If the state's primary means of revenue generation comes through money changing ownership in transactions then increases in both the quantity of transactions and the volume of each transaction are the primary goals of the state. So, naturally, trade is in the revenue generation interest of governments. Intrastate transactions. Interstate commerce. International trade.
There are so many ways to look at how governments and organizations function. Understanding the structural and philosophical design gives clues to understanding the purpose of a specific government. But what is the purpose of a human being, a citizen, under such a structure? Rather than a government of the people, by the people, and for the people it is a government lording over the people, controlling the people, and taking from the people. What is it giving? Not much. The focus of elected and appointed officials is elsewhere, fulfilling the duties of expansion ... under the rhetoric of freedom and liberty.
I want the freedom to eat whenever I need to eat. Quality food. I want the liberty of a reliable and secure shelter. I want the autonomy of free public transportation and generously accessible health care. I want clean, safe drinking water. I want clean air to breath. I want pedestrian- and bike-friendly cities with cobblestone streets and great architecture. I want public dancing and singing, smiles and laughter. I want a passionate, even lustful, spirit of giving. I want orgasmic generosity, streets filled with people of all ages and races writhing on the ground in ecstasy, the entirety of the populace reaching a collective climax of caring.
I want each person to die in that state, for the human species to go extinct at that moment, the moment of the apex of the collective realization of the potential of the species. The art of the age may have bested itself in increments over years or decades. Perhaps technology combined with open-minded consideration of the needs and desires of all made survival and security givens. Maybe no one felt short of belonging. There may have been opportunities and resources for achievements great and small. The diversity of beauty that could have been created would have been overwhelming. An environmentally sustainable paradise of dynamic change and endless wonder?
And then one day the mass of humanity, having rid the world of need and want, collectively experienced conscious awareness of the realization of self. Each human being alive came to a point of personal self-realization with a clear understanding that every other person in the world simultaneously experienced personal self-realization. The species-wide realization of all selves simultaneously led to the zenith of the experience of all possible moments. The eternal moment. Followed by the moment where realization of conscious existence meets, possibly, nonconscious existence. Or a transformation of conscious existence into ... who knows?
But what would come after such a moment if everyone, instead, lived? What would be the purpose of humanity living on beyond that moment? Other than ... appreciation? That's what I'm left wondering. Is the height of a human life the appreciation of being aware of being? Would a simultaneous spontaneous collective self-realization create a psychic big bang and the creation of a new universe with physical laws indistinguishable from the laws of love? Or would everyone just sneeze and snap out of it. Will each person have a story about where they were and what they were doing when collective self-realization occurred?
"Cassandra, if you think that's weird, listen to this. I was on a platform waiting to catch the Brown Line. I think I was at Fullerton. Anyway, it was packed. You remember? It was late afternoon, a Wednesday?"
"Oh, yeah. No one alive at that moment will ever forget that day."
"Yeah. So, anyway, I was listening to my iPod. Just sort of zoning out. And that's when the flash came for me. I know it was different for everyone, that each person is wholly unique and thus each experience of awareness of self in relation to all else was unlike any other experience. A paradox in the sense that it's impossible to know anything other than what the individual experiences and yet we all agree that we each had the same experience at the same moment."
"I know, Robin, but that always makes me wonder why space didn't transform at all."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, we all intersected our experience of the realization of our respective selves at the same moment, but the distances in space between the particularity of each body remained the same."
"Well, yes and no. Believe it or not, that's where my story is going! There was this guy standing next to me and he was cute, but, like I said, I was zoning out. Just tired from a long day of boring bullshit. So the flash hit me hard. It was like a spaceship appeared next to me, some guy pulled me in, and we zoomed off into space. But without ever moving. The cute guy who had been standing next to me, though? Hovering about forty feet off the ground. There were others, too. I know it was the Fullerton el because I was next to that athletics field, the track from, what is it there, DePaul?"
"I don't know."
"Anyway, there was a group of guys practicing lacrosse or something like that. Well, a bunch of them floated up in the air, too. I could see a horizon of trees and rooftops stretching toward the lake and there were people rising up into the sky all over the place. I would imagine it was true in the other direction, too, to the west, but I never looked behind me. I woudn't have seen anything that way, anyway. I think there's a building next to the station and you can just see a brick wall. I can't remember for sure."
"I never heard anything about people floating in the air."
"Well, if you travel around and talk to people they tell you all sorts of stuff about what they experienced. I met a woman from Bangladesh who told me her husband vomited snakes for a minute before passing out. The snakes slithered toward her open kitchen window before becoming butterflies and fluttering away."
"That's bizarre. I knew there were diverse stories, but I haven't heard anything like what you've been telling me. I want to know more about the floating people."
"Well, each person reached his or her own particular height and then hovered there. Some on the platform were five feet or ten feet off the ground while some seemed to be maybe 50 or 60 feet in the air. It was hard to tell. They were way up there. But in the horizon, the people floating up above the rooftops and the trees? I don't know for sure, but some had to be several hundred feet in the air. It was so weird seeing the little dots rising up above the trees and houses and buildings, just slowly going up and up and up. Some stopped while others kept going. Then there were more that rose up above the tree line, above the roof line. Then, after a bit, they gently lowered back toward the ground. Mostly at the same rates they'd risen."
"Did you ever levitate?"
"Me? No. I didn't. I had a sense of being able to see without looking, of being able to understand without knowing, of being elsewhere at the same time I was where I was. It was that feeling that makes me question your point about space not being traversed. And I mean this in a more important way than the bodies floating. I had the ... understanding ... that 'I' existed in 'my' body, in everyone else's body, in the trees, in space, in the past, now, in the future. Everywhere. Always. I understood that there was no difference between being and nothing."
"Okay, that sounds more familiar to me. I guess I ... I don't always remember what I realized during the experience. I feel ... stupid. In comparison to me at that moment."
"I know. It happens to me all the time, too. I have my moments, though, where everything comes back as it was and my mind experiences a heightened level of awareness. Things slow down, so to speak. Everything I need to know comes to me as I need it without putting forth any effort. There's just a flow that runs through my being, a river of wisdom that flows from somewhere that doesn't exist through my chest and out into the world as it is. When I feel far from that experience of being, I feel a bit lost."
"I think it's what Alzheimer's must be like. In a different way."
"Yeah, I think I understand what you mean. Like remembering that there was something important to consider but that you can't figure out what it is. And you try to think and when that doesn't work you try even harder. But we didn't will it in the first place, did we? There was just a wave of realization that washed over us. Out of the blue. Had nothing to do with anything we did or did not do. I don't know why it happened."
"No one does. Well, there are plenty who claim to know. Fucking preachers. Philosophers. Mayors. Real estate developers. Senators. Assholes."
"Yeah. I know. The world's exactly the same as it was before. Look at the news. The television programs. The movies. The fashions."
"Wal-Mart. FedEx. Bank of America."
"Yeah. It was like, for a little while, people started to make a stink about things. They actually seemed to want to change things. There was a lot of heated talk, you know?"
"I remember. Nothing came of it, though. The moment had passed. No one had 'it' any more. They tried to recreate it. To will it, as you said. They just fucked things up worse for awhile. And then everyone was right back to fighting over everything. It was like it had never happened."
"Yeah. You see those faces sometimes, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"You know, those faces. The faces of the people who are 'too' aware. They can feel the loss of it. You can see it overwhelming them. That's why I don't always enjoy that level of awareness. To be aware, aware of what had happened, and now aware that it's not occurring, that there was no rhyme or reason to it, and that you're one of the few."
"You ever hear about those 'awareness' parties?"
"Oh, yeah. I've been to a couple."
"Really? What were they like?"
"What have you heard?"
"Not much, really. Some outlandish stuff sometimes. Pretty silly most of the time. I thought maybe they were just an urban myth."
"No. They're real."
"So, what are they like?"
"It's not ... something I talk about with anyone."
"Come on, you can't mention that and not talk about it!"
"I'm sorry. Look, I have to go."
"What? Hey, wait! Come on, I wasn't serious, you know? Geesh."
Robin got up and walked away. Cassandra sat alone for a time on the bench in the park. Talking to herself. Many people walked past coming from both directions on the path. A few cyclists. Several joggers. A woman with a stroller stopped to fiddle with something and then moved along. She smiled and waved goodbye when she left. Cassandra finally rose and began walking back toward the bustle of the city. The late afternoon sky, visible through gaps in the trees, was a dark hazy blue.
The wind picked up just a bit. The leaves in the trees rustled. A few were blown off. Cassandra clutched her arms tight across her chest, closing her coat and insulating herself from the bite of the wind. As she turned toward the steps climbing toward the pedestrian bridge spanning Lake Shore Drive, the wind was at her back. She felt it move with her, around her, trying to get through her, propelling her up the steps. Walking across the bridge the wind turned angry, whipping against the left side of her body mercilessly. One gust caused her to stumble a few steps to her right while she tried to maintain her balance.
The wind died down a bit after she crossed the bridge. Cassandra looked back toward the lake. The sky was getting darker over the eastern horizon. The clouds were coming in from the west, though. It wouldn't be long before the rain came down. Cassandra flagged a cab without a problem once she reached the edge of the park. She hopped in and told the cabbie where she wanted to go. He merged into traffic while Cassandra collected herself. She looked in her purse and grabbed her cell phone. She had received several messages. She ignored them and sent a text to Robert, Robin's boyfriend.
"Same time?"
The response came a few moments later. "Yeah. xoxo"
