Part 6 in the 'Ethical Revolution' series

Real life is made up of a full range of twisted conundrums, dichotomies and powerful contradictions. And human beings are compelled every minute of every day to live by one of the greatest incongruities ever conceived by nature.

This incongruity is that all of the great natural laws of animal behavior that made us so successful as a primal species and have brought us to the threshold of what can actually be called intelligence and civility, are now responsible for killing tens of millions of humans each year, causing mass extinctions of flora and fauna that have been around for thousands of millennia, and have arguably brought us to the verge of drastically altering the entire ecosystem of the planet we like to call ‘Earth’.

One of the most dangerous of these now detrimental, cellular coded human actions, is the Law of Expanding Returns.

What is success? This question receives thought and contemplations by the entire world’s population probably every day of the week. At least one time during every twenty-four hour span, six billion human beings all wonder about and add their thoughtful ‘two cents’ to this seemingly complex and hopeless question of what defines success in the lives of members of our species.

To think that the effort of truly defining success is a difficult and complex task, is to demonstrate an incorrect and delusional belief. This is one of the great twisted dichotomies we Homo sapiens survive with. In all certainty success only seems complex on the surface, but when someone delves into and examines success and rinses it down to it’s purest form, the definition of success actually becomes simple and extremely straight forward to understand.

The Law of Expanding Returns as a trait incorporated in all species of life, defines success in a basic, complete form and we all give homage to this definition with the very method we use to make every decision of our entire lives.

The Law of Expanding Returns fills each moment that we make decisions in. We react to -and act on- this law right down to the core of our cellular instinctual reactions. When a person drives a car to work, when they decide which line to get in at the grocery store, when they decide which career to choose, the Law of Expanding Returns is the core of every decision. It continues to act as the supreme measurement of success in this world.

Do not be fooled by platitudes that state: “Happiness is the best measurement of success”. Without food, without shelter, without hope, there is no success. The Law of Expanding Returns is the rule we act on to get food, to get shelter, to get hope. It is the only real measurement all species use to decide if anyone anywhere is getting ahead.

The Law of Expanding Returns is not just a physical rule that all life naturally follows and lives by. Instead it has become incorporated over millions of years of survival training, as an unconscious driving need that governs our thoughts, our dealings, and our actionable behavior. Next to the drive of procreation it is the most powerful underlying force that makes humans do what they do. As well, it makes all life, from microbes and bacteria all the way up to elephants and eagles, act in the ways we see them act.

This is a very powerful principle and the only way to get beyond just ‘becoming’ civilized and instead graduating into ‘being’ civilized, is to first recognize this base behavior in us, and second to begin using our newly found intelligence as a species to control it; thus carefully and cleverly lifting ourselves up into a rational and enlightened Ethical Revolution.

When a politician takes a bribe against all of the ethics he has ever stood for, he is reacting to the inexorable force of Expanding Returns.

. . .. . . . . . . A federal jury convicted a former Louisiana congressman Wednesday of taking bribes on 11 of 16 counts in a case in which agents found $90,000 in his freezer. Former Rep. William Jefferson, a Democrat who had represented parts of New Orleans, was accused of accepting more than $400,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for brokering business deals in Africa. . . . . . . . . . . .

When a hostile corporation seeks methods of manufacturing that cost less but allow toxic chemicals to pollute vast sections of our living environment, they are acting on the need to act expediently on the Law of Expanding Returns.

. . . . . . . . . . Why would Hooker Chemical sell the charming Love Canal neighborhood to the city of Niagara Falls for just $1? Perhaps because Hooker had used the canal as a dumping site for 20,000 tons of its waste. When the city built low-income housing and a school on the buried canal and its surrounding land, it failed to warn citizens about the mountain of poison beneath them. Soon, children were coming home with chemical burns, women passed poison on to their children through breast milk, and neurological problems and cancer rates rose sharply. In 1979, the EPA called the town’s miscarriage rate “disturbingly high.” Eventually forced to intervene, the federal government relocated all 800 LoveCanal families. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

As this law originates from the dim roots of time that is measured not in mere hundreds of thousands of years, but in the millions of years instead; as this law is lived by every species of microbe, bird, mammal, fish, or bacteria that has lived or ever will, it is appropriate to use an example from nature as a simple illustration of how the Law of Expanding Returns defines success for us all.

Imagine that in one small section of the planet there is a wolf breathlessly chasing a frantic and harried rabbit. This wolf happens to be slow and the rabbit happens to be only barely faster. For three hours and more the wolf has frenetically chased his prey, twisting turning, scenting the underbrush anxiously when for only a moment the rabbit eludes him. Then at long last the chase is over. There is blood, there is death, and one organism has life for a few more moments though another one does not. Such is the tableau of living that goes on from the top of the food chain to the very bottom.

The point here is that this wolf was NOT successful.

Yes he was not hurt; yes he was able to win the race. But the cost was too high. In over three hours the wolf spent nearly 5000 calories. After eating and digesting all that was edible, the wolf only gained a little more than 4800 calories back. By every principle that we really believe depicts success, this wolf FAILED. The Law of Expanding Returns was not heeded and if such faulty hunting occurrences such as this keep up, it is immanent that the wolf will die of malnutrition and starvation.

In another part of the world a different wolf has learned a trick of sleeping just out of sight of rabbit holes. When the rabbit comes out to get food or water, a simple jump and snap of the jaws provides a great satisfactory meal. By every standard we use as a definition, this wolf is successful. He spends about 700 calories napping and sleeping until the rabbit emerges, and gains 4800 calories (more or less) for his effort. Knowing how to get food so quickly and so easily ensures that this wolf has time for many other activities that the first wolf did not, including having time to learn and study life around him in order to become more and more successful. As well he is able to gain weight by putting on the muscle and fat that will make certain of survival through winter or any other foreseeable hard time.

The Law of Expanding Returns states that success is always measured by the ratio of ‘expending the least amount of calories possible to get the most amount of calorie interest, in return’ - in every situation that requires an action.

If we have a less than, equal to, or even a barely more expanding ratio of caloric returns to caloric expenditures in any effort we endeavor, we are not successful. As far as the question of money goes, forget about money.

All currency is just a temporarily accepted representative storage and trade medium for this previously mentioned ratio of caloric exchange.

When a person such as Bill Gates can take just a couple of moments to speak a sentence into a microphone and earn $50,000.00, he is considered extremely successful.

As well, if a person works a forty hour week to earn $200,000.00 a year; though not in the same league as Bill Gates, they are still considered more successful than 90% of the world’s population.

Someone, who works fifty to sixty hours a week to make $30,000 a year is not considered successful. This is far to low a ratio of exchange for expenditure vs. returns.

We utilize this principle without thinking. For instance when we come to a stop light while driving home we try to gauge which car in front of us will take off first so we can expend less time and effort in our vehicle to get us to our destination quicker and more efficiently!

It is obvious to anyone who cares to give even just a brief thought that The Law of Expanding Returns is a principle that has defined success or failure for as long as we have been in existence. But what we do not do, is understand this principle with the expanded enlightenment possible when using our new, powerful developing intellect.

Without perfectly complete understanding of it's many facets, we are powerless in our attempts to relegate this law to a less dominating position in our daily existence; a less dominating position that is necessary to keep us surviving as a viable, ethical and culturally refined part of this universe.

The drive for expanding returns is part of our Old Brain. This drive is automatic and is a completely thoughtless thrust at the base of all human action.

UNGOVERENED ADHERENCE TO THE LAW OF EXPANDING RETURNS IS RESPONSIBLE FOR NEARLY ALL OF THE CORRUPTION, PAIN, GREED AND GRIEF THAT OUR SPECIES INFLICTS ON OUR OWN DEVELOPING HUMAN SOCIETY.

THE CREATION OF A CODE ETHICS WE CAN ALL GLADLY AND WILLINGLY ADHERE TO, IS THE VERY ESSENCE OF OUR EFFORT TO WALL UP THIS DRIVE AND DIRECT IT INTO A CONSTRUCTED COURSE OF CIVILIZED THOUGHT AND ACTION INSTEAD.

Unfortunately, this law not only causes most of the pain and suffering that we inflict on each other, but it is also the secret of our intelligence and survival as well. Long ago, humans who were weak and inefficient against the brute strength of most specialized predator species began to use intelligent methods to level the playing field. With an increasing ability to use tools, humans began to have methods available to them that allowed the ratio of caloric expense to caloric increase, to expand positively and out of all proportion compared to the species around them.

It is not recommended or even possible to ignore this living law and eliminate our 'driving necessity' to live up to ever increasing ratio standards. Any member of a species with an inborn drive to take in less calories than they expend on a regular basis cannot survive and are soon extinct. A form of adherence to this law must remain in our psychological profile to help us exist. However, as previously stated, the ultimate expression of living The Law of Expanding Returns, always devolves into the creation of pain and suffering for other racial members, and for all other existing species as well.

Just as over population by any species causes harm and destruction to the environment that they live in, over applying the Law of Expanding Returns causes great harm and destruction to the social and physical environment around us.

To not see this is to deny intelligence and move backward into the dark ages of non-reason.

It is bred into us to always seek better returns for our efforts. Imagine spending an entire day, the whole day, making only barely enough to provide food and shelter for that day and not beyond. There would be no time to rest, accept at night. There would be no days off, unless for that day we take off there would be no food and no warmth.

Instead, to earn the caloric equivalent of several days food and shelter for just one days worth of work, helps us store up calorie representatives that will provide for a time when perhaps we are sick or when we need to rest up. Even better, being able to store up several days worth of calorie intake for one or even a half a day of work allowed ancient humans to have time to learn, time to improve upon hunter gatherer techniques. And most important of all, high caloric storage as result of better adherence to the Law of Expanding Returns, allows time for parents to have more children and raise them with sufficient food to grow strong and hardy.

Better caloric storage techniques also gave those who employed them, time to train up children in improved survival arts, thus passing on the tendency, generation by generation, to seek more and more and ever greater techniques of getting more intake back for what you spend out in effort to achieve. A domino affect, as are all Old Brain survival techniques.

When identifying this concept, the first question asked by an intelligent thinker is: ‘Why do we care about this law?’

The answer is: ‘Because it is mostly just a law designed to help primitive species evolve and get stronger’.

If a primitive species discovers methods of survival that allow the 'ratio of return to expense' to grow disproportionately, they soon begin to overpopulate and consume resources at a rate that is dangerous to them and the surrounding environment. In a primitive setting this does not happen because predators are always present to keep every species survival rate down to safe numbers. It has been said that if house flys bred unchecked, inside of ten years they would cover the earth to a depth of 6 feet. But this does not happen because predators consume flys and kill them by the millions every week.

But when humans who now have basic intelligence apply this principle and it increases survival rates to a point where all are able to breed at will and fill the environment with 6 billions of propagating, consuming, expanding masses of members with no great natural predators to keep their number down, disaster for our race and all other species looms threatening on the near horizon.

The second answer to the question about 'why we care about this law' is: all greed, war, and theft in the human race spills out of this overwhelming, animal urge to always get more for less effort.

It is good to have one person able to grow enough food for a village. It is good have one person be able to train entire class of students. It is good to be able to only work 40 hours to support your family for an entire week and more. It is an ongoing grand and challenging goal to find new and better ways of production that cost less while at the same time are able to provide a better form of living for all of us on Earth.

But when all is said and done, the most efficient expression of Law of Expanding Returns is slavery, theft, and murder.

If it is great to work 80 hours and get 100 hours of worth of sustenance, it is even better to just work 40 hours for 500 hours of existence. Beyond that, how much better to work one day a week and make enough money for a month? And how many of us would like to only work a single hour out of each year and still make enough money to live like Donald Trump! It does not end. We look out carefully for every deal possible so that in each situation of existence we can give as little as possible out, yet get the greatest amount possible back in return.

If a person buys a $30,000.00 car for just $15,000.00 they call everyone they ever knew to tell about the great deal they were able to manipulate. It is our goal every day to pay less at the pump to get more mileage out of every gallon consumed by our cars.

WE MUST HAVE MORE FOR LESS!

And there is no better way to get more for less than to have someone else expend their own calories to work and earn something, and then take it away from them for oneself! There is no way to get better caloric return for the tiniest of expenditure, then to commit theft as a way of life! This is why we cannot seem to eliminate graft from our lives and from our society. With The Law of Expanding Returns pushing us, cajoling us, leading us to better ways to get more for giving less; so seductively, so enticingly, so much a part of our nature to succeed this way, it is unavoidable that robbery, pilfering and burglary of all sort is committed.

Murder too is a part of this process. If you steal water, land, food, and shelter from someone because it is ultimately the easiest way to expend little effort on your part to get great amounts of resources in return, certain individuals that you steal from might come after you. They might even take resources back from you. If you are constantly looking over your shoulder in order to prevent retribution, you are inefficiently wasting vast amounts of calories for very little gain in return. It is a much better adherence to the Law of Expanding Returns to ensure that when you steal from someone, they and even their revenge seeking friends and family are eliminated as a future threat to your successful well being.

Slavery also is a perfect resolution for the need to negotiate a great ‘win’ for adherence to The Law of Expanding Returns. How better to get more for less than to barely feed and clothe someone, but make them work from sunup to sundown for your own personal gain?

Of course, a certain group of individuals might happen to observe another group acting as a threat to their own caloric returns, and if the first group notes that the other group is in the habit of regularly not earning their own daily income accept by theft from surrounding inhabitants, the first group might ban together with others who are not a threat and preemptively eliminate the threatening assemblage before the previously observed caloric theft happens to them.

Thus we have the simplest recipe for murder and war as it currently pervades our entire society. And all of it dictated by strict adherence to The Law of Expanding Returns.

End Of Section A 'First Law of Civilization'

Continue on to part 6B in the 'Ethical Revolution' series             http://hubpages.com/hub/the-First-Rule-of-Civilization-Part-II