This post is essentially an invitation to watch a documentary which was produced in 2010. However the subject matter of the film is timeless.
Whether you’re watching FOX, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., you’re being fed bullshit. But it comes in different flavors, because those controlling the news know, everyone doesn’t like vanilla. However there are certain constants no matter what channel you tune in to. Some of them are:
1. Accumulating vast wealth is good.
2. We should all admire those who have accumulated vast wealth.
3. Be afraid, be very afraid.. Depending upon what channel you’re watching, what we’re supposed to be afraid of can vary. But it’s never the extravagantly wealthy, nor war.
4. War is a necessity.
5. We need to spend more on war.
It is important to those busily accumulating wealth and power, regardless of the effects of their actions upon the majority of people in the world, or the planet itself, that we, the masses, believe these things. They are constantly endeavoring to engineer consent for their actions. Our continued belief of these concepts enables them to maintain and advance their agenda.
All we need to win this war is to realize our kinship, our innate interconnectedness. To love one another as we love ourselves. And to love the universal creative spirit that gives us life. To respect the creator, respect the creation.
The most important battle going on is to control our perceptions of what is going on. The battle to control our thoughts. This documentary provides a clear picture of history and nature of this battle. Click on the link to be taken to the full video on YouTube:
There have been a number of posts about how someone’s ancestors (like mine) immigrated to the U.S. Were glad to be here, learned the language, and assimilated into the culture. That used to be the norm.
As is all too clear from the news that is not necessarily the case with immigrants today.
However, there is something else that is different that isn’t as widely distributed via the news. When my ancestors, and others, in the past came to the U.S. it wasn’t because U.S. individuals and corporations, and foreign tyrants, often with assistance from the U.S. government, had destroyed living conditions in their countries of origin.
That being the case, why would they want to come here? Why come to a country whose governmental policies obviously, and increasingly, show moral bankruptcy? A country which the home to those who have absconded with a great deal of their country’s natural resources? That’s a good question, however, it also provides the answer. They are just, as the phrase states: following the money. The wealth which, at one time, resided in their home countries, or was the land they lived on and farmed.
Countries are like ships. While conditions are acceptable on them, whose going to jump overboard and risk the dangerous swim to a ship on the horizon? Nobody, or very, very few. Everyone needs a ship to live on. We all need a home. We all need hope.
So, unless we want to see this mad scramble continue indefinitely, this mad scramble to find space in one of the ships of state where conditions still offer hope, one of two things has to happen. 1. We either try to revitalize conditions on the other ships in our world, or, 2. We kill a whole lot of people around the world, stop the flow at the source.
At this point a lot of you are offended, shocked by the latter option. Good for you, you’re still fully human. But there are some reading this who may not be shocked at all. Who will think, good idea, let’s take that second option.
There are a number of ways that a human being’s innate sensibilities can be numbed to the point the second option seems attractive. Ongoing trauma, over years, might do it. Chronic severe stress, again over years, might do it. Or belonging to a group, a family or club, which engages in practices designed to numb, to obliviate, those aspects of our humanity; empathy or any other innate connectivity to others, can do it. And if you aren’t already aware, there are such groups, families, and clubs. If you occupy a position of authority, it doesn’t seem to be all that difficult to find some who will blindly follow.
Humankind has a sorry history of people being willing to be used by those in positions of authority. We’ve been doing it for decades, centuries. Sometimes it doesn’t require a whole lot of effort on the part of those working to manipulate us to serve their agendas. If starting with a human being early enough, with the right indoctrination, mass murder can just seem normal. I think that was probably one of the goals within the Hitler Youth movement. There are many reports of practices among groups claiming to be satanic which feed such a state of being. And, as noted in the prior paragraph, there are others. If you doubt this at all, look around, events in the world clearly show there are a good number of people who do not flinch at the prospect of killing, murdering others to gain some worldly resource or another, or simply because someone in a position of authority told them to. They can be found in dark alleys, on battlefields, and they can be found in what has come to be known as “polite society”.
I tend to think it requires even less in the way of indoctrination to get people to perform activities which support rapacious, materialistic behavior when all they know of it are figures on a spreadsheet, abstractions. White collar crime has, in many places, had many of it’s forms legalized by those who benefit most from it’s practices.
So, what about the rest of us, those of us who are still fully in possession of our innate human faculties? Do we just follow the example of the three monkeys, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil? Following that model will only help pave an unobstructed road for those who seek to prey upon the world at large.
I am in the U.S., the examples I have given refer most directly to things going on the U.S. However, the behaviors, the actions, the dynamics described in this post are most certainly not limited to the U.S. The very same dynamics are going on around the world. Different predators, same activities.
What those of us who still are cognizant of the interconnectedness of life, who are still guided by our innate sense of what is fair and reasonable, must do is speak out, act out. Speak out the truths we know. Do not quietly allow those with purely self-serving agendas slant, distort and/or fabricate the information which is being disseminated within our communities. Act out. Vote whenever possible to support just causes. Participate in and support businesses and activities which truly are benefits to our communities. Refuse to participate in the machinations working to drain the economic life out of our communities. Refuse to participate in activities which are polluting our air, water, soil, our world, our very bodies. Discourage our young people from becoming tools for the militaristic destruction of other people, the takeover of other country’s resources.
“Don’t play the victim to circumstances you created.” I saw that statement on Facebook and it hit me like cold shower. Wow. So simple yet so profound. I would alter it some to read; “Don’t play the victim to circumstances that you helped to create.” The latter statement sums up what is going on with the issue of illegal immigration to the U.S. The U.S., as a nation, is experiencing the consequences of decades of supporting tyrants and greed in Mexico, Central and South America and elsewhere. Everyone who believes it is too much trouble to pay attention to politics needs to wake up, politics can and will affect your life!
What do we expect when some U.S. corporations have been engaging in profiteering too often at the expense of and to the detriment of the common people in several Central and South American countries. While, concurrently, the U.S. government has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting leaders and methods which render countries unlivable for vast numbers of the populations of those countries?
We cannot as a people continue to ignore a simple reality; we need to be working to build a culture which is supportive and nurturing of whole and healthful human life. And we need to support such efforts elsewhere. What we are doing now, as a matter of national policy and culture is worshiping the “bottom line”. It’s all about the money. We have become a species in which too much of what we, as a species, are engaged in seems hellbent in destroying our environment…and ourselves. Often or always in the name of corporate and/or personal “profit”. It seems too many in positions of political and industrial power have narrowly defined “profit” to include only monetary or material gain. This is proving to be a very costly error in reasoning.
In order to correct things one thing is certain, there needs to be balance brought back into our economic reality. There is an absolute need for us, as a species, to recognize our mutuality and keep each other’s well-being in mind.
Why focus on something so mundane as money rather than lofty sentiments about love and/or spirituality? Because what is happening with the material wealth we possess is a visible measure of what is happening with our spiritual reality. I don’t think that we’re all greedy, or callous to the well-being of our neighbors, however, look at what’s happening in so many places around the world. No matter all the high platitudes being written and spoken, platitudes about love and beauty, the truth is how we treat each other speaks much louder than the words in book or magazine or the music on the radio.
We usually think of external/worldly change happening as a result of an internal change, however, the reverse can also be true. Sometimes when we realize the absolute need for an external/worldly change, and act upon that realization, the dynamics precipitate a fulfillment of the change within our psycho-emotional make-up.
So, as we look around at the increasing poverty and suffering of the many on one side of the scale and the extravagant, inordinate wealth of the few on the other, isn’t it obvious what needs to be done? The only question is how is it going to happen? Because when things get too far out of balance, the natural tendency toward a viable balance will assert itself, that’s as inherent a reality as gravity. (As above so below, as below so above.) Will it happen in a caring, thoughtful manner or in a chaotic, traumatic series of events? Like so much else that happens in this world, it’s all up to us.
July 2017: I need to add that the predatory exploitation of developing and/or “third-world” countries has not been limited to individuals and/or corporations headquartered in the U.S. Nor is the government of the U.S. the only government which has a history of supporting, even subsidizing such exploitative activity. And finally, the problem of refugees and immigrants from countries which are suffering in significant part as a result of such exploitative activity is not limited to the United States.
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