When people are afraid of losing something they need either physically or psychologically, they can be controlled. People with nothing left to lose can be dangerous to those in charge. The controllers placate them with enough things in their lives so they fear what little they do have may be lost if they disobey or rebel. Think about all the ‘stuff’ in your life. It’s nice to have, but do you really need it? How much does ‘stuff’ control your thinking and your choices?
We have this problem of catastrophobia (a fear of catastrophe – pick your favorite catastrophe movie in a dystopian future that scares you: e.g., Mad Max. We fear losing what we have even as it is already being taken away from us in increments. I used a cartoon in my classes where a corporate CEO is talking to his board saying, “The projections are that the future is rife with horror and catastrophe, but the good news is that the last quarter’s profits will be the best ever.” Sadly, it depicts the truth of how our economics works. And yet, we are all in a rush to ‘Get Back to Normal.’ I had hoped that the dystopian 2020 would have given us more insights into what was important in our lives. But it seems our addiction to consumerism knows no bounds. With all the stores closed or limited access, I have been watching the numbers of delivery vans of all kinds and running at all hours bringing all manner of boxes from online shopping to my neighbors. Not that I was totally immune, as I did have a few deliveries of books and Jigsaw-puzzles during 2020, but one of my neighbors has at least 3 deliveries every day.
It can all seem demoralizing, but you need to understand that despite the wielding of immense power, these power structures are incredible fickle and unstable. They survive only because we let them. They bully us into submission, but we have the real power! And in the westernized countries, especially the USA with its 5% (330 million) of the world’s population using 30% of the world’s resources, this economic model is not only a failed model but an obscenely unequal one that we buy into. (Note: that the world’s population is essentially controlled by 400 individuals who own more than 50% of everything.) To change this control, we need to be aware and to make different choices. Let’s be clear, we already make unwise choices and we can unmake those choices, and we can choose something else that works for everyone. We choose all the time, so now is the time to be conscious of what we are choosing.
Our ‘normal world’ that so many now yearn to return to after the dystopian 2020 is driven by a malformed idea of capitalism – a cancerous form we can call Predatory Capitalism – “The only responsibility of any business is to maximize profits regardless of the social and environmental costs” Milton Friedman. One single common denominator is the Corporatocracy – BIG OIL, the most powerful corporate controlling cabal on the planet, with its dependents of Big Ag, Big Pharma, and the military industrial complexes all backed by Big Governments around the world supporting Big financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and all the private Central and Reserve Banks. It isn’t a big conspiracy at the corporate level, they are just following a mindset that Milton Friedman established with his economic theories such as Monetarism, that propagate scarcity and limitation. The market place can be democracy if we choose to control it rather than the businesses controlling us (see previous post Rethinking Economics 3 – A Rant about Corruption and Preoccupation with Money {Oct 2019}).
Which thoughts are yours and which are egregores (see last post) that have been imposed on you that you accept? It is important to know this because egregores are addictive in how they frame our thinking and hence our actions (behaviors). To make this clearer, think about your fashion sense. How much is your own invention and how much is what the stores and society have pre-decided for you? Before you instantly say your fashion-sense is your own, how many of you wear Elizabethan ruffs, farthingales and Doublets? After all they were high fashion in the 1500s, and your fashion today is just that, todays fashion. You make your choices within a narrow set of options that are part of the accepted norms of now. Religions are a great example of egregores that have lasted many hundreds of years morphing as they do from one into another as times change (e.g., we no longer worship Horus, Mithras, or Odin – although there are a few people that that still do). The way we live is much the same. It’s all part of a great indoctrination Egregores are thoughts forms, ideas, memes, that we buy into because they trigger us to react, whether in fear or pleasure. The fear-based ones are control mechanisms with ‘True Believers’ relying on dogmatism to get others to agree with them.
Do you truly believe that we can create a better world? How do we retain our individualism and yet interact and help people in healthy ways that benefit all? Being awake is to the key, which is to live consciously. Think about how much you do on autopilot (Subconsciously) from your conditioning.
Who are you? – I am an X (identifying with something(s) external) or are you simply, I AM. Is what you are doing now helping you achieve your life’s aims? If not, why are you doing it? Is the way you are living the way you want to live? If not, what should you be doing to live the way you want? If you are reading this blog about sustainability then I presume you want a better world in which we live sustainably and care for all life and the planet.
It isn’t about what I do, or what ten of my friends do, or what my whole town can do, although at the local level that would be good. What is crucial to understand is that if WE are to make the changes we want to see, it is up to a million, or a billion people simultaneous saying, “Enough is enough. It is our world for everyone and everything and WE will make the choices.” I cannot as an individual change the world, but I can do what I can to stop contributing to the problems. And as more and more of us individually do that, we create a change in the consciousness of the world and thereby change the world. After this past year, isn’t the start of 2021 a good time to make some resolutions that mean something better. A good time to start living the change!
“Every soul is like a raindrop that falls from the sky into one vast ocean of consciousness. Most raindrops hit the surface and make a small ripple that fades away, but some ripples become waves.”
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