Five visions¶
Started on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 (02:30). Last modification March 17.
Imagine humanity as an apple tree¶
Imagine humanity as an apple tree, every human a cell and God as the gardener. An apple tree cannot imagine the gardener. A cell cannot imagine the apple tree. “Ouch” says the tree in spring when the gardener cuts a water sprout. And all the cells that die because they happened to sit in this water sprout shout “We are innocent! Injustice!” But that’s life. A cell in an apple tree doesn’t know anything about trees and gardeners. It just does her job, it works to rule. Religious humans are like cells that try to listen to what the gardener says.
Imagine Putin and me in the sauna¶
Imagine Vladimir Putin and me sitting together in the sauna.
Me: Vladimir, what are you trying to say to the world? Genocide in Ukraine and the NATO aggressions are just excuses. You have something more important to say.
Vladimir: You won’t understand me.
Me: Try to explain anyway. It seems important.
Vladimir: Where to start? Look at your liberal capitalistic system. It causes much harm to the poor and to our common home the Earth. We cannot let money rule the world. That’s not what God wants. He wants us, the humans, to rule the world. Liberal capitalism is just an excuse to not rule.
Me: Hey, that sounds like Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti!
Vladimir: Yes, you got it. It’s better that one human rules the world than no human at all. I am a human.
Me: And you are a candidate for ruling the world?
Vladimir: That’s not the question. God will tell the world that I am right. I am the one elected by the Russian people. I do my best because I am responsible. The NATO allies are threatening us, so I need to say “stop”. That’s my job.
Me: But can’t you say “stop” without killing innocent people?
Vladimir: Hey! I tried! But they didn’t listen! I am more sorry for the war than you. Ukraine is our brother. But I had no choice. Remember the water sprout in the apple tree. Somebody must do the dirty work of cutting it off.
Me: The question then is: who decides whether something is a water sprout or not? Definitively not another water sprout next to it.
I don’t remember what he answered. I woke up in hospital. The doctors say that I’m lucky to be alive and that Vladimir said I must have lost consciousness after a particularly heavy vape and that he unfortunately noticed my malaise only when I hit my head on the floor.
Imagine that Google becomes a foundation¶
Imagine a successful private corporation with limited liability, for example Google, whose shareholders decide by their free will that they have harvested enough revenue from the money they invested. They would say “Now is the moment to thank God and give the fruit of our work to the poor, so that we will have treasure in heaven”. Legally spoken the company would turn into a foundation. The shareholders would formulate the constitution of the foundation and decide a date when all shares will loose their monetary value. (Inspired by Matthew 19:21 and the biblical jubilee)
Imagine the Church as a compass and the State as a captain¶
The compass knows where the north pole is. It does not know about cliffs. It has no power over the ship. The captain knows about cliffs and knows the destination of the freight. Sometimes the straight route is suboptimal or simply impossible. The Church with power in the visible world would be like a compass that directly controls the steering wheel. A captain refusing to look at the compass would be a blind man trying to lead a blind man (Luke 6:39). An unreliable compass is worse than a weak motor.
Imagine a new democracy¶
Imagine that you can sign in at the parliament’s website, select one of your friends as getting your voice, and hit submit. You are asked to vote for one of your friends whom you consider trustworthy. The vote of your friend will then count twice (their voice plus your voice). Every citizen is a candidate, electoral campaigns have become useless. You can change your vote at any time. When you have a certain number of voices, you are asked whether you agree to take a seat in the parliament. If you do not want to take a seat, you simply vote for some other citizen. The same system could work for any size of communities, not only for nations.