For Real

Life is what you make it.

Never mind that you're born into all manner of constriction and surrounded by influences and blatant manipulations coming at you from all sides.

The power of positive thinking can overcome! Yes, it can.

Among the things it can overcome is an interest in truth. Truth... you know, that stuff that doesn't go away just because you don't believe it exists?

Let's talk about the two-fold path of American Enlightenment.

First there's, The Way of Marginalization: disempowerment, numbness, depression, and the exile to Oblivion

Then, The Way of The Rat Race: occupied with obsessions, trivialized by competition that reduces creativity and your entire life to lowest common denominator banality and sensationalism.

Is every individual in the USA forced to walk one of these two paths? Pushed ever onward by the credos of rugged individualism?

No. Most people are disempowered by soul-numbing occupations in addition to being pressurized by the requirements of mere survival in a society that not only casts us adrift alone, but also pits us against each other.

Maybe life is like an allotment of time in a public bathroom stall. You enter, locking the door behind you and all most people see as evidence that you exist is a little sign on the outside of the door that reads, OCCUPIED. There are, of course, the occasional accompanying sounds and smells. A few gifted others have the rare opportunity to witness your entry and exit to and from the stall.

Forced to live a bland, mostly meaningless existence bouncing between the rat race and marginalization, we are simultaneously exiled into oblivion and trivialized by the banal, but ruthless competition for our identities and mere survival.

Is this what God had in mind when concocting that special plan for your life?

There is something to be admired in the human spirit that won't give up the effort to create something worthwhile, something good, something beautiful.

Maybe the challenge is to assert that the glass is half-full while staring with eyes wide open at the atrocities of human society and the horrors of the human condition. I'm not talking about asserting it with a phoney, pollyanna sincerity masking deep dread. I mean for real, with a real passion.

Curious Doubt and the flame of Uncertainty

The manipulation of the many by the few was evident at the start of the United States. "We the people" was a sovereign to replace the King of the old monarchy, but it only included white, male, landowners in the 18th century. Elite groups with power sought to maintain control, but because people spoke up and made their voices heard, "We the people" eventually broadened to include all races, males, females, and poor people with no land ownership. The elites did not give up, nor have they lost much, if any ground. Maybe they've progressed...

Residents of the North American continent fell prey to occupation by various European countries, starting in the 16th century. England's colonization of the "new world" lost steam in the 18th century as the European colonists themselves revolted in favor of the United States of America, which then proceeded to take over a vast section of the continent. (Howard Zinn, "History is a Weapon")

The current occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with their flimsy justifications are essentially the same brutal colonizations that Europeans practiced for thousands of years. While it's true that elite forces are still creating a lot of suffering in the world, it's also true that the rise of massive public opinion can reverse the tide of those efforts. Citizens support, ignore, or work against the various efforts of the elites. Today, new technologies and techniques of manufacturing public consent create opportunities that we must all pay some attention to, or become manipulated by, through our ignorance.
Noam Chomsky RSS feeds - The Imperial Presidency: Sovereignty, Terror and the "Second Superpower" Tracks

Stoking the flame of uncertainty and encouraging curious inspection of assumed truths and status quo versions of reality is the purpose of this tiny little blog. Socrates, Maslow, Watts, Krishnamurti and many others have advocated the individual pursuit of awareness and balance. It can function like an antibody in an immune system, fighting off harmful viruses.