In the fish bowl

"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl...year after year." - Pink Floyd

Our very existence here on planet Earth is exactly as Mr. Pink described it. We are in fact tied to our fish bowl, forced to live with one another, or perhaps as some would have it, live off one another. So, the fish bowl serves as great context for how we should manage our world, manage our relationships, and stick to a plan.

The burning question for me is: if there is just the one fish bowl, with God looking in on his floating fanatical fishes, how can we not manage to work things out amongst us? Ah, you see, God inadvertently put fish that eat one another in the bowl together. I'm not blaming God. I'm questioning the rationale and I'm also beginning to understand that God too practices laissez-faire economics.

People - and this is not a rant about the environment or helping the common man or even your neighbor - this is it! This is all we got (I heavily discount the ridiculous and bloated excess of the space program as totally bogus). If we start there - if everyone can agree on this simple fact - perhaps logic and reason will prevail. Just use common sense, put your politics aside for a moment, and think about these three words: this is it.

So, just a few more comments about the fish bowl for the practical fish bowl owner:

1. The water has to be changed every once and a while. It's true people. Just admit it. If not, the fish, you guessed it, die.
2. There must be enough food, but not too much. Again, death ensues.
3. All the fish should have access to the food. A bunch of dead fishes just make life, well, fishy.
4. Fish that want to eat other fish should not be entered into the fish bowl environment.

I think if we all worked together - free markets and all, values laden and all - I believe we can truly overcome the first three. Number 4 is the tough one. See, there are some groups of people (or "schools of fish" if we elect to keep with our metaphor) the world over that simply are not content with the food they have, the car they drive, or the homes they own. Others are simply jealous of those that have all those things. Others are just hell bent on destroying the fish bowl at any expense. How do we change them? Can we change them? Should we change them?

I believe that at some point we must christen a new era - buy a new fish bowl, if you will - where there are simple rules to engender simple, yet fulfilling outcomes. That will take discipline, a long term commitment to rational behavior (yes, we will all have to go to school, learn a skill or craft, and feed ourselves and our families), and a focus on more important things - family, community, and, of course, a clean fish bowl. It will also take a firm approach to those that disrupt the general welfare of others. It will take, most of all, trust.

As I look back on this entry, I admit that much of it is idealistic (Idealistic? Sure, why not? It's a free country) and perhaps a bit silly. What is not silly, and in fact very real, is the self-inflicted complexity of life itself. Out of our own sheer greed, desire, or compulsion, we've bloody fallen into the deep end (of the fish bowl?). Simplify, folks. The economy will, in grand elastic fashion, mold itself to our new found freedom. The politicians will have fewer throngs to pander to. I promise you we will all be much happier.

Now, that's a fish bowl worth swimming in every day.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace. I shall try to do the same. From inside the murky fish bowl right beside you, I bid you a good night and a wonderful Friday.