At present humans aspire to gain material wealth. Obviously one may enjoy life more possessing such wealth. However no one our little rock that I can see has come up with anything to show it is any more significant than an ant colony in the grand scheme of things (i.e. the place it inhabits - the universe). So ultimately no matter how much money you made or how successful you were, all that will be left of you is history - just a record, just another statistic in the old earth history books/ computer records/ databases or whatever.
Unless you believe in God or Religions, we really have no purpose at the moment and I can only hope we evolve biologically and technologically into a greater species and a planet we can be proud of. Imagine some relatively highly advanced alien civilization paid us a visit and communicated with us. Would you be proud of our planet in its present state? At one end of the spectrum we have celebrities - the very epitome of capitalism - wallowing in their wealth like a pig in mud, living lives of extravagant luxury. At the other end you get all of the starving and diseased members of our species who weren't so lucky to be born into such capitalist opportunity. While the celebrities in "Hollywood" spend millions on pieces of gold and rock, newborns (if they even reach that stage) at other parts of the world die of starvation. Where is the sense in that? Our world governments should be ashamed for continuing to let such inequalities exist particularly if they have the audacity to call themselves intelligent and civilized individuals.
Other members of the human race discriminate people because of their religion, sexuality, gender, ethnicity... The list does go on. The fact of the matter is that there are two types of people in our world at present. The powerful and the proletariat. The powerful are the government, corporations and their influence including the media. The proletariat is everyone else regardless of their beliefs, origins, sexuality, gender... We should be united because we are the oppressed - oppressed by a capitalist system. I say that not as someone who has a secret agenda or anything. I went to school just like everyone else. I graduated from college. I work 40 hours a week for a wage which mostly goes to supporting my family. I consider myself well off because me and my family will never have to worry about food or water and we are (financially) about 3 times better off than families who don't work in my country, through choice or otherwise. You could call me a benefactor of capitalism yet I despise it because of the inequalities it causes in our world. I don't know entirely about socialism or communism - many people associate them with words like "bad", "evil", "totalitarian", "oppressive", but the way I see it those associations are made because of propaganda and generalisations. I know this isn't conceivable and if you aren't open-minded you may consider the idea silly but I think a socialist one world government would be ideal. Every citizen on earth would be entitled to a basic Providence of food, water, health, shelter and education. Those who don't work (but are able) would get that and perhaps a slight amount of money. Those who aren't able would be provided for. Those who do would get all the benefits of the current system. Caps would exist on wealth. Corporate possession and insane levels of profit would be cut right down. There would be more than enough wealth to distribute among the people and government provided services. The world would truly be happier place without all of the inequalities that make me ashamed to be a benefactor of capitalism, not through choice but because want for my family.
The true ultimate insignificance of wealth is undeniable. So many wars are caused by money and so much death. We're just what Carl Sagan calls a pale blue dot. We aren't even a mere grain of sand in our own universe (Who knows how many more universes exist outside our own? The number could easily by far exceed billions). Yet (lets say we're ants) we quarrel over little rocks, pieces of dirt and food, when there's more than enough on our little Earth for everyone to be happy. A significant reason for this? Sure. It's a vicious circle - the corporations own (or at least have huge influence over) the governments and the corporations like their power so would never see the death of capitalism, what would there be for them to gain from that? Well being due to the knowledge they made the world a better place despite losing all of their wealth? Ha.
I'll finish there. Again as always, just some thoughts I had.
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