Do you want to simply exist (life’s a bitch and then you die) or do you want to actually LIVE (to thrive and grow)? If even for a second you, think “I will live when………….” BUT I can’t because……….” you are merely existing. I have said it earlier and I will keep emphasizing it. I talked about a Prince Ea video that emphasized regret at not living. We are so brainwashed into accepting what is, that we self-impose our own blinders on to avoid seeing what we know deep down is obvious. We are not here to be work-slaves trying to steal moments away to be happy. It’s not that living sustainably will be all fun and games – it will include work – but that work will be something we thrive on and love doing. I have been offering a vision for Sustainable Living for many years now: it’s what I wrote a textbook about. And whenever I talk about it in front of an audience or to people I meet, I mainly get the same response – that’s what I want – BUT… (here there are many reasons for inaction). I think many actually want me to go out and create a new world and then invite them in to join me once it has been proved successful and better. I think Aldo Leopold had that same response to his Land Ethic idea. I love the quote by Quinn, “When the plane is going down and someone offers you a parachute, you don’t demand to see the warranty.”
OK, that was a little harsh, but I want to explore why we prefer the rut to the freedom to be found out of the rut. When I first watched the film ’The Matrix’ I was shocked by how the world we live in was so well explained by the metaphorical use of the story line in the film. The character Morpheus is explaining to Neo:
“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: “What truth? “
Morpheus: “What you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”
AND
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”
If for some reason, this sounds silly to you, for me to compare a science fiction film with our reality, then let me use an example from our own history of how the hierarchy want to keep us following the status quo. After the utter chaos of an almost global world-wide war (WWII), a new generation of kids arose that started to rebel. Think about the 1950s with people like James Dean who stood for a generation of “Rebels without a Cause.” I recall the Teddy Boys in England at that time – rebels in dress fashion and music against the conformity of society. It was the beginning all over of the clash of The Great-Conformity vs. The Great Non-Conformity. Whether it was the James Dean wannabe’s in the US or the Teddy Boys in the UK, the response from the authorities was the same – they were called ‘disruptive elements’ because they bucked the establishment. Then along came the 1960s and the music got wilder, the kids got crazier, and then a bunch tried to make an ingenuous and disorganized effort to escape from our culture/civilized society. They ultimately failed because they hadn’t identified the bars that kept them in the system. The ‘hippies’ either rejoined the great conformity, or else found a way to live on the edges of the system, remaining as non-conformist as they were able. The weird part was that the great non-conformity actually became a fashion statement for the 1960s and 70s conformists. Today, being called a hippy is still considered a derogatory term. I always asked my worldviews class when covering this period, “What is it that the hippies did that made them so contemptable?” My students answers were consistent: Drugs is always the first item. Interestingly, the hippies, many who did use drugs did it openly, but the conformist youth also did drugs but hid it from sight! Hippy lifestyle comes next because many lived in communes and lived a shared cooperative lifestyle. Third is that hippies were pacifists who began a revolt against an unpopular war in Vietnam. Of course, this is not quite the matrix film, but it is a couple of generations of kids that awakened to challenge the hierarchical view of the day and how the hierarchy suppressed an alternate perspective to its own (and still does).
Knowledge is NOT power, it is the use of knowledge that is power! Mind chatter is your greatest enemy and critic. If you had ten minutes before you die, what would you focus upon? We are so worried about ourselves, the little individual, that we seem incapable of thinking about the greater good for all individuals. The poet William Blake’s said in 1793 in ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” Sounds a little like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (See post The Hierarchy 2 – Waiting for Superman). Even with the internet, we live our daily lives with limited information about our world, but the tranquilizing mainstream narrative is repeated so much we have come to believe it as all that is there.
We live in a society of Propaganda and Controlled information. If we see information that conflicts with what we think we know, we are conditioned to deny and ridicule it since it does not fit our belief structures. Propaganda is not necessarily a lie but can be just selected truth that fit an agenda. Mainstream media and entertainment, and I will include mainstream big money sports here, is there to distract us from what is going on. When the Huns were beating at the gates of Rome in the waning days of the Roman Empire, the games in the Colosseums became incredibly elaborate and bloody. It has become a matter of The Devil We Know vs. The Devil We Don’t. The probability of a better world where we are obliged to do something seems less attractive than staying in the rut where we can complain but at least doesn’t change. After all that diatribe, time to envision some positive outcomes. A world of possibilities exists if we want and believe in ourselves enough to create a change that we can envision. To Be Continued…..
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