You must believe in yourself if you want others to.
Qiu Chu Ji (AD 1148 – 1227)
Our little farm, hidden in the mountains of the central highlands, began to produce abundant food. We had enough food to share with our parent village and to sell at the thriving market below us. Anne’s philosophy was counter to everything capitalism and exploitation stood for. Still, she was not a warrior sent to tear down the walls of sickly governments paralyzed by greed and corruption.
Anne was not on this earth to terrorize people into changing their co-dependence on industry and government. Anne saw her life mission to spread knowledge of self-sufficiency, harness the world for food, water, and shelter, and further the goal of being a worthy caretaker of the earth’s bounty. Anne’s sworn enemy was never mentioned. To do so would give it life and power to defeat her.
The people who created the need for me to be here with Anne eventually became the enemy we fought so hard to overcome with kindness and generosity and with our hard labor coaxing out the earth’s fruits, vegetables, and flowers from the clay and rocks. It was never so evident that the organization of industrial operations for staggering profit that enriched a few elites over the poverty of the masses was a dangerous evolution.
I believed in the mission of Bilderberg and its influential members to counter the spread of communism and socialist democracies. My Armed Forces branch was rabid in its desire to follow the tenets of Bilderberg to build a better world through the strength of the defense, social programs like education, career enhancements, and even free support to small business start-ups. Something went wrong, and the Frankenstein created by the Capitalist Father turned on its master and ran into the darkness of conflict.
This Frankenstein did not care to create a sense of world peace by setting humans free, teaching them self sufficiency. Frankenstein’s goal was riches and an extravagant lifestyle made possible by fleecing the public of every penny they could earn and then tossing them back into the gutters of poverty created by the very people who swore to uphold the highest standards of humanity.
I kept a low profile at the market, dressed in local clothes and wearing the conical sun hat tilted over my face. Anne wore the traditional attire of the local tribe, which made her fit in. Looking more closely at both of us, the people knew we were not genuine. We were clearly from somewhere else. Anne’s larger stature and rounder eyes were subtle telltales of a strange subterfuge. I became a curiosity that brought people to us, and Anne gave the best bargains. We sold our goods quickly and usually returned to our high paradise before noon.
I was well-trained in observation, and back at camp, I recorded my notes. The fertile lands of the highlands and the adjacent lowlands close to Cambodia were a thriving network based almost solely on agricultural enterprise. Food was plentiful and diverse. The people were healthy and dynamic. They had everything they needed and were universally skilled at creating elegant solutions by reusing and repurposing things that had exceeded their original lifecycle. Nothing was junk. Everything was just material waiting to be repurposed and given a new life. I worried about what would happen to this healthy organism if Western industrialization took hold.
The War America fought with the Vietnamese people took on a new face, a face of utter defeat. America had come for noble ideology, but our reality of corruption and lack of proper understanding of the people and their collective heart and soul enslaved us in a cage with an angry tiger. The outcome was a government that failed to learn its lesson, and we would repeat our failed policies repeatedly in every country we invaded.
I was heartbroken. I had become a tool for a geopolitical ideology that served no one but the elites who sent me here. I had gone native by looking through the crystal ball of an outcast orphan. It has been the belief of great thinkers and leaders in history that change starts in an individual’s mind, and the crisis of change creates the force that rips the status quo apart and presents a new understanding of the future.
Today global affairs comprised of conflict, poverty, starvation, and thirst join forces with nature that exert their power on populations to weaken the fabric of our humanity. While the West determines that women should be called chest feeders, birth parents, or Cis-gendered to avoid the ugly truth that men in women’s clothing are not what defines womanhood. While Americans fight over a fake beer’s market inclusion of transgender, 10 percent of the world’s population faces food insecurity and starvation.
It’s worth noting that food insecurity can take many forms, ranging from moderate to severe, and can be caused by a variety of factors including poverty, conflict, climate change, and natural disasters. Food insecurity is exceptionally high in some regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
While we sleep, an estimated 4.2 billion people, or 55% of the world’s population, are affected by water stress at least one month a year, according to the World Resources Institute. 2.2 billion face continuous water insufficiency below the levels necessary to sustain life.
According to the United Nations, an estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide live in inadequate housing, which means that their homes lack one or more of the following: access to safe drinking water, access to sanitation facilities, durable housing, sufficient living area, and security of tenure. Additionally, the United Nations estimates that 100 million people worldwide are homeless, meaning they do not have a place to live.
According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), in 2020, there were at least 55 countries where organized violence was taking place, which included armed conflicts, political violence, and riots. Some countries that experienced the most intense conflicts or violence include Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq, and Ukraine.
What is interesting here is the global statistics for economic growth compare 250 countries on a per capita basis to determine each country’s ranking. Below 250 are countries without governments or infrastructure strong enough to be international trade partners. This means that 55 of these 250 countries are torn apart by war, economic collapse, social upheaval, and natural disasters.
And finally, 36% of the world population lives in poverty, defined as less than $2.90 a day in income. Poverty is not a cause; it is a symptom of how we have strayed so far from a way of life that supports fundamental human rights and the opportunity to control one’s future by their actions in a nurturing environment.
The most essential thing Anne taught me was that I was responsible for my future, and a lifetime of effort to be a good steward of the earth and an example to those who would look to me for guidance in the future would contribute to a folding of knowledge that enabled future generations to thrive. While our current state of existence indicates she failed, I see a few bright and shining stars driving hard to implement those things I learned so long ago from an abandoned child whose life trajectory proved that if you believe in yourself, others will too.
Hyperion Sky 
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