Think about the choices you made today. Do you think they were your choices? They were not. You do not choose to do the things you do any more than a pitcher chooses to pitch a baseball game or a basketball player chooses to shoot a three point shot. Each does what he does because of the team to which he belongs. The choice to make choices is determined by the groups to which we belong. So, don't get angry at the people who do things you do not like. Their responsibility is limited by the type of world you have helped to create. Each of us is because we are.

You really didn't build that. By that I mean that it was not your idea to build it, even though you think you came up with the idea. Think about it. Would you have built it if the circumstances under which you built it did not exist? The answer is "No." So, you have to agree that it was not your idea to build that.

"The love of money is the root of all evil," said the ancient writer. Whose love of money? Why do we assume this principle applies to us as individuals? I don't think it does. The love of money permeates our societies. What puts the most fear in our hearts is the state of our money-based economies. Everything must be monetized. We are ill-at-ease if the money supply is threatened.

Here is a theoretical constitutional law question. The US Constitution allows for write-in candidates and restricts the President to two consecutive terms. What would happen if, in 2016 enough people wrote in the name of Barack Obama for the Presidency for him to win both the Electoral College and the popular vote?

Every promise evokes strong emotions and expectations, but the nature of those emotions and expectations depend on the knowledge and perspective of the one receiving the promises.

The Game is Rigged

The history we are creating is a product of the choices we have made along our journey, but humans have a tendency to overestimate the influence that the choices that they make have on their history. This is driven by a desire to separate themselves from the non-human species, whose behavior we claim is hardwired in their DNA. But how valid is that perspective? The truth is that we do not have sole control over our choices, either as individuals or as groups. Freedom of choice is only an illusion. We all do what we are driven to do by forces over which we have no control.

We seem unwilling to learn the only lesson that decades of science has taught us -- that nature always does what it wants to do and cannot be made to do what it does not want to do.