Winners & Losers

In sports there can be only one winner. That we take for granted, and usually when we take up a sport, our goals is to become that one winner. Does that rule have to apply to life as well? We, as a society, say yes, and I don't understand why.

Capitalism is a cruel system. You may say "tough luck: life is cruel," but I would answer "yes, but does it have to be? I think not." Let's say there are ten persons standing on one shore of a river, and they have to swim across to the other shore. Capitalism says: jump in and try to make it to the other side! It's certain though that 3 or 4 of you won't make it. That's the thing I don't understand. We've organized our societies in a way that makes sure some will not make it. When people say that in capitalism anyone can make it, they're lying, because capitalism is founded on the fact that some won't. Some, no, many will drown before they reach the shore of a decent life.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm a bit sport-minded today as the new Formula One season is about to start next Friday, so I'll keep with the sport analogies for a bit. In team-sports there's also one winner, but it's a team with multiple individuals. These individuals know each others' every move, every strength and weakness, they even gauge their mood before the game. The winning team operates like an oiled machine with every part working seamlessly with the others. Now my question is this: aren't we all in the same team in life? Aren't we all together, playing against the harshness of nature and for the prize of a decent life? Right now we're not. Right now we all play an individual sport against billions of other individual life-athletes, and our chance of winning is slim at best.

You know those movies when the entire world population is in deadly peril because of some threat from outer space? It doesn't matter if that threat is an asteroid or aliens; in those films the world's governments work together to face the threat. That most of those films are made in Hollywood is easily seen because of the fact that it's most often the American President who leads the effort and makes the moving speech addressing the world. But that doesn't matter; what matters is that everyone's united, no costs are spared, rivalries are set aside. Why isn't that the default? In the end, in those films, we all win or we all lose in the end.

Given that we have the opportunity, the means, the resources and the time to make a world in which we all win, why don't we? We have too much of everything, and we're killing the planet because of it. So why hang on to a system that demands there be too much of everything on one side, and not distribute everything to everyone on the other? It's a disgrace that we produce enough food to feed a population of 10 billion, yet still people die from hunger. If those aliens do visit us, it's going to be impossible to explain ourselves.

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I'm going to close with an apology. I've made a promise, almost five years ago on Steemit, that I'll publish a post every day. And up until now, I'm proud to say I've kept that promise. But the coming weeks, maybe months, I'm going to have to break that promise... A couple of things in my personal life will prevent me from posting every day. So, I hope you'll be able to forgive me; I know I'm having trouble to forgive myself... I don't know when I'll be able to post again; maybe tomorrow there'll be a post, maybe not, I just can't tell as the coming weeks or months are going to be hectic for me. Don't worry about me though, there's nothing wrong with my health, there's just some things and people I have to take care of. So, maybe I'll speak to you tomorrow, maybe it'll be in the weekend; I hope to see you then!

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!