EZEKIEL SAW A WHEEL . . . .

“Ezekiel saw the wheel, way up in the middle of the air.”
(Negro spiritual)

Actually, he saw two wheels, one inside the other (Ezekiel 1:16). When two wheels are set inside each other they are made to turn together, in the same direction, in harmony. And Ezekiel tells us that where the living creatures went, the wheels went. These wheels are united inside one another, turning in the same direction, with similar purpose. Working together favors life.

In contrast, William Blake wrote, in his poem “And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time” (second stanza only presented here):
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
What mill wheels did he reference? It is generally thought that he spoke of a wheel outside of a wheel, as found in an industrial mill of his day: the two wheels in opposition to each other. In this arrangement, one wheel turns the other by inter-meshing cogs. These two wheels are divided in space, direction of rotation and purpose. And this image he found “Satanic”.

The word “control” literally means to roll against. It is interesting that as a mechanical principle, opposing wheels are excellent forms of control. But as a metaphor for a culture, or a person, it suggests that sometime after Ezekiel, man began to see himself as turning, not with the forces of creation and God, but against it.

GDP AND FAILURE

Can a country survive when it is more profitable to be sick or broken than to be well or repaired? Soon the major portion of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will not be about production, but about health care. No one can make money out of keeping people healthy, so we are worth more to our country sick and well. Why? Because we will spend more. Of course, this is true only if the only our culture values only money. GDP does not measure many other variables such as top soil, stability, creativity, safety, friendliness, food quality, reliability of products, or freedom.

This is true of almost everything. For example, instead of talking about the life of one person, what if we examine the value of one marriage and family. If a husband and wife are united in their goals and committed to their marriage, they will work together, diligently to purchase a home, care for it properly, raise children, educate them, and try to be productive in the community. They will be of great worth to that community as will their children as they grow into responsible adults. But they will not be worth as much financially to the community because they will be frugal and consume less.

They will be worth more, financially, to the economy if they divorce. Then they will no longer be able to help each other out. There won’t be two people to help with the children and they will need child care. There will have to be two houses instead of one. Instead of producing part of their own food they will have to purchase more because there is no time to garden. They will have to purchase more processed foods because there is less time to cook. They will eat out more often. There will be legal bills, and trips back and forth to share children, and more cell phones so the children can stay in contact. More computers, TV’s, stoves, refrigerators, furniture, cars and such will be needed for two households.

The divorced family is worth so much less to the community and to society, but so much more to the financial economy. Could the same thing be said for neighborhoods, communities, counties, states, and countries? Perhaps the GDP could be used as a measure of just how broken and inefficient a nation is: the higher the GDP, the worse off it would be in many of the things that matter most. Is the GDP a direct predictor of divorce? Could it be used as an indicator of ill health or failing communities? I haven’t done the statistics, but it sort of seems like someone ought to look at that.

CONTROL

Humans are obsessed with control. We say we want to “keep things under control”. We try to “control” inflation, erosion, traffic, crowds, development, and even our selves. Much of our efforts are spent in trying to control the forces of nature. But we have been successful enough that we sometimes think we have control.

However, it is impossible to control anything, if we refuse to identify, and set, the limits of the extremes. So while we use the word, we have no real intent. If one cannot limit the cause, one cannot limit the effect. And humans refuse to limit spending, borrowing, cars, houses, or just about anything else, even ourselves. We wish to control the forces of nature, but not limit human nature.

For whatever reason, humans have taken control mostly through violent means. How much of our society depends on explosions? We use the concept in mines, building highways, weapons, inside internal combustion engines, even fighting fires. And wherever there is energy there is always the risk of explosion. We even experience “boom and bust” economic cycles. The industrial revolution could be called the explosion revolution.

When something is very complex we generally assume there must be some single cause. Early scientists discovered a law that for every action there must be an opposite and equal reaction. While this appears to be true, it has led mankind to believe that there must always be central control. In fact, in nature, control is almost always decentralized. But humans have difficulty seeing how order can arise spontaneously from disorder, even though it appears to happen over and over again.

Thus we continuously try to control the world with central control, when all of nature testifies that it is not possible. Nature and human nature are not the same thing.