Somewhere in time and within the dynamics of human engagement, leadership emerged from the ancient caves of magic and mystery to become what we call today politics.

This brief evolution of roughly
2.5 million years or more began with the basic needs of the individual, the family — extended or otherwise — the immediate collective and, in time, the tribe, the village and the local kingdom, state or country at large. Only recently have we considered the notion of a global community squatting upon a flat world upon which everything from a 16-year-old receiving a $360,000 birthday car at the same time over half the world lives on less than $2 a day takes place. Diversity reigns.

But does it?

Karl Marx wrote religion is the opiate of the people, that is, we, the masses. Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote 'Whither is God ... I shall tell you. We have killed him — you and I." All of us his murderers. Again, we, the masses. And, Carl Jung wrote that politics poisons the utterly incompetent mind of the masses. But note: Opium, during Marx's hour, was, in fact, the only significant pain relief available. Hence, the metaphor. Nietzsche did not kill God on his watch. We did. And we continue to do so every day by our mindless practice of depleted religions and fraudulent faiths.

In fact, global warming has little to do with carbon emissions. Global warming is actually moral incineration unfolding. And Jung was right: We have become utterly incompetent to manage our own and collective physical, mental, emotional social and spiritual health and well-being. Suspicion, greed, hate and violence have filled our personified body politic, our xenophobic brother's keeper mind, and our insolvent human spirit with an inferno of fear consciously stoked by posturing clowns on cable TV and syndicated radio, the recognition of, let alone respect for, the truth notwithstanding.

We have abandoned our power of cogent reasoning, dispassionate judgment and our intuitive knowledge of life itself. Objective examination and insightful commentary have been murdered and have been buried.

Therefore, I respectfully ask for all to stand and be counted as constituents of the new nihilism. We have rejected established law and institutions and have become the uncompromising repudiators of value and meaning.

We have renounced our fundamental faith in our own internal value — human and spiritual — and, instead, have placed such worth in the external manifestations we have created such as the mega-church with the mega-bucks flouting a bible annotated according to undisguised non-secular politics, a constitution equally parsed and ciphered into manufactured relevance, and the rule of law, be it the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, that has become nothing more than talking points for blustering bureaucrats and for equally pretentious preachers.

Today, at best, such precious documents seem to hold little more than the enchanting magic of a Ouija board or an alchemist's collection of stones, metals and charming elixir. At worst, they are used as fuel for scorn and condemnation by our narcissistic leadership or as a source for verbal hatred carried on pikes by well meaning hypocrites as scripted by their psychotic god. Accordingly, we wail, lash out and fear everything as do frightened children waking from an everlasting nightmare.

We have simply lost it — the full power of our collective humanity. We are exhausted spiritually. We have become nothing more than the aggregate congregation of zero. Sadly, but blindly and ferociously ignorant, we have become "the sum of zeroes."

Santa Fean Rudy Bentz, Ed.D., an educator for 35 years, continues to teach and develop academic and therapeutic curricula.