Our System Promotes Hopelessness And Selfishness

             

Most of us have a learned sense of helplessness. It is most often aided by a learned selfishness. This is in no way a blanket condemnation of the majority of people, it is simply a diagnosis of the situation. We are in fact victims of mindsets that have been passed along by our media and our institutions of learning in order to promote the attitudes of our ruling class. Allow me to explain.

Our ruling class is composed of those who have the most wealth and power. In life, you tend to get what you desire most and work hardest for, and those with the most wealth and power tend to have them because they focused their energy and attention on them. Assuredly there are other factors involved that aide them in their quest for wealth and power: physical prowess, good looks, winning personality, intelligence, talent, work ethic, etc. (To be fair, there are also negative attributes involved: heartlessness, obsessiveness, dishonesty, etc. We have to include these since many a fortune has been made through immoral and illegal means. Pablo Escobar, for example, was extraordinarily wealthy.) But overall, wealth and power are acquired by those who most desire them. It is no different in any other field (e.g. First chair is generally given to the musician who focuses most on winning it. Good health is generally given to those who prioritize it the most. Sexual conquest is achieved most often by those who prioritize it over stable relationships.)

So our ruling class mainly consists of those who have acquired the most wealth and power. They do this by concentrating single-mindedly on acquiring the tools and attitudes which will help them to gain wealth and power. This requires an immense focus, and such a focus means not even being aware of lesser aims. Anything that does not lead to their further acquisition of wealth and power becomes irrelevant. In fact, for them, practically speaking, such things do not exist.

Narrative control is a vastly underestimated dimension of power. Those who tell the stories can shape the behavior of others. It has always been this way. The divine right of kings justified the actions of those who had most successfully pursued wealth and power. So too do rags-to-riches stories help promote the view of the wealthy and powerful. While almost none of our ruling class were born into poverty, they like to believe in a system where it is hard work rather than privilege that has put them in the position they inhabit. They like to believe they are in positions of power and have a disproportionate degree of wealth because of their superior attributes and not because of their positions of privilege and an obsessive and unnatural desire for wealth and power at the cost of nobler pursuits. And not only do THEY want to believe it, they want EVERYBODY to believe it.

Those with power wish to share their understanding of the world, which is that pursuing wealth and power is the noblest way to spend your life. They want everybody to believe that the system that brought them to power and maintains their wealth is the finest system there is or ever could be, because it makes the rulers look good and assists in their continued pursuit of ever more wealth and power. They want you to look upon them as role models and want you to live according to their values.

Narrative control is one of the greatest forms of power, and wealth helps them to buy the media that shapes narratives. I don’t think most of us would be too different if we had the wealth and power to shape our world. I know radio would sound a whole lot different if I were in charge. I know the books people read in school would be different if I had a say. So I’m not necessarily even blaming the super-rich for our learned helplessness or our learned selfishness. It’s not a matter of finding someone to blame, it’s about understanding why we feel so helpless and allow ourselves to become so selfish. It’s because the narrative that is controlled by the obscenely wealthy is focused on the things that benefit them and not on the things that might benefit the overwhelming majority of human beings on this planet.

Now that we know that those who most desire wealth and power have both the desire and the means to shape the narratives that instruct us, it becomes easy for us to understand why we feel so helpless. We feel helpless for two reasons. The first is that the rich and powerful (and they are mainly different from us because of their obsessive need for riches and power) have no interest in discussing mindsets that do not further their own goals. This is a conscious decision of theirs. They want to deprive the majority of people (who do not share as passionately their desire for power and wealth) of the powerful tools they need to create a society that helps the masses at the expense of the ruling elite. The tools that would help the majority are those narratives that do not stress self-interest and domination over others. Our rulers obviously do not want to give the majority these tools, so they use their wealth and power to promote a narrative which works in their favor.

While the ruling elite consciously use their power and wealth to shape the narrative, they also unconsciously shape it. As I said earlier, those who desire wealth and power are so singularly focused on their pursuit that they simply do not see the things that have meaning to those who prize others values, such as building strong communities, preserving the natural world, and being present for friends and family. Our rulers have no time for such pursuits, and have no interest in talking about them. Therefore, the institutions which they control will neither talk about nor promote such values.

Parameters are therefore set for those seeking change from within the system. The average person who seeks to make a better society feels hopeless because the solutions they are permitted to discuss are strictly limited. In the realm of voting, they are given the choice of voting out one party that serves the ruling elite by voting in the other party that serves the ruling elite. Given these options, it is no wonder why the majority of people in our society feel helpless.

                 

Helplessness in one aspect of life leads one eventually to find some other aspect of their life they might be able to improve. A runner who becomes paralyzed might shift his energies into wheelchair sports. A singer who loses their voice might take to playing the piano in order to still participate in music. A person who feels helpless to build a better world will likely direct his energies into personal ambitions. The desire to make things better still exists, but the energy will be directed into avenues that jibe with the narratives of the ruling elite.

In wanting to improve our own lot in life, we quickly learn that we proceed more quickly when we share the same values as those who are above us. Those who are in the position to allow us to move upward in society in turn have already discovered this, and so have adopted the values and the attitudes of their gatekeepers. And so it goes, straight up to the top. The more you assimilate the values of the ruling elite, the less barriers that are placed between you and success in the system they have created. Therefore, along the many different levels of society, it is understood that embracing the values of the ruling elite enables you to achieve greater success, while embracing values that run contrary to the people on top are only going to hurt you. When you have already assimilated the idea that you are helpless to make change outside of the system, it is easier to succumb to the values of those who will at least enable you to have some success within the system.

So the ruling elite instill a sense of helplessness in the people in order that they might choose the elite’s preferred “virtue” of selfishness. This in turn increases the power of the ruling elite still further. It also further increases the feelings of helplessness among those who do not place the acquisition of wealth and power above the desire to build a world built upon values such as community, fraternity and equality. Concepts for building a better world that have existed for thousands of years are being systematically scrubbed from our consciousness by a system that works for an elite few while making the rest of us needlessly suffer.

I would like to leave you with a few thoughts. You are not helpless. The idea of you being helpless has been implanted in you by a narrative created by those who want you to feel helpless. Selfishness is not your path to success, it is the path that those who wish to control you would like to see you take. The story they tell you is not one that is intended to serve you but them. There are other ways, better ways that we might take. There is so much more to this world than the tawdry narratives of selfishness and helplessness would have you believe. They have constricted your world, put your mind in a prison of their design. Only a beaten-down slave or a sadistic prison guard would accept the narrative that is given us.

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Two Parties, One Failed Political Process

Interesting times we are living in. We have two parties and no vision for the future coming from either of them.

In any other age, any war that was fought was sold with the promise that it was fought to bring about peace, justice, and renewed prosperity. Not so, nowadays. War is now fought to punish bad guys. And since dropping bombs on people tends to bring out the worst in them, we are merely creating more bad guys. There is no end to the wars we fight, because we fight wars on behest of the weapons manufacturers, not for a better tomorrow. We fight wars for corporate interests, and corporate interests run contrary to the interests of the citizens of the countries we bomb. Therefore, we will never be able to bomb them into seeing our country’s point of view.

There is no path to peace, only rationalizations for the next war (which does not replace but is added to the pile of wars we are already fighting). There is no path towards prosperity, other than cutting taxes for the very wealthy, and signing trade agreements written by those same tax-avoiding corporations.

On the issues where the two main parties agree—the federal reserve, never opposing war, never doing anything about climate change, bailing out failed banks without demanding accountability or changing the rules, increased surveillance, etc.—they are both firmly on the side of powerful interests against the citizenry. Where the two parties disagree, each of them floats into some fantasy world detached from the realities the common person cares about. (Transgender use of bathrooms? Why did that suddenly become the dominant news topic for months on end?) Or else they label the other in the most absurd and extremist way by disallowing any middle ground. Most people sit somewhere in the middle on issues such as gun control and abortion, but Republicans and Democrats would make you believe that there is no middle.

Somehow, some way, Republicans managed to get themselves elected not only to the Presidency, but a majority of both houses of Congress, and most of the governorships, on issues that most people find repugnant. Voters had very genuine issues with the Affordable Care Act and were hoping for the Republican opposition to replace it with something better. And yet the Republicans could only come up with something worse, could only imagine stripping the better parts from an otherwise terrible idea.

Republicans are in charge and are incapable of doing anything. And they’re incapable of pushing through any of their ideas because they know there will be nobody to blame but themselves. For the last eight years their whole identity was to be a resistance to the Democrats and that foreign-born President of theirs. It’s really easy to tear down what someone else is trying to build up, it’s a lot harder to do the building up.

Now it is the Democrat’s turn to be the party out of office, the ones who oppose everything the other party does. Not in a rational, principled, or constructive manner, but in a knee-jerk sort of way. Find an issue you can exploit and drive the wedge in deep, regardless of whether such distractions harm the populace.

As the Republicans are unable to do anything because they have no one to blame for their failures, so to do the Democrats seek to avoid actually taking a position while hurling vitriol at all things Republican. To take a position of their own, to promise to actually work for the American people should they be elected, is a bridge too far. Unlike Trump who was willing to promise anything and everything to get elected, most Democrats have been around a while and know it’s safer to offer platitudes without actually saying something that might come back to bite them in the butt. They have yet to appreciate and mimic the genius of Trump, which is to speak so absurdly that supporters can only see what they wish to see in the candidate.

But what has the resistance accomplished so far, other than making itself look ridiculous? What is the Democratic strategy to defeat the ignorance and hatred they see in the Trump movement, other than showing themselves capable of an equal degree of ignorance and hatred? Their one hope seems to be to play nice with the deep state in hopes that it will eventually exert its power and rid them of Trump.

There is not an adult in the room, other than the deep state. And the deep state is quite willing to have the focus be on the warring children rather than themselves. Politics as it stands now is a Jerry Springer Show and we simply cannot permit ourselves to take seriously anyone who would walk on that stage. New outlets must be established, our trust in the media outlets and power structures that have led us to this point must be redirected into people and groups who prove worthy of trust. We must finally realize that any institution taking vast sums of money from powerful interests are innately unworthy of our trust.

We must divert our energies from the large institutions that have only their own interests at heart. And perhaps even more important, we must divert our mental focus from the narrative that such institutions have woven for us. Until we can free ourselves from the perspective and world-view that now box us in, we cannot help but be part of the machine that is busily tearing down humanity, our resources, our environment, and our future.

The Slow Strangling Of Our Consciousness

Asking the experts of today to solve the world’s problems is like asking the priests of the volcano god how to end the drought. All they will tell you to do is sacrifice a virgin, it’s all they know. Today’s experts are little different, there are just more of them. Ask them what their solutions are, and they will tell you to bomb it, privatize it or medicate it.

Everyone in a position of power in a corrupt system is de facto corrupt himself. In bowing to a corrupt authority, they have surrendered their conscience, have proven themselves unable to choose between right and wrong. They cannot save us, they can only hurt us. We must help ourselves, there is no other power we can turn to.

Those in power, those whose job it is to inform the public, are more herders of opinion than people interested in expanding our understanding of the circumstances we now face. Their job is to limit the view of those who must toil for the present system in the same way horses are blinkered to prevent them being distracted from the task demanded of them.

And in blinkering others, they blinker themselves. Intent on their task, they are so focused on it that they lose sight of their larger obligation to humanity. Not constricted themselves, they yet become even more myopic than those they blinker because, as it is said, none are so blind as those who refuse to see.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. A rock rolling downhill not only continues to roll downhill, it picks up speed as it does. Media that is more concerned with directing thought than it is opening new paradigms and providing greater context for its viewers will not merely maintain the status quo but will continue to narrow the window through which the world is shown. This has been occurring for decades now, though it has happened just slowly enough that we somehow have not become aware of it. The imperfections of the human mind are many, and the study of how those imperfections can be exploited has been well funded. Kind and decent human beings can be manipulated into supporting the most inhuman of systems if they are led to believe that the “experts” know more than they. Research the Milgram experiments if you have any doubt.

There are two ways thought can travel: outward and inward. We can expand our understanding of the world we live in by permitting ourselves to hold more than one possibility, one paradigm at a time. By not demanding hard and simplistic answers we can drift off into seeing facts and events from multiple perspectives. This requires a degree of faith, a relative absence of fear. In this way we can acquire a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the world and our place in it.

But fear is a barrier that bounces such understanding back upon ourselves. The media has erected a curtain of fear that causes us to seek simple answers in order to deal with immediate threats that may or not be real. The media would have you believe that ISIS, fascists, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and people of the party opposite yours are right outside the door. The crisis is perpetual, though ever-shifting, and in such a situation, you have little recourse but to trust those who have been kind enough to alert you to the threat. They have to run the media this way, it’s good for business.

Once your thoughts and perceptions begin to peer inward, once you begin to discard possibilities and embrace simplistic solutions, the lens through which you see the world continues to shrink. And like the teeth of a predator, the tools of the media are designed to grab hold of you and constantly direct you towards its awaiting maw. You sit transfixed, staring with fear and incomprehension at the world outside which is actually the world inside the media’s constricted narrative.

It is worth reminding yourself that the media is not your friend. What they do they do for money. There are ample examples easily found on the internet where those who are in the know admit as much. The CEO of CBS himself said of Donald Trump’s presidential run, “It might not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Are these the sort of people you want guiding you, guiding your nation? Are these the sort of people in whose hands you want to place your emotional and spiritual well-being? The future of the planet?

They do what they do for money. They do what they do for self-enrichment. Oh, I know, the mantra of the day is that the free enterprise system that rewards individual greed ends up being the ultimate delivery system for all that is good for us. It is repeated to us constantly until we accept it uncritically, indeed unthinkingly. And who is it delivering that message to us night and day? The media, a conglomeration of corporations that not only seek profit for themselves but seek a cultural milieu that justifies such profiteering for themselves and their sponsors.

The result is ultra hi-def television that nonetheless offers us only black and white broadcasting, the contrast level turned so high that there is little to no gray area. The definition our televisions are capable of is nothing short of miraculous, and yet so little detail is ever provided. Instead, instances of violence are looped continuously and the narrative that accompanies the video must play to the beat.

In short, the media is a Frankenstein monster created by powerful corporate interests and faithfully obedient to the Military Industrial Complex, the more direct weapon of those same corporate interests. It has a job, and it is not to inform you. It has a mission statement, and it is not the search for truth. It has an obligation to someone, and it is not the viewer. Unless you truly believe you live in a free society, you must know this is true.

You do know it is true. On some level you are unable to accept the lie. In your calmer moments, those moments where the media is not busily herding ideas that have strayed too far from the official narrative the way a sheepdog herds the flock, you have admitted as much. But then the powers that be find some new unsavory business to attend to and the media is put into motion once again in order to justify some great evil, such as destroying the environment or bombing nations that have done nothing to us. Then the fear sets in and you cling to the narrative the media spins the way Harlow’s lab monkeys clung to their cloth mothers.

It's time to step away from the artificial zone of comfort the media has constructed for us. Not only is it a trap but it is one that crushes us once we are inside it.

It will seem like madness at first, because you have been conditioned your whole life to think within the box. Those paths to death and destruction are the only ones we’ve been shown, and you’ve been corrected every time you’ve strayed too far from them. But one only has to look honestly at the ever-shrinking mindset that the authorities present to realize they offer no hope to humanity. They offer death, fear, environmental destruction. Their hope for the future is a technology bereft of all morality or humanity, Their hope is that perhaps we can export a few fortunate ones to some new planet to begin again this dysfunctional system. Hope for tomorrow is just another product or viewpoint they’re trying to sell, not a guiding principle.

We’re on our own. Humanity must evolve or perish. The system that exists today, the one all the authorities and institutions promote in order to advance themselves, is a death cult hell-bent on wasting Earth’s precious resources to make weapons in order to blow up more of Earth’s precious resources. Where are the voices in government, in business, or the media that decry the insanity? They are not merely silent, they are loudly crying for more.