FRAUD - Being There

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Date Line February 21, 2007

I awoke this morning thinking FRAUD. Actually it was a result of a dream review of my life – and the lives of all those I know of.

Fraud. Fake. Intending to deceive, or the act of intentionally engaging in deception for personal gain. Fraud. But against who and how.

Then, tonight, I again watched my favorite movie: “Being There”, staring Peter Sellers. It reminded me of the fraud and the reason this is my favorite film.

Yes, I could explain it. I was raised in a Biblical context – even my genetics scream out that connection and a connection to ALL the biblical (Sacred) texts written over the past six thousand (yes, 6,000) years.

“Being There” – the title is a giveaway; but one which needs the reinforcement of the impersonal character portrayed by Sellers; the character of CHANCE the GARDENER. The man with no history, no need to read or write; the man who tells us, “I like to watch.”

He is nonjudgmental – this Chancy Gardner – who, by chance, meets Eve, whose elderly billionaire husband, Ben, is dying of a children’s bone disease. Chance, by chance – or intent? Chancy, who has no background, no history, no origin. This is a man who just watches television; a simpleton who talks in gardening analogies to power.

A fraud – the scope of which is revealed in the final scene. It is too bad that the totality, the preponderance of evidence, is lost on the average viewer. Fraud – he who creates a Garden, is nonjudgmental, likes to watch and ... (why spoil it ... watch the film; see what he can do)

Fraud. Chance. What have you that you earned? What has just happened, just followed where you might have wanted to go without any solid input or deliberate action?

Well ... I guess I’m a fraud ... maybe a failure. Not quite sure. It’s a matter of kids and how they turn out.

My oldest does well, is totally independent, but a failure when his credentials are weighted against his professional position. Yet, even that would carry little weight – if he had kids. But with him, that genetic line ends. His mother’s genetic line ends – her mtDNA cannot, will not, be shared with another generation.

My next? She too is a dead end. For her, the probability of children is passing quickly. It takes finding someone with whom to have a child. But being female, it is her mother’s line that ends.

Why look at children? Well, we are the product of millions of years of evolution. Modern humans – what? Sixty thousand years? So it is that period of time which lead to today.

It is all that when before – the survival of the fittest; and the decision of those, who are the product of that survival, that their unique genetic combination is unfit to continue; it is unfit to survive.

The birthrate has plummeted. The majority of those below forty have now decided that they are unfit to survive. It is both the ultimate declaration of defeat, and the ultimate insult to their ancestors. It is the proclamation: “Your efforts are for naught, your choices were wrong, your genes deserve to die.”

When applied to “the survival of the fittest,” today’s children are proclaiming their ancestry a fraud. Looking back on the Biblical Armageddon (or any credible doomsday prophecy), the warning and promise remains – the world belongs to those who survive. Isn’t it so nice to see so many who do not believe they are fit to own the world?

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