To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. The realist, meanwhile, looks at the rate of change of the glass to determine whether it'll be nearly full or nearly empty. The Pyramid vs the Tower are two metaphors to look at when evaluating life in a realistic way. The pyramid has an end. The tower is almost endless. When climbing the rungs of a ladder, it helps to know whether the ladder has a realistic top or whether the rungs lead to an endless climb without a destination.

Climbing a Pyramid

Climbing a pyramid has traps just like climbing a tower does. Yet, the tower is more of a trap in the long run because its end is so far off, if there ever is one. Similar to the difference between a sitcom and an endless series, the pyramid has a defined end. Meanwhile, the tower itself is portrayed to be the goal. Climb as high as you can!

One of the greater areas of conflict in life comes from the confusion between towers and pyramids. Figures of authority commonly portray towers to be pyramids and vice versa. Human laws are a pyramid. It's relatively easy to follow them. Even when breaking them, it's hard to enforce every crime with anything more than a fine. Otherwise, the cost of jail time would be a greater burden to society than the cost of the fine. Yet, in some countries human laws are portrayed as towers. Without a consistent codified set of laws, new rules are brought in arbitrarily that weren't there before in order to punish misdemeanors like speaking out against authority. Individuals who present themselves to be a thorn in the side of governments are made to disappear or coerced into ratting out their fellow citizens of other misdemeanors.

In these instances where climbing a pyramid is falsely portrayed as a tower, the police state rears its ugly head. Individual freedoms are slowly but methodically dismantled by the state. What was once freedom of speech is met with freedom of oppression. One of the first signs of this occurring is the surveillance and blocking of internet applications where freedom of speech is known to thrive.

Climbing a Tower

Unlike climbing a pyramid—where there is known to be a definitive end—climbing a tower is different in that it's more competitive. Rampant capitalism leads to a tower-like phenomenon, where the rich get richer and the poor are left to their own demise. Each floor of the tower leads to more rewards that can only be redeemed by climbers who have reached the previous floor.

This race to climb as high as possible leads to fierce competition among the climbers. Soon, dirty tactics emerge where the climbers attempt to bend the rules for their own advantage. The climbers pretend to each other that fair is foul and foul is fair, all for the sake of not reaching a specific destination. The means are their own reward because there is no end. The only positive thing to come out of the fierce competition of climbing the tower is that the people who are just starting their climb have some sort of a blueprint on what to expect.

Yet, even within the tower some climbers will skirt the rules in their own way without harming others. Some climbers may choose to establish a floor of their own, free from outside intervention. Eventually, the higher floors are all taken up by these climbers. New climbers will either replace them or surpass them. Yet one certainty remains: there's usually no choice but to keep climbing.

So, which kind of world would you rather have? A world full of pyramids? Or a world full of towers?