The central tenet, the main thesis of this work is a spiritual one. It is about transcendence, it is about how to live, it is about what life is and what it is for. It will seem to the interested reader that many of the essays are more focused on mundane issues such as economics. There is a reason for this. If you take my reasons for living and priorities for the uses of wealth as "given", the biggest problems with pursuing them in the West and especially in the United States (and in the rest of the world due to U.S. economic imperialism) are due to the primacy of the "economy" and the concerns of capital in public life today. Thus many of the problems to be solved along the way to many more people living fulfilling lives are economic in nature, but not the same problems that faced us a mere century or two ago. Where once the problem of "scarcity" desperately needed to be solved prior to any higher aspirations, now the problem of "scarcity for most in a time of immense wealth for a few" needs to be solved. I just hope it does not have to be solved violently, since that is such a waste. 12/2/99 
© Huw Powell
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