Response to comments, part deux

I tried to respond anonymously to the last round of comments. Didn't work. Well, it worked once when I just pressed down on a key and hit return. So, I finally made a comment and the comment was "fffffff." Whee! So, another entry as a response.

Nancy, I understand what you're saying about beating your head against the wall of the system. The issue is that the system will bang your head against the wall if you don't do so voluntarily.

Now, you may ask how that happens and I will answer, "through force." If you follow the rules of society as a means to avoid becoming a victim of state/corporate force then you are voluntarily banging your head against the wall (unless of course you are freely embracing being what the system wants you to be--a laborer and a consumer--in the way the system wants you to be a laborer and a consumer).

If you choose to veer from those boundaries, it will become apparent soon enough. If you start chopping down trees at the nearest woods you can find (because you want to build a house on a nice expanse of mowed grass you saw that was adjacent to another house) then you'll get attention very, very fast.

As angry people come to you to stop you--police as well as neighbors and homeowners--you'll realize that you are not free to use the resources you can see with your own eyes. Someone else "owns" the trees you see. Someone else "owns" the land and the grass growing from it on the spot you wanted to build your house.

So, whether you realize it or not, the system is banging your head against the wall. You've internalized what you are not "allowed" to do. You grew up being taught the rules by those in positions of authority and just like Pavlov's dogs you were either punished or rewarded based on whether or not your words and your actions matched the script written by the most powerful individuals driving institutions around the country and world.

So, what do you do with this information? Well, unlike the powerful, I'm not going to force you or anyone else to follow MY script. I'm detaching myself from the rules of the game so that I can THINK for myself. It's an ongoing struggle and there was just so much bullshit injected into my brain, creating all kinds of ridiculous wiring problems that affected my thinking in completely unhealthy ways (but also completely in tune with the system's structure--the system is designed to make each person unthinking and unhealthy) that it's a never-ending process.

So, for you, you create what you want organically as you see fit. That's what I offer that the system doesn't. I offer freedom. I don't inhibit you or anyone else. I simply express myself and I do so as much as a means to wrap my head around the lies I've been told so that I can better understand them, untangle them, and all of the sudden I have malleable neural synapses again. The difference now, though, is that I'm in control of creating new synaptic pathways. Decision making determines how they'll form and the identity that accompanies those decisions is ... still unknown to me. Which is, from my perspective, the beauty of open-ended self-creation. I'm not predetermining an outcome for my own identity or for my understanding of the world.

In other words, wonder-fueled discovery followed by wonder-fueled discovery. If you want a "way" to be in the world, that's it. And there certainly isn't a need for a system of ANY sort for anyone who is actively engaged in their moments. Not that I or anyone else doesn't LONG for the system at times. Even much of the time. It's familiar, it's easy, it does all the heavy lifting and thinking for you.

But it also means remaining perpetually a child, a follower embracing the opportunity to give up all responsibility for thought and action. A pet even more than a child, really. Which is what I wrote in an earlier post. As soon as life is reduced to merely comfort and survival, well, those conditions can be met by the system. If that's a satisfying life for you or anyone else then it will be embraced.

I embraced that life for quite awhile. I figured there was nothing that could be done, the system was entrenched so what was there to do but follow or be destroyed? So I got in line and numbed myself to reality, following the drudgery of days just like the rest of the unhappy. And if you don't think Americans are unhappy, I can show you places in the world where people are. It's NOTICEABLE! Very easily perceived.

Which brings me to PQ's point about the world being better. I think the percentages of those suffering to those not is about the same as it always has been, frankly. There are still places in the world with high infant mortality rates and all that. And for every case like that I'll go ahead and show that for the child born that would have died at birth, the child's is now being born into a Dickensian slum in China, India, Mexico, Ecuadaor, Brazil, Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, Mozambique, Vietnam, and on an on. Most of Asia, Africa, Russia, Eastern Europe, and South and Central America are poor. Extremely poor. Technology has just improved the means of exploitation and control.

But, yes, I agree, it's always been this way. I'm definitely not arguing against that. That, in fact, is my point. There has been NO progression in history. There couldn't be, anyway. Each individual life may find a progression over time, but, guess what? Also a deterioration over time. That's the reason why civilization's are problematic. They have lifespans that exceed their generations. They shouldn't. I really believe that. Each individual in each generation, in order to even come close to reaching their potential, NEEDS the opportunity for self-direction. Anything short of that is ... we may as well not have sentience. In fact, we'd be better off without awareness if following the lead of others is all we're choosing to do, all we're ALLOWED to do.

I have more to add in relation to what can change. If you're assuming that an individual entry is telling a story independent of all of the other entries then you'd be mistaken. They should be taken as a whole and, if taken that way, it's quite obvious I'm still in the process telling the story. Start multiplying the first four posts I made in January by the number for March. Take that number, insert it into the third paragraph of the first entry for February. Use that context to create the basis for a collateralized debt obligation, sell it as a hedge fund betting on societal collapse, and then wait for Armageddon. Your returns will be lucrative, but your riches will be useless absent the civilization that valued them. That's the story for each one of us even now, though, stories of individuals wealthy with riches civilization does not value.

Next time I'll tell a story about the stories Wall Street tells itself and how those stories create the reality we all experience. Wealth, in a sense, is just the power to make your story the one everyone else has to follow ... OR ELSE!