Technology is a wonderful and amazing thing. It could lift the world from poverty, move food and other goods at the blink of an eye from where there is excess to those that need them. It could speed curing diseases to unimaginable short times just by allowing scientists to communicate with each other and share ideas and experiments. It could allow us to take a tour of a far off and exotic place on our lunch break without leaving our chair or stepper. I might be more inclined to get on my treadmill if I was taking a walking tour of the Great Pyramid. Just imagine for a moment a world without boundaries, friends all over the world talking to you via the Internet, instant translations of any document you want to read, plenty of food, wearing a Sari from India, boots from Italy, Jewelry from Nepal and a burka to protect you from the sun to work without anyone thinking any the less of you while you stop to pickup lunch at a Mexican Taco Stand and get back on clean public transportation to make it to your job that you love going to because you have that midnight conference with China and Australian on how to save the bees and transport healing honey from New Zealand to Finland to make Mead that is a health drink without a single thought that includes FEAR or HATE.

Yes, technology could have created that world, right now, in your backyard but it didn't. You see, technology can't really create anything. It is a tool in the hands of those with the power and unfortunately some people are easy to manipulate into doing the dirty work for others.

Let me explain how we arrived where we are today, mourning the loss of good people who just wanted to live their lives in peace and enjoyment at the hands of a few mentally ill and, yes, deficient men. It started a long time ago with a psychopath named Abraham. He was a greedy, lazy bastard who wanted a place in history like the great men who had come before him and asked only that the tenets of their method of enlightenment be remembered providing they continued to work and be of value.

You see, prior to that moment if you wanted to be a spiritual, enlightened person leading a happy life with friends and family and food and shelter, you worked your little ass off learning, practicing and mucking around in the dirt to grow food and at the end of the day, you came home to loving group of people and enjoyed the fruits of your and everyone's labor and study over a good meal and great conversation. You looked forward to visitors with new information to help you find peace and happiness by working, meditating and building your home. You shared with your neighbors no matter who they were or where they came from because you knew we were all in this together and that whether you succeeded or failed was YOUR personal mission and responsibility.

Ah, but Abraham decided some God had chosen him and his relatives and if they just made everyone else obey their rules or he would have them killed in the name of God, he could have EVERYTHING that he could see or from horizon to horizon, and everyone else would get their reward for helping him as soon as they died. Now, mind you, their living relatives wouldn't be sharing in 13 virgins because rewards were only delivered to the DEAD. But it was an easy path to take. There was no more meditating, learning, or standing in odd positions. Heck, you didn't even have to be able to read. The Priests would read the HOLY BOOK to you and tell you what to do, all you had to do was pray to Abraham, I mean his God and give up your hard earned food and anything else God needed. Now if Abraham, I mean his God, deemed you worthy, you would get what you prayed for and of course, had delivered the proper amount of sacrifice for to the Priest. If you didn't get what you prayed for, well, YOU and your animal nature were the problem. YOU didn't pray right. YOU didn't tithe enough. YOU weren't holy enough, pure enough, good enough BUT we can fix that. All you have to do is deliver more and more of your worldly goods to the Priests that represent Abraham, I mean God. Hey, everyone needs some accountants and inventory people to keep track of the food and gold and minerals and chairs and tables and God needs those accountants, I mean Priests, because apparently omnipotence doesn't extend to knowing how much you put in the collection plate, just that errant thought you had after too much beer that your same sex cousin was looking kind of attractive and now you are going to Hell.

Yes, it is just that silly when you take a step back and look at it. What is Judaism, Christianity and Islam killing each over for centuries? Boiled down into one sentence it is whether you are judged by GOD before or after you die. Yup, it is that simple. And who is profiting from this? That would be the people who interpret the religious texts, sell the religious trinkets and make the weapons to kill each other with better and better.

And then came technology. I know you thought it would be money. Hey, money is the devil's lucre. Lucre, Lucifer, do you see the origin of the word? No, that is not the problem.

The problem is people are innately good. Yes, you read that right. People are innately good. They just want enough to eat, shelter, a few toys, something to do they really like doing and someone to love and share their life with. That's all. That's the problem. No one ever managed to build a crystal cathedral or buy a new jet with a bunch of happy people sitting around a good meal having an intelligent conversation. All these mega-churches at the beck and call of a single man or woman couldn't exist unless they had a whole army of priests, who tended to be rebellious little critters, to gather money from the peasants and bring it back to the Vatican.

Now mind you, I don't begrudge them managing to create a better system of fleecing the peasants. It beats waiting for someone to get sick or fall in love with the wrong person to get dinner delivered as payment but that system did keep us thin and healthy and far more than that, we, the local shaman, witch, healer, wise one actually had to produce results rather than leaving it up to a capricious God who couldn't lose or fail. It made us and our successors a bit better at what we did with each generation.

However, it was technology that created the monster we now fear as it was used to create the Mega-churches. Now the insane message of one man.... and CAN anyone out there who is reasonable debate the fact that people like Robertson are insane... I mean demonic cooties from thrift store clothing?? …. please.... can reach not the village idiot but millions of idiots all over the world.

There are people who do not want responsibility for even picking out their clothes in the morning because they are LAZY. So hey, some guy who says you don't have to worry about your hair, your figure or anything because you can now cover it from head to toe with black looking like a waddling penis to satisfy the homosexual urges of a bunch of men who will tell you based on the opinion of one man, I mean God, what and how to fix dinner, where you can walk and when you can speak and that's just the Catholic Church. Surprise! Bet you didn't see that one coming! Now that I have inserted that image in your brain, it won't leave because once again, they are all descended from the greedy ambition of one man who convinced a lot of people to kill for him and his family so they could live in luxury and of course, have all the women and young boys, and YOU could get your reward as soon as you died for them, I mean God.

The problem of technology is this greedy, hateful and murderous lifestyle is available to anyone who can construct a web page or open an account on the social media and get a thousand or more people to click to follow them. Yea technology! If you have the insane hatred of pencils, you can find a bunch more people in the entire world that agree with you and will sell everything they own to travel to your little Holy piece of desert to kill everyone who uses an eraser, destroy all pencils and then move on to the rest of the world to cleanse it of graphite so that only the Holy Dip Pens can exist with their harem of virgins or young boys. You can't spend all your time sharpening pencils. The village idiot is now able to create entire countries of idiots like them and WE are bleeding because of it.

The problem is NOT refugees. The problem is HATE, GREED and FAME. Yes, fame. We all can't be beautiful people because we aren't in charge of what beautiful is. We have that told to us. And those who can't be those beautiful people that others worship, want their NAME in the history books. They don't particularly want their deeds to be written down but they want you to remember their names and for that they are willing to kill any number of people or at least, get a bunch of village idiots to do it for them while they relax in their safe little hovels bent over a keyboard eating their favorite food quoting God. Meanwhile, good people bleed and die for nothing but someone to get a footnote in history.

We don't remember Confucius for how many Taoists he killed (because he didn't kill any) and the way he said to dress (because he didn't come up fashion statements) but for what he said and the practical ideas that allowed people to live better. We don't remember Buddha for a Holy War but for the ways he came up with to speed our enlightenment and bring peace. We don't remember the poetry of Rumi for his infinite praise of an invisible friend but for his love of life and a woman. But we remember Abraham, David, Solomon, Muhammad, John the Baptist, the Popes, the Puritans, the insert names, for the number of people killed and oppressed and, civilizations, works of art, cities destroyed in the name of GOD.

Friends, it is time to take back our planet. We are the stewards of this place. We are responsible for our lives and the lives of other beings on this planet. We deserve to eat, have a roof over our heads, love and enjoy our lives. We do not deserve to die so another person can have more, more and more power and hate and money and toys. It is time for a revolution. It is time to love. It is time to enjoy not infinite boring sameness but to celebrate the differences in each other. It is time to learn in peace. It is time to progress and cease to allow others to tell us someone has to suffer and die so their name can go down in history as a great representative of an invisible God. It is time to take back responsibility for our lives, our souls and our creativity. It is time to stop bleeding and dying for ideas and insane people. It is time to be proud of ourselves not our title to some religion. It is time to say not I am a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Pagan but I am Joe or Amy, not a color or a lifestyle, but a person and that is good enough. It is time to isolate the insane hateful people and get them some treatment. We really do have pills for this illness. No one is born hating the baby in the next crib. That is something that has to be taught through pain and suffering.

There is a site with the pictures of 18 what they consider to be evil men, as adults and as children. I disagree with several of their choices but the ones I think we can all agree upon, you will see a child whose spirit is already broken, no smile, eyes blank or downcast. You will see resignation to do whatever they have to in order to avoid the next beating whether it is physical or mental and a resolve to take revenge on someone for their current state. THIS HAS TO STOP.

My uncle had a farm and 18 children not so much from desire but because there was no birth control and he loved his wife more than you can probably imagine. From the day each child was capable of understanding what was happening, they found a way to make themselves useful not because of some God because of the innate human desire to be helpful to others. The kid who was a whiz at repairing engines and farm equipment wasn't valued over the one that plowed a straight line or planted an evenly spaced row of corn and ironed shirts best. Each person had a talent that was needed, even the handicapped son that painted the house and buildings in pretty designs because that was all he really could do. He was mourned equally when he died at 16. They didn't hate their more prosperous neighbors and when something happened like the barn roof collapsing, they helped their neighbors rebuild it not because of God telling them to but because it was the thing to do in a community where everyone depended on each other. They didn't hate anyone.

My aunt and most of her children have never left the little area of the country they were born and grew up in. Imagine my surprise when I found my letters about the, to me, mundane things of living in different places and countries were read over and over as entertainment and wonder. They wanted me to visit so I could tell them about these other people and places. They didn't hate them. In fact they would have been beside themselves if I could bring a Mexican with me so they could meet one. Now they have the Internet.

Unfortunately, so does the fearful, beaten down Nazi down the street. I would say to go give him a hug but he has too many guns and explosives for it be safe. And then I would ask you, who does him having that arsenal profit? You and I didn't get a single thing from it, so who did? Who is really winning, friends? It isn't us. We are the ones bleeding, dying, suffering, watching our babies and parents waste away from a curable diseases. We aren't winning. We aren't even surviving. We deserve more, not because some God tells us or we serve his representatives, but because we are living, breathing, intelligent creatures that are capable of infinite love and we are each BEAUTIFUL in very, very different ways.

Take back the planet! Please.