One Existential Purpose :

There are myriad differing religious and political beliefs/tenets, but there is one incontrovertible, existential fact that we must all recognize.

The one existential purpose of all adults of any species is survival of the species; not accumulation of wealth; not preservation of possessions. That means making babies and making them successful. Thus, our offspring are our primary resource; not a necessary bother. Their preservation and nurture far outweigh any other suggestible need. Existentially speaking, our adult purpose is to make the next generation successful.

How do we ensure success for future generations? Survival of our species is a societal obligation; not an individual endeavor. All economic progress for anyone starts with five essential, primal needs. Without them nothing else matters.

1.       Environment: needless to say, without it no life exists. Many people, though, follow some misguided mantra touting a need for “economic progress;” loudly denigrating the environment’s importance.

2.       Water: we live hardly a week without it. Go figure; we are some 60% water, depending on gender, age and other factors. Our blood is some 80% water.

3.       Food: without it we might survive three weeks.

Without # 1, #2, and #3 everything else – including gold – is worthless.

4.       Clothing and shelter: elemental protection. When viewing this from a Universal History angle, it would be hard to say which comes first. Even today there are primitives who live without clothing, but they have “houses.”.

5.       Training/Education: Even wired-in, instinctive drives of lower species require additional training. As natural as it is for a cheetah cub to chase moving things, its mother spends more than a year training it to hunt. Humans need more training. Without it we are no more than limited hunters/gatherers.

Success with primal-need building blocks 1 – 4 requires skill advancement. Primal existence provides access only to crude versions of them, and little more. Like lower animals early humans spent virtually all waking hours in that pursuit. Further economic progress is impossible without Primal Need building block #5.

Education contravenes rediscovery and reinvention. It helps us build advancement from old things to new and better things. It makes everything else possible. If we needed to reinvent the wheel to go somewhere else, we would likely have no idea that "somewhere else" exists. First, last, always; education is critical to movement beyond cave dweller needs.

Absurd to the max; political right-wing leadership (if it be leadership at all) tends to claim that a good economy is needed before education can be adequately funded.

While economic progress assists education, education is pre-requisite to that progress. It is the key to personal upward mobility which unlocks the doors of the economy. Without education there are no industry leaders, workers, bankers, attorneys or other professions. All wealth fails if education is not strongly supported. Without it there is no financial base for economic development. We can’t even “stand still” economically without it.

Clearly; economic progress without education is impossible. Without adequately maintained and funded education all else beyond crude versions the first four building blocks fails.

It runs no other way.