Consider that you are driving on a road and reach a T junction. You can enter the blue road which gets you to a ravine in which you will certainly crash. The road is however one big fun fare filled with goodies (plenty of food, sex and rock & roll, mountains of gold and properties along the way) for you to enjoy quickly before you crash. Once in a while you hear a scream and wonder whether it is of joy or fear just before the crash?

The other road (yellow)  is dull, even very difficult to drive due to the many horrible looking obstacles, no goodies at all, even hardship to expect, but it gets you along side the ravine safely and eventually turns away from it.

Which road would you pick? The yellow one for the long term safety where you see hardly anyone? Or the blue one for the short term joy yet unsafe and where you see a lot of people?

When you make your choice and finally encourage yourself to go for safety, the yellow road, despite the powerful attraction of fun, you notice a little man sitting there. He controls a big barrier, preventing access to the yellow track. When you ask him why you may not continue he tells you that he represents justice of a democratically chosen government and local banking system who both control the blue road and all the attractions along side. It has been decided by law that everyone has to take that blue road and he is there to assure that this rule is followed, if necessary by applying the law.

“But this will get me killed” you exclaim. The bureaucrat shrugs his shoulders and  says that he is just doing his job. It’s a free country and everyone has the right to vote democratically. Short term fun was chosen so everyone has to have fun even if it gets you killed. Dullness is not allowed and long term dullness is even banned from the choices, even if this saves your life. All banking and government investment goes into placing more attractions along the blue track and upholding the system that has been chosen for.

He even pinpoints far in the distance where you can still see a very narrow bridge over the ravine. “See”, the bureaucrat says “that is the place where the bankers and chosen politicians stand to assure that this system keeps running. It is a small bridge and has only room for them and their interests, nothing else. And look at poor me, I have to sit here and have to tell everyone to take the blue road full of attractions. A hell of a job”.

Now it is again up to you. What do you do? Do you follow the rules imposed onto you or do you make up your own mind?

The story reflects our current system of economies of growth. They are on social and ecological crash course but still oblige people by law to stick to the money driven dependencies of consumption, even if you want to take another route. Sustainable progress is blocked by bureaucracy. The only choice we really have, if sufficiently aware of disaster, is to avoid the bureaucrat, jump the gate and walk the road of safety even though we travel alone in a desert.

Strangely enough most people still take the road of consumable pleasure knowing that it ends in disaster. They do it either for the short term fun, out of lazyness to build a new life out in the empty desert or out of fear for the authorities that impose the laws. What is needed for the masses to pull down the barrier, fire the bureaucrat and build a new society along the empty road?