The flow chart of the economy is this: A pipeline rammed into the Earth, the inside of the pipe lubricated with competition and greed, and the tube fits inside a human mouth.

All the spinning wheels and blinking lights are just clever human innovation to make “Earth economics” an enjoyable ordeal. Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin hit this metaphor square on the head with “Drill baby, drill.”

The tubes sucking the blood out of Earth is one thing. The tubes sucking human imagination dry is another.

Generally, I believe, human imagination wanes as we age. What is it that blocks or impounds our imagination as we come out of childhood? One theory I have is education. Education and logic replaces our imagination and instinct as a tool for survival. That is why I trust my gut more than economic professors. But the comedian who was roasting President Bush the other night criticized Bush and others for trusting their gut.

Our gut isn’t always right, since it is a “natural” way to survive. Humans must be allowed to make mistakes. That is part of our destiny. Following mountains of laws and dogma interferes with a human’s natural code of decision making. We must not be mistaken for a binary machine. The brain, I read in Newsweek, is a very chaotic system. The reason people have seizures is because this “chaos” is temporarily obstructed, causing a pattern to form in one small area of the brain. Bizzare! How a bit of orderliness can cause a person to feel like they are in a hellish nightmare!

The orderliness of economics is reflected in corporatization, which is anti-human — or anti-imagination — or anti-mistakes. Could it be that early humans made a “mistake” that actually helped our survival? The scientific word is mutation. We need “mutations” or we will stagnate into oblivion.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Any questions? Am I crazy?

Call it chaotic.

Patrick Cunningham

Twin Lakes