When Everything Changed (2 page)

Obviously we wouldn’t. We’d protect our children from known
dangers. Why then, they asked, do you box up your murderous psychopaths and
other predators for a time, and then release them once again to prey upon the
innocent?

What can we possibly answer – that we require child predators to
voluntarily report their presence to the local authorities whenever they move
so we’ll know who to suspect when a child disappears? Sometimes I think we
are
as stupid as the Guardians say we are.

They have only shown us a small amount of their technology, and
that little bit makes our most advanced developments look like Legos. But I do
think we should get some credit for how far we got on our own with technology
in just a short time. A hundred years ago, many people didn’t even have
electricity. And just before the Guardians came, we were all walking around
with miniature computers that also functioned as telecommunication devices.
That’s something, isn’t it?

In the official talks between heads of various nations and the
Guardians shortly after they arrived here, leaders of developed countries tried
pointing out our technological prowess in response to the Guardians saying that
we were uncivilized.  It’s not like we were cavemen before they got here.

The politicians admitted that there was work that needed to be
done in many areas, but, they argued; look at how well we’re doing on the
positive side of things. Every day billions of people have good food and
shelter; we have hot and cold water in safe and comfortable homes.

Most people have access to education, they pointed out, and the
majority of people are law-abiding citizens who have recourse through legal
systems where they can safely confront those who are not law-abiding, and
justice is obtained. Legal representation is provided for them if they can’t
afford their own. We have gone to the moon and back, and sent probes to nearby
planets, and have the technology to send high-definition images through space
hundreds of thousands of miles back to earth.

Wireless technology has come so far, they argued, the entire world
is interconnected and in communication and sharing knowledge. In the field of
medicine, we’ve made many advances in just the last ten years and are close to
miraculous breakthroughs.

The Guardians listened patiently as the chief earth representative
tried to build a case for earth sovereignty. But the Guardians, even with their
unnatural patience had heard all that they could stand before the Secretary
General of the U.N. had even finished reading the first page of his prepared
speech.

“Enough!” spat the Prime Guardian. “When the food you eat has any
nutrition remaining, it is incidental and rarely by design. The water you drink
is either extracted from your own waste products, or when fresh, is
deliberately poisoned in treatment facilities. The education you provide is
ridiculously lacking in substance and efficiency. After twelve years of what
you call education, many of your people cannot even write in their own
language.”

“And why you spend twelve years “teaching” the same subject matter
over and over while omitting anything useful is a mystery even we can’t figure
out.  And it’s a criminal waste of time. Your system of “justice” is a
façade and is not concerned with justice at all. Your space travel is akin to a
child first learning to walk and then progressing to the point where he can
jump. Your computerized technology is the only arena in which you’ve shown any
promise, but this accomplishment was only possible due to greed on one hand,
and the desire to be continuously entertained on the other.”

“Nearly everything you do is for profit and amusement. All of your
accomplishments mean nothing in the face of all that you have failed at. How
well is a family when the father is blind to one child randomly stabbing the
other children while yet another child is starving to death, and another is
being drowned by its mother, and another is eating itself to death while yet
another one purposely poisons itself with drugs? But you point to the roof of
the house and say, ‘But look at our satellite dish – we’re getting great
reception on our television.’”

“Enough. You’ve tried and failed. Being that we are responsible
for you, we must take responsibility for your failure and correct your ways. If
a father teaches his children how to survive and prosper  and then takes
his leave, then returns much later to find that his children have become
dangerously incompetent adults in need of restraint, feeding, education and
supervision, does he allow them to justify how and why they should be allowed
to continue on a path of self-destruction?”

At that point, the Talks became the Listening. Representatives
from the Earth were no longer allowed to give any input.  The Guardians
haven’t explained yet how they’re responsible for us. So I don’t know what they
meant by that, but they’re going to be re-opening the colleges soon and that’s
when they say we’ll learn everything we need to know. We’ll learn our true
history, our relationship to the Guardians, real science and physics, biology and
nutrition, and we’ll even be learning their language, and, they say, our own
language. Education will be mandatory for just about everyone and it will take
less than one year.

They said we had progressed, “only in the physical.” When
something was profitable, we financed, researched, developed, manufactured,
marketed and sold it until everyone had two. We would move the earth to make a
dollar. But if something was beneficial for improving the state of mankind, it
would go largely unknown because there is no profit in improving a mind or a
soul. The Prime Guardian said we were so proud of our technology, but what of
our philosophy and religion? When was the last advancement made in either of
those fields?  They said great teachers had tried to give us some basic
hints about how to make minor but important improvements to ourselves several
times in our history but we never took to heart the things they said. Instead
we deliberately distorted their teachings and used them to justify wars and
enslavement, and we even figured out ways to exploit their teachings to make a
profit, of course.

They said our society is like our schools. We worship all the
wrong people. If a student in a school is intelligent and excels at
intellectual accomplishments, he is lucky to make it through the day without
being assaulted. We’re proud of our technology, but they said we treat the very
people who invent it like outcasts. But, they pointed out, if another student
runs quickly with a ball and frequently accomplishes a meaningless task like
evading opposition to cross a white line while carrying a ball or depositing a
ball through an elevated metal hoop, we lift him up on a pedestal and offer him
wealth and adoration. Inventors are outcast. Athletes are heroes.

Likewise, we ignore the greatest minds in the world who could have
led us to becoming better people. In fact, many times, we kill them and then
make a great show of our grief over losing them while never taking to heart the
things they said or wrote which could have improved us all.

They acknowledge that they can’t change our minds or our values,
but they can and will change our systems and the information we will at least
have exposure to. What we do with it, they say is up to us, more or less. We’re
still not free, and we still have rules, but they say we’ll get our freedoms
back later, after we’ve been properly educated. During the time of education,
we have very limited forms of entertainment. Movies, television and
professional sports are temporarily suspended.

Morally, they say we have the intelligence to do the right things,
but that we never do because we always put greed and personal gain first.
Actually, they say that a very small percentage of the population is truly
abhorrent, but all the rest of us are culpable for going along with evil every
step of the way.

They gave us Hitler and the Nazis as an example for what all of us
are like. Of course we disagreed. All sane people recognize the Nazis as being
evil and we took offense at being told we were no better than them. But once
again, they proved it. “How is it,” they asked, “that one man, no more able
than any other, but being more narcissistic, greedy and with an insatiable
appetite for power over others is able to control and subjugate millions of
free people who do not like him and do not wish to be under his power?”

“One such man can kill millions of his fellow citizens and no one
can stop him? Your Hitler was not the first to do this and he was not the last,
nor even the worst. What kind of people tolerate genocide of their brethren?
The only one among you willing to dispose of an evil dictator is the evil
dictator in waiting – the one who wishes to take his place and wield his power
himself. No others.”

It is kinda crazy if you think about it – that one person could
dominate millions of people. But they definitely put an end to dictatorships.
In fact, all of the political leaders around the world were removed from
office. They say we’ll be allowed to elect delegates later so we can have a
semblance of self-rule, but the delegates will only have the authority to make
decisions regarding non-essential matters. I can’t wait to see how the
elections are going to work because the only thing they’ve told us so far is
that anyone wishing to hold office will be disqualified from being a candidate
based on his desire to hold office.

One thing I’m surprised they haven’t changed much is religion.
Aside from abolishing a few religions that they described as “ridiculous and
destructive,” they’ve pretty much left religion alone. They warned that there
would be no tolerance of violent crimes committed in the belief that they are
required by scriptures or religious duty. They don’t hide their derision, but
so far they let people continue to worship however they please with the exception
that there shall be no religious order or scripture that violates natural law
or incites such violation. Natural law is what they call the obvious right and
wrong that they claim every child knows. Kinda like the Ten Commandments. Basic
rules like not killing people or stealing. You can almost see how pathetic we
must look to them if you think about it from their perspective – we’ve had the
basic rules of civility for thousands of years and still hadn’t mastered them.

It’s been five years since they came and changed everything. And
because they changed so much of how we lived before, people have changed a lot
too.

All of the improvements they’ve introduced have kind of
snowballed. It’s like the opposite of a dwindling spiral, but I don’t know what
you’d call such a thing. An ascending spiral? Without crime, people feel more
at ease now. It’s nearly 100 percent safe to go outside. There’s no fear – at
least no fear of being raped, robbed, beaten, or killed. Some people fear the
sickness they felt during the riot, but I don’t think anyone will try that
again. With no crime and with people feeling more at ease, they’re nicer to
each other and their minds are freed up to think about positive things.

No one goes hungry any more, and with everyone working, people
feel a sense of contribution to the new world we’re living in. The Guardians
say, whether we know it or not, accomplishment is the key to happiness and
self-esteem. Think of the difference between being a homeless bum, sitting in
front of a convenience store, begging people for money and cashing a welfare
check once a month, or being a part of making your town a better place because
you helped paint the buildings or planted the fruit trees or landscaped the
parks, or helped eradicate the pollution, or whatever. The squalor is gone, and
you were part of the improvement project. I’ve never been homeless, but I can
see how that might change a person.

So now we’re all healthy, safe, living in beautiful cities and are
soon to be extremely well educated like never before. Everyone has health care,
a job, transportation of some form or another. The air is clean, the water has
never tasted better – and that’s right out of the tap. Fish and wildlife are
flourishing. People are happier and the new children seem like a completely
different breed.

The Guardians insist they have done no genetic modifications to
account for the changes in children who were born after their arrival. They say
that happy, healthy children are normal – we’re just not used to it. Now that people
actually have to talk to their kids and develop relationships with them, maybe
it’s true that they haven’t had their DNA altered. Apparently they just needed
parents to be parents and not leave them to be raised by the TV, other messed
up kids at school, and/or strangers at daycare while they fought their way up
the corporate ladder or broke their backs every day to increase the wealth of
billionaires.

Happy people living in a beautiful world. Who could complain,
right? I suspect that when we get TV and sports back, they won’t be as popular
as they were before. Although our formal education hasn’t started yet, we’ve
been given informal lessons via radio, and people are actually tuning in. At
first, it was only out of curiosity, but then people started talking about the
lessons with their families and friends and neighbors. And nothing they’re
teaching us is any kind of wacked-out alien philosophy either. It’s mainly
things we either already knew, or should have known, but we just didn’t pay
attention to what was important.

Now that people are actually having conversations that the
Guardians say are more than just mindless babble for the sake of babbling and
avoiding silence, it seems like people are becoming smarter in a way. They’re
thinking about who they are and why they do what they do, and apparently
they’re becoming better people. The P.G. said we’re taking baby steps toward
real progress and advancement, but unlike our advances in technology and greedy
exploitation of everything on earth - this is something we can truly be proud
of.