-hut from Harry. Harry would build a home for Tom in exchange of wheat.

How do you measure how much they owe each other of their specialised goods? 

• How much wheat do you exchange for clothes? 
• How much clothes do you exchange for a cold-storage?
• And how much wheat can you exchange for a home?

 Let’s say, people decided on values of each product, for example, 50kg wheat is equal to 20kg garment, 250kg clothes for building a cold-storage and 650kg wheat for building a home.

If Dick received tons of wheat for giving away clothes, how does he manage to store it? Cold-storage… if Harry were to receive tons of clothes and wheat for building cold-storage and home, would he use all of them OR how would he store them? It’s a struggle for life time.

How do we solve this? We might come up with a number of solutions, but let’s consider 2 main answers for now. 

1. First one, they came up with one unit to measure all goods and services, ie., Money.

A common measure to weigh wheat, clothes and houses. You grow wheat, and sell in exchange for money, you stitch clothes, and sell in exchange for money and you build, in exchange for money. Money, with which you can buy required quantities of all the products. That way you don’t overload yourself with one goods and you are promised that, money buys you everything.

So everybody wanted more money to buy more goods, in-turn they had to produce more to sell them for money, to produce more you need more hands to work so you employ people to work for you in exchange of money! Now when you have labourers to pay, you need to produce and sell more than ever. Let’s say you were successful in producing more, you can’t sell them all at once can you? Who will buy so much? Population problem is of today, not back then. So what do you do? You store in a cold-storage which is again an expense. Wait… on what confidence are you increasing your expenses? I’ll tell you, you have no doubt that people might stop eating wheat or stop wearing clothes, you are taking future for guarantee. You are sure that people will always come back to you.

We produced more and stored goods required for, say another 10 years, should we stop producing now? And live a leisure life until storage is almost empty? Never, we can’t stop doing what we do and sit idle can we? You wish. We never stopped, we continued producing more goods for future, which is to come after 10 years from now. Wait… why are we rushing again? Greed for more? What’s the hurry to live the future? It will any way come with Presents. Now think, can you collect money from customers of all 10 years right now and promise them to supply goods regularly for 10 years, and repeat the same for another 10 years? Seems weird right? No, that’s what we are doing right now.

Ok now consumer side of the story. This led to more and more consumption of goods and services, lot more than required. Slowly, the same wheat and garment cost people double because, producer decided to increase his expenses, in consideration with his future. Same wheat, rice, garments and clothes were available in various forms, which triggered the need for more and more consumption. Humans are like baseless pots, it is never full. As the demand increased, price and supply has to increase. This was fine until population was reasonable.

Tell me, if a state has a population of 1crore and its government circulates money for 10 lakh Rs./$/£/€/¥, how will you distribute? Equally? Or based on how much worth each person is, or his goods is or profession is? If you are not distributing equally, then there is rich and poor. Now rich never want to be poor so they keep gathering money from all possible ways. Poor stay poor, let’s say survival of the fittest.

In today’s scenario, we hear people earn in millions and billions and what not, there is no such existence/circulation of money. All you have is guarantee of future, you are eligible to encash your future on any present day, because you have proved yourself to be trust-worthy in the past. Now, can you connect this to 10 years of credit you received in return-promise to supply wheat for 10 years?

1. There was another choice our ancestors had. Now imagine the same above transactions but remove money from the equation. Wait… what!? Yes. Don’t panic, I’m here to help you imagine. Say Tom, could supply wheat to dick and Harry when they need and in-turn receive clothes and house when Tom needed. Instead of storing in large quantities we can promise each other to supply goods when need arises. Let’s call this as ‘Semi-Barter system’.

Talking of larger population and not just Tom, Dick and Harry, all those who produce similar kind of products can come together, form a company and produce sufficient goods to supply to the whole state. Instead of employing people for money, people with similar skills come and work together. Nobody has to pay any money to anybody, everybody gets everything provided everyone must and should indulge or occupy in one or the other occupation. Individuals are free to choose their line of work and contribute their share of effort. May be establish a different control department to keep an eye on everyone and make sure everybody’s needs are met and contribution of effort is received, instead of RBI or Income Tax or whatever.

Thus no need to rush to live the future with more money and comforts than anybody around you. Can we all agree to co-exist peacefully without making an issue about who is surviving better than whom? Was this option favourable? I know we can’t imagine whole of history without the existence of money, but should we imagine the same history? Don’t you think Historical events would have been a lot different than we know?

Imagine a world without the fear of money. I know you can’t, we have come a very long way. We can’t go back in time and change. Neither can we blame our ancestors for not letting us have a say in things they decided to do.   

Or do u think NOW we have a say or a choice? Because talking or language or clothes or castes or money dint happen overnight isn’t it?

It’s called Evolution, whatever you were thinking right now. Ideas were passed on to generations after generations and finally a system established, The First Great Human successfully gets to live in our world and in fact inside all of us. Because isn’t the exact same thing everyone wants even today? To live on even after we die!!? Leave a mark unique to us and be remembered by generations to come?

[JUST A THOUGHT: Why don’t we rename MONEY into POINTS? We have a balance of so many points in our bank accounts which we can use to buy things we need, by transferring a sum of points to others? Naa… not possible, inflation is now hitting hard on under-developed and developing countries, if we convert M to P developed countries will collapse. Moreover developed countries will never let that happen!]

Why do we feel, ‘that’s it! Our ancestors made some things and we are here only to follow it’ and not evolve!? Why do we fear change? Why do we think we are not capable of evolving? Is it compulsory to continue doing what our ancestors CHOSE to do? No offense, I think our ancestors were way more BRILLIANT, ACCEPTING and EVOLVING than us. We only built our world on their foundation. Can we have multiple foundations and grounds?

Why can’t we make our world to live and to die with it and let future generations decide and make how they want their worlds to be? I know it feels weird to even think that way… so let me help, when we face a confusion or life choices, can we decide what we want only for ourselves and let the choice continue to exist for whoever wants to walk the path, rather than one/a group deciding for whole of human species!?

what do you think will happen if we have only one tense ie., Present? Can we give up our egos to live on even after death and just, stay dead for once? You never know, you might come back to share with us, what actually happens after death and we might laugh at you coz we are ignorant and CHOOSE to know death by experience and not in fantasy theories.

Can we not own this earth and just be a tourist in it? Tell me which one would you choose between to build a home and a holiday resort, when you DON’T have all the time in the world? Can we evolve and make different choices to change only a couple of choices our ancestors made {because you know they were smarter than us} and still live happily ever after?

I somewhere heard, there’s only one way to find out!