Over the past few weeks I’ve been sliding down the rabbit
hole of some very esoteric and controversial subject matter – the Sumerians,
alternative history, the origins of religious texts – and I came across a very
interesting guy named Michael Tellinger.
A South African, Tellinger is an author, researcher and speaker whose
area of exploration is extremely controversial and includes a mysterious tenth
planet called Niburu, actual giants on earth in our ancient past and the
incredibly advanced Sumerians, who were responsible for such “firsts” as the
first schools, the first proverbs and sayings, the first messiahs, the first Noah
and the Flood stories, the first legal precedents in court cases, the first
tale of a dying and resurrected god, the first funeral chants, first moral
ideas and the first concept of time, among other achievements.
If you haven’t already rolled your eyes
and moved on at this point, I appreciate your openness and thank you for
hanging in there. Let’s set aside Tellinger’s more controversial historical conclusions
for a moment, because out of his research and studies, he has created an
organization called the Ubuntu Liberation Movement. I’m new to this, and if you
want to know more about it just google the name, but the movement’s goals as I
understand them are to create societies from the ground up designed to release
humans from the systems and traditions that keep us more or less emotionally and
spiritually enslaved (to the benefit of the worlds elites), and this includes
money.
Tellinger argues that money, which also
originated in Sumeria, was created as a way to control and suppress human
interaction and, as we can clearly see today, is the force that allows the one
percent, a tiny fraction of the population, to control the wealth of the world,
and our quality of life. Tellinger envisions communities that do not use money, but rely on the latent and learned talents of all community members for
success, and are guided by the simple principal, “if it’s not good for
everyone, it’s not good at all.” Anyway, if it’s of interest to you, check out
their site. What I want to discuss further is Tellinger’s (and my own) views on
competition.
In Western societies, the idea that competition is a normal
and natural aspect of human life has been drilled into us for ages.
War is the ultimate competition, deciding who gets what plot of land and ruling
rights. From Gladiator fights to Darwin to baseball’s World Series to who gets
the corner office, the concept that competition is normal and necessary to human
progress is now simply taken for granted today. Tellinger, however, says no,
competition is actually destructive and demeaning, and is counterproductive to
real human progress. He argues that collaboration that incorporates contributionism, not competition, is the key
to our future survival.
Tellinger is certainly not the first person to point out the
problems with competition, but it still seems like a revolutionary idea to many
people. Just one look at the current situation on planet Earth, however, should
convince anyone that this is not really a controversial concept at all.
A major problem with competition versus contributionism is
that when you compete for something, you are far more likely to fail than to
win. Just as in Vegas, the odds are always against you. In most cases, there’s
only one winner who gets the coveted job, who can hold up the gold trophy,
who is able to deposit the big check. The vast majority of us are simply
expected to accept our status as losers and move on with our lives. In
addition, what we face under present day capitalism is not a level playing
field where everyone gets an equal chance to succeed, but a highly rigged
system where past winners already have tremendous advantages over the rest of
us. The elites who control things – the banks, Wall Street, world capitals –
are continuously perpetuating the myth that competition is the natural order of
the world, all to their continuing advantage, and our continuing enslavement.
Contributionism, according to Tellinger, is the way to break
the cycle of oppression and truly realize what it means to be human. And what
are our options? Our current course is leading the human race to
self-destruction. Can we put any hope in the idea that our ruling elites with
their powerful institutions will somehow have a change of heart and begin
working in the interests of the masses? We all know the answer to that.
Tellinger’s ideas are radical, and his Ubuntu Liberation
Movement is certainly below the radar of most people, but I believe there are
only two paths humans can take at this point in history: One is to continue on
our current march of endless war and conflict perpetuated by the elites for
their own gain or two, start from scratch. A new way forward for humanity has
to come from the bottom up, one community at a time. Tellinger’s idea of a
collaborative society unshackled from money and competition may not be the
answer, but to me it seems like a compelling start.
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