No other nation on Earth comes remotely close to the United States in terms of debt owed. And, no other nation is as fervently pro-Capitalism as is the United States. How these facts might be perceived as disconnected is a wonder for the ages. A sensible person would see being in the red to such extremity as living beyond one’s means, but the cult-like Capitalistic thinking enables economists to weigh such figures as actually displaying emblematic signs of a strong economy. If being in the negative is indicative of anything healthy or estimable, then recipients of traditional welfare programs should be held in highest regard, as they are singular examples of the exponentially greater nation that spawned them. Individually, those without literal capital are vilified instead, for merely mimicking what the nation itself is culpable of on a grander scale. And despite the apparent freedoms granted by our society, preordained roles are fulfilled nonetheless, like clockwork, by one and all.
To feel normal with our enslavement to the dogmatic routine, we are expected to be frightened from questioning the official libretto or from thinking outside of boxes, particularly outside these boxes with glowing screens before us. We are expected to mistake the familiarity of our chains and the illusion of choice with freedom. We are made to feel comfortably numb and accepting of the continued prospect of giving the bulk of our waking life to making money for agencies already possessing more than we ourselves ever will, so that we can take our rewarded pennies to buy products from them which we do not honestly require to begin with.
Those straying from the conditioned norms, those striving for independence, they must contend with law enforcement. In early 2016, archives from the Fraternal Order of Police were leaked online concerning among other things the 325k Freemasons in their ranks, suggesting that officers abide by dictates the public is not wholly privy to. And this is no coincidence, as our increasingly shortened memory recall and even briefer attention spans eagerly forget that law enforcement in the states were begat as groups purposed with collecting taxes in the north and reprimanding slaves in the south. It would appear that serving increasingly nonsensical taxation and protecting a slave caste system have always been at the forefront of their prerogatives. Modernly, they cannot exist to enforce laws for the sake of the public trust, when lawmakers themselves are not even serving the people of the country. Why continue playing the bit part of a link to a chain of which each and every other component is actively profiteering from your diminished well-being? Why allow control to forces who have none of your best interests at heart or in mind? You will never get rich for the troubles. You will not even be remembered. You either own your life or you do not, and things need not be more complicated than that.
The idea that persons share too much publicly is not necessarily a matter of prudery. There is a romance to unveiling the unknown. And the general public is under no obligation to be interested in what’s shared to begin with. We can learn from each other, as no man is an island and all that jazz, but we learn extraordinarily little from the avatars and proxies separating real people from how they portray themselves. While the police themselves remain the largest purveyors of hate crimes, the fact that in truth free speech does actually have limits in this country shows that people are not frightened of potential hate crimes so much as nobody wants to be disagreed with. Otherwise the police forces would have been depowered and dismantled ages ago. We can allow untold billions to be pumped into manufacturing the disingenuous but all-encompassing environment of marketing and promotions and advertising campaigns but god forbid somebody say something kinda cross. Then we look the other way when things we do not agree with are torn to shreds, yet are so quick to unleash the double standard when it concerns us directly. We are not really together.
This is even further perverted under group dynamics. Mass mobilization even for altruistic purposes is utilizing the same essential tools as lynch mob mentalities. There might be degrees of safety in numbers, but the personal responsibility drops accordingly, with any zeitgeist allowing faces to be lost in the crowd. People should be encouraged to think and feel for themselves, which for all the promises that mass communication holds, such toys only lead to further confusion. Social media has defined itself as a platform for hollow assimilation, where misrepresentations wave frantically to the digital world for recognition and validation. People insisting that social tools of the internet might still be a means for loosening the chains of control are confusing their technological reach with the physics of everything in real life away from keyboards. Abiding by the filter provided by tech manifests nothing tangible, no matter how many people feverishly wish otherwise. But uncovering the world ourselves, knowing firsthand the success of a visceral accomplishment that comes only after foreplay and hard work is what escape velocity requires. Individual passengers on a runaway train have no power to decide where they are headed.
And maybe it is arrogant for so many people to presume themselves to be so fascinating. There is an old Russian proverb, that evil must be invited into the home. This was carjacked by vampire fiction, but the point remains, that bad things are more likely to happen to those who allow them. I am no fan of the concept of victim-shaming, but in this case…if people object to having all of their datum mined and collected then they do have absolute power to put a stop to it. But culture has molded us to be so egocentric that we no longer have power over ourselves. We trade self-control for the one in a zillion chance at meeting with fame and fortune. Which is definitively pathological.
Authentic change has never and will never arrive through easy ruses, no matter how attractive the plastic packaging. Acquired knowledge goes farther than cheat-sheets. Promoting false identities online leads to no real interpersonal relationships, and prompting internet communities to change the physical world is equally a dead-end for all the same reasons. For awhile I was hung up on the idea that a Democracy in the truest possible sense, where all men are purportedly created equal, would by nature lose the elections in exchange for lotteries, like being called in for jury duty. I feel the fact that this is not the case is indicative of two things.
The first would be the money at stake, which is the real reason why virtually every candidate runs. The money to be made from side deals, the chances to hookup buddies, and the cushy jobs to be lined up for when the term ends, with Wall Street or defense contractors or private legal consulting firms or whatever. All for favors given while in office. And the second is probably the obvious response to lotteries versus elections. The typical man on the street would likely be totally ill-equipped for representing his state in Congress or the like. But then, if any chain is only as strong as its weakest link, to my mind this should entail more efforts given at strengthening the weaker links. Genuinely free healthcare for all. Free education for all. More spent on domestic infrastructure than on “defense”. If anything, this would be a measure for discerning Nationalists and Capitalists from one another, whereas Neocons and Neolibs alike have fiercely insisted upon a union of the ideals behind those terms over the past 2 or 3 decades. But managing a government is not the same as running a business. Businesses are fundamentally profit-driven above and beyond even providing whatever services. Hence regulations, ideally to keep people from getting ripped off or poisoned to death. Governments however, are not about generating profit, but managing existing resources. And a true Democracy, in my view, should be one where resources are managed so well that any tax-paying adult citizen actually could be capable of a leadership role.
Like reversing the cause and effect of the G.I. Bill so that anyone going into any branch of the armed forces had to obtain a college degree first, though still on Uncle Sam’s wooden nickle. That would lead to the most effective military ever, where each and every soldier is a college grad. Of course, I’m not saying that every college graduate would be a soldier, but every soldier should be given adequate tools to ply their trade, as should everyone else. This same principle should readily and widely apply for the general public. Give everybody the tools to be the best they could want to be, and the idea of lotteries replacing costly and biased elections would not sound like a shocker. Why are we not striving for that? Because independent thinkers are not what the Powers That Be want or need to retain their own positions of authority.
Democracy is merely a word. The bread and circuses are but smoke and mirrors, and the only way to change things for the betterment of civilization is to silence all mongers of power and money. Power and riches are mutable and finite, but intelligence most assuredly is not. There will be no categorical peace in the world until all remnants of any and every financial system are fundamentally and irrevocably abandoned. Only then will living carry the worth it deserves, and only then might anybody have an equal chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There are no short-cuts and there are no alternatives, and belittling the prognosis is allowing one’s complacency (and perhaps fear) to show.
The world doesn’t need more groups or clubs or teams or organizations or gangs or churches or religions or political movements or governments or businesses. It needs more individuals, real individuals whose lives are not pathetically dependent on any financial system as a plastic measurement for success or well-being. Finance cannot match the authentic validation that comes from self-actualization, self-realization, self-determination. Money is for people without skills or talents, and the more wealth they have the more unskilled and talent-less they inherently are. Across the avenue, the more skills and talents one accomplishes the less and less dependency they find for money. Or authority.
The world needs to drop its hangups of slaves and slave-keepers, and learn that bartering and trading for goods and services would compel all players into being honest for a change, especially as then a man would only be worth his weight, and not worth the weight of his daddy’s business contacts or who knows who. Capitalism is tearing the fucking world apart. Anyone who does not or will not see that is lost. Capitalism screams that money is more valuable than life, when in reality the most powerful thing on the planet is the strong individual who cannot be either bought or sold, someone neither looking to use others or to be used by others. Apple has freaking suicide nets for its outsourced workers yet people still slavishly hold accounts at the iTunes store. Any and every manner of collective is hellbent on stifling any and every example of actual individuality. Self-reliance is a threat to all aspects of the system around us. Actual individuality, self-dependency, would never put workers in the position of contemplating suicide as the only option, nor would it put customers in the position of neglecting the moral implications of supporting a company that must itself consider suicide nets.
People who enable stacked-deck election cycles, people possessing more social networking profiles than books read, people who believe that work honestly pays off when allowing the greater portion of their lifetime to be mindlessly given away to service for the privileged classes, would not understand or appreciate any of this. They are dreamily awaiting in the eternal line to be the privileged class, when privilege cannot even exist unless a great many others are deprived, unprivileged to be contrasted by. They are a minstrel show, no matter if unintentional or unknowing, beggars for the things which they believe this manufactured society will provide, when they should instead be encouraged to apply such faith and esteem and reins of control to themselves. Every selfie taken is a moment spent not bettering oneself, distracting ourselves as though anybody even has a right to be entertained to begin with. Living to entertain others or to be entertained by others is nothing but a distraction from an awfully big and growing list of problems which are not solving themselves. First and foremost, our access to genuine contentment resting squarely with the whims of others.