As I observe what is going on around the world, with large-scale protests and civic disobedience, the unrest, which is poorly covered by the mainstream media, is ushering in a change. What seems clear is that 2024 promises to be an interesting shitstorm of that change. I don’t foresee it being violent but certainly a contentious period as hierarchies around the world struggle to keep their control. Now you can take that as a negative, but my sense is that it is the birthing of much needed change in how control and power exist within humanity. I think it is the time for when we retake back our power and personal sovereignty.
It’s hard to believe that the following ‘dark’ except was written in 1916 by American humorist Mark Twain in his novel The Mysterious Stranger. “I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don’t dare to assert themselves. Think of it! One kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speaking as an expert, I know that ninety- nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches and wants them killed.
Someday a handful will rise up on the other side and make the most noise–perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a determined front will do it–and in a week all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end… Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race–the individual’s distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety’s or comfort’s sake, to stand well in his neighbor’s eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.”
I use this except in today’s post as an observation of humanity as it has been for several millennia. Twain is not alone in having this observation. Other famous authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley have written novels describing how dystopian systems develop from apathetic populations. The numerous protests going on in Europe and the USA at this time, herald changing consciousness in the masses about intolerance at how the hierarchical systems have been trying to consolidate their power by restricting our freedoms. This was especially notable with the lockdowns of 2020, but has been apparent to so many since 9/11/2001, when the ‘war-on-terrorism’ ushered in a whole slew of global restrictions and ‘security’ aspects in the name of keeping us safe from those dangerous ‘others.’
The hierarchical powers get their power from keeping the masses fearful. Fearful people don’t think, they react from a flight or fight survival perspective. I have a written about this before (e.g., Thinking Anew – Part 18 – Authenticity part 1 {April 2022} and Becoming different – Part 1: Moving past Victimhood {May 2022}). In past centuries, the people taking back their power was often done with violent revolutions since violent conflict was all they understood. Modern hierarchies may be derived from the same shit artists that were once aristocrats and emperors, but a couple of centuries of experiencing at least some semblance of democracy and republics has given us the feeling that we can have power, if only we choose to exercise it for ourselves instead of giving it away. I believe we are about to have a bloodless revolution that finally comes about because we finally take-back-our-power peacefully.
As the Twain except expresses, we have always complained about our rulers, governments, etc., but still put up with them until it becomes intolerable. Think about the last line in the Twain except above where he says that people are never truly loyal to these institutions. Yet, through the past millennia we were convinced to go to war to crush those that disagreed with our hierarchies. I have always found this type of tribalism or nationalism a fascinating aspect of our societies that makes us so easy to goad into doing horrendous things we would never contemplate within a regular community.
Consider your home area. You probably have a mix of people with varying opinions and viewpoints, some agreeable and some disagreeable. Without some ‘leader’ riling us up to destroy ‘the other,’ we usually get along in a relatively peaceful state at any given time. Presuming you are not a sociopath or worse, a psychopath, how often do you feel like going over to a neighbor to destroy them, their family, their homes, their friends, etc.? Mostly you wouldn’t because they are more like you than not like you. Yet when a ‘leader’ wants you to destroy ‘the other’ we allow ourselves to be convinced to do it? I think we inherently know and understand what is going on but are too conditioned to go against the accepted grain of ‘normality’ as we have come to picture it.
If there is one thing I have always noted wherever I travel, it is how people everywhere are so similar. Yes, they have different cultures and ways of doing things, but in all respects of everyday living have similar hopes and aspirations for their families, friends, and communities. The idea of killing your neighbors simply because they are different from you is not true for the vast majority of people around the world. And I don’t believe ever has been – it’s not who we are as humans. Yet for the last six millennia, we have done the bidding of hierarchies that goaded us one way or another into doing so.
As another example of the ridiculousness of war and conflict I’ll wrap us this post with an excerpt from Walter Lippmann’s book Public Opinion (1922) – ‘The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads.’ “There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come, and the islanders were still talking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies [WWI].
But their plight was not so different from that of most of the population of Europe. They had been mistaken for six weeks, on the continent the interval may have been only six days or six hours. There was an interval. There was a moment when the picture of Europe on which men were conducting their business as usual, did not in any way correspond to the Europe which was about to make a jumble of their lives. There was a time for each man when he was still adjusted to an environment that no longer existed. All over the world as late as July 25th [1914] men were making goods that they would not be able to ship, buying goods they would not be able to import, careers were being planned, enterprises contemplated, hopes and expectations entertained, all in the belief that the world as known was the world as it was.
Men were writing books describing that world. They trusted the picture in their heads. And then over four years later, on a Thursday morning, came the news of an armistice, and people gave vent to their unutterable relief that the slaughter was over. Yet in the five days before the real armistice came [November 11, 1918], though the end of the war had been celebrated, several thousand young men died on the battlefields [all the way up to the stroke of 11am on that day of armistice when hostilities would finally cease].”
To Be Continued …………….
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