As I get older I feel my relationships with the world, culture, politics, as well as with my work, and with the people in my life, all changing.
I am less attached. I see with a longer view. I am less interested in outcomes and more interested in how things are happening.
Each year I find myself choosing to ingest less and less media. What we call “news” is pretty much just propaganda. What we call “our political system” is a military dictatorship on a global scale. Whatever brand of partisanship one buys into, it is all a lie designed to perpetuate bigger deeper more encompassing lies.
I see it. I cannot change it single handedly. It tires me and brings me great sadness.
Earlier in my life I did learn that it is enough for me to focus on what’s in front of me, to do my work the best I can, and that my small contributions, though a drop in the bucket, aggregate with all the work of all the others, and so together we make a difference. I still believe this is true, however, I also believe that the more encompassing lies I referred to above have not been widely exposed yet, so even with all of the amazing contributions by hundreds of millions of people, we are still living in what is essentially a mass hypnosis/delusion that maintains acceptance of injustice as a core value in contemporary human societies.
Referring to a pop-culture event, The Matrix; remember when Morpheus tells Neo that he is a slave? The worst thing would be to be enslaved, right? And yet, look at the reality. We work at whatever it is we do, and we pay a hefty chunk of the money we earn (a ridiculous concept on a planet that used to feed us all “for free”) to people to make weapons, to train our youth to be killers, and to send them around the world to impose the same system upon others. That is how it is happening, and the only way it will change is with refusal to continue participating in this sham, on a massive scale. Refusal is happening around the world in flashes. Nowadays there are always protests just as there are always wars. People are gathering to refuse at least for a little while. It doesn’t last, or at least it hasn’t yet, but it is happening more and more, everywhere. Real change occurs from the bottom up, and it takes time and numerous attempts before it “takes” but that is what’s happening.
More and more people now understand that the so-called leaders, the Obamas and “past leaders” like the Clintons and Bushes, are enemies of liberty. They serve another master, call it greed, call it blood lust, call it whatever you want. These people thrive on the destruction of culture, the destruction of the Earth, the destruction of YOUR liberty. They purvey and profit from death to your children, by violence or poisonous foods and drugs they sell to the world. Anyone who is amassing a fortune and not using it to help is an enemy to liberty. Bill and Melinda Gates have spent fortunes getting vaccines out to the world; vaccines that sterilize, cause permanent brain damage, and even bring death, to children. These are the kinds of people that the propaganda “news” tells us are good people doing good work in the world, but that is all part of the lie.
For the first time in my life I see people in the US questioning the role of the police. I’ve known since I was a child that many of the people who are attracted to police work are actually dangerous psychopaths. This is finally being acknowledged on a large scale. Contemporary police forces are an outgrowth of union busting private thugs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally even some of the privileged classes are questioning the existence of these police forces that operate above the law.
Shakespeare’s popular phrase again shows itself to be so true “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players...”
We each play our part. It can be profoundly disconcerting to realize that we are playing into the hands of the very people who mean us harm, when we participate in the status quo, and yet more and more people seeing this is exactly the cure! The more of us who wake up and see, and who are ready when the time comes to STOP complying, the better.
The only revolution that can work here in the US is not a violent one, but one whereby those who seek to control us are rendered irrelevant. If the soldiers would just all stop participating. If the good cops would stop turning away when the bad cops rape, rob, and murder. If the people who work as peons in the banks would just stop what they are doing that enables the great thieves in the big offices to get away with their deeds. Basically we need to acknowledge our co-dependency, as a country, and stop enabling the money/blood/war addicts who are running the show.
Recent events regarding the deaths caused by police in Ferguson MO, New York NY, Oakland CA, and more, have highlighted the perception of separateness between police and the citizenry. The execution of two police in New York has caused further polarization. The "thin blue line" has become a line of death. This is an unacceptable situation. As a society all of us need for police to either protect and serve the communities they work in, or be disbanded. The adversarial posturing by police is unacceptable. They are not a private cadre in blue who get to terrorize the citizenry. They are not above the law. Anyone who becomes a police officer should be high on the altruisim scale and low on the narcissistic. They deserve to receive excellent mental health training as well as how to handle violent situations. Training should include de-escalation as well as how to use force in the form of non-lethal restraints. Etc...my point is that if police are to continue to exist there needs to be a paradigm shift. People who are not police need a role in oversight of police, which means people have to step up. Police need to humbly shed any belief that they are above the law. Every police person needs to take a good look at their motives for being on the force. If you're in it for glory, or because you like the power, admit it to yourself and go into a different line of work. That would be serving your community better than being a cop when you're in it for the wrong reasons. I suspect that a truly effective police force would involve people rotating out of their positions after a set number of years. Service to the community should be rotated to prevent burn out, entrenchment, and corruption.
I am one of many trying to make some kind of sense of what is happening around me. There have got to be better ways for us to proceed.
