Rebooting the World

When your computer goes haywire, you reboot it. What happens when the world goes haywire? Where’s the reboot button? 

Isn’t that a fundamental question? Is it possible to return everything to its pristine condition? Is there a mechanism for restoring the Garden of Eden, for bringing back the Golden Age of Saturn? If we can’t reset the world, doesn’t it point to a fundamental design flaw?

If a natural reboot button doesn’t exist, can’t we create one using our human reason? How would we put right all of the mistakes of the past, the myriad errors committed by those who preceded us? Even now, most people are mired in the darkness of superstition and mad beliefs.

Democracy has a reboot button of sorts. It’s called an election. A bad government can be voted out and a new one voted in to start the system afresh. The trouble is, the new gang looks exactly like the old. Nothing changes. The power behind the throne is still there. The puppetmasters hidden by the curtain are the same as before. The democratic reboot button pretends to work, but doesn’t. It’s part of the great democratic illusion.

Evangelical Protestantism can’t be reset because it says that the Bible is the perfect, immutable and eternal word of God. Islam says the same thing about the Koran, and Judaism about the Torah. The Pope theoretically has the power to reboot Catholicism but since Catholicism claims that it represents eternal truth, it would be absurd if the Pope suddenly did the biggest U-turn in history. Therefore, theocratic regimes have no possibility of a reboot button. Mistakes cannot be corrected.

Dictatorships have no reboot button either because the dictator can’t afford to admit he’s wrong. Only the dictator’s death permits a regime reboot. Soviet communism had no reboot button because, being totalitarian, it was locked into an ideology that couldn’t acknowledge error.

Capitalism has no reboot button. Those families with capital remain the same generation after generation. A lucky few are admitted to the charmed circle of top capitalists and an unlucky few disappear because they died without heirs or committed some crime that couldn’t be swept under the carpet or gambled it all away or spent everything on living the high life – but those are rarities.  

The Old World Order have no desire for any reboot button for the simple and obvious reason that it would end their reign. Every top dog wants to bury the reboot button permanently. That’s one bone they don’t want anyone to dig up.

Most individuals have no reboot button. Once their identity is set, they almost never change their beliefs or ways of doing things. How many Orthodox Jews, Christian Fundamentalists or Muslims are capable of rebooting their beliefs? They are totally brainwashed and the purpose of brainwashing is to exclude the possibility of other choices.

Societies, institutions, companies, banks, religions, political systems…none of them have reboot buttons. Violent revolution, bankruptcy and collapse are the only ways to reboot things that are failing disastrously. Hardly rational and efficient, wouldn’t you agree? It needn’t be like this.

We can and must create a system that allows new generations to be released from the mistakes made by our ancestors. We can rocket-boost human evolution towards divinity if we know how to free the collective human mind of the junk and nonsense that has accumulated since the dawn of time.