Welcome to Moronia

The once-thriving land whose residents became obsessed with profit and ceased to exist

The author is a longtime resident of the Chico area who enjoys her retirement and various interests in Forest Ranch.

Moronia, land of profit, was blessed. Beautiful, spacious and fertile were its lands—abundant and clean were its waters. The people who lived there had great pride and conviction, eager and strong in the beginning, determined to create a fair and just way of life fortified by certain laws so that opportunity, freedom and justice could be had by all.

But the civilization perished. Somewhere along the way, complications set in, things got out of balance and, well, it fell flat on its face. What happened, you ask, to this great giant, beautiful and blessed?

Its spirit dulled and became slave to economics. The people, easily befuddled by the high talk of experts, lost all sense of individual direction and their brains became mush for the commercial appetites of Big Money to move around and mold.

Hypnotized by the illusion of safety in profit, almost everyone gave up their lives no matter how great or hard the sacrifice so that they might increase their holdings for a “better life” (breaking even the Profit Gods would not allow). And so, instead of uniting in brotherhood to help each other, they chose to stockpile instead, and to each be in charge of his own separate cache.

For example, this is how a typical Moronian might go through life: Work, work, work, work, work … though the day would always come when more money was needed and advice would be sought from a variety of self-interested sources. The first might advise that the job itself was to blame and offer guidance, in exchange for a consideration, that was sure to make things better. A second might suggest a chain of Paper Securities to keep things moving along. Another might simply offer a veil of blind faith.

Yes, they all disappeared. Gone, just like the value of their coin and currency (bits of paper that proclaimed reliance on God but showed no real mercy) in a frenzy of profit that left behind only bankruptcy and plastic.

Sad!