Modern society is an awe-inspiring feat of engineering. I'm not referring to skyscrapers, global economics or the internet - I'm talking about the complex system of mechanisms designed to control the minds and hearts of the people. Society is designed to repress free thought and emotion and instill (program) people with the proper instructions to keep the machine running. Unfortunately, the machine doesn't require you to feel love, compassion, trust or any other healthy emotion to keep everything running. You just need to be stable enough to grit your teeth, trudge into work and flash that fake smile towards all the co-workers you silently resent. And if a few people crack, so be it. We label them crazy, or stick them in prison, or sentence them to death. There are plenty more to fill their shoes. However, the true insanity is the fact that we've all accepted that "this is just the way things are." Living for the weekend is something everyone does and school shootings are just a sad part of reality. Really? Really?! Our collective mindset is so warped that we truly believe it is normal for people to rape, murder, and hate each other. That young people shooting up schools is sad, but not shocking. That it is normal to spend over 40 hours of your precious life a week doing something you don't really care about. That isn't normal, it's utterly dysfunctional. And I reject the concept that people are born this way. I challenge you to walk into the newborn ward of a hospital and find me a baby who is a murderer or psychopath.
We are born innocent, loving and kind and the pressures of the outside world force us out of that state. That state of loving-kindness is often referred to as "balance" because that is our mind-state when we are free of anger, resentment, fear. etc. The problem is that so many of us are out of balance that we are unable to teach each other how to get back into balance. We think to ourselves, "Oh man Robert was really mean today, but I guess he's just an asshole." We think it is normal to feel angry or uncomfortable or anxious all the time because we feel that way! And nobody told us any different. We just assume because everybody else lives in that state of constant subtle discomfort it must be the way things are. And hell, we just pretend we're happy like the rest of them while we drink and fight and slowly die behind closed doors. And when anyone has the balls to stand up and yell IS THIS ALL THERE IS? the reaction is everyone silently judges them. They just want that person to shut up and just leave and let everyone get on with their lives of quiet desperation. Because if we all stop and listen then we'll have to think about how unhappy we are and that tiny voice might pop up that says "is this life even worth living". OF COURSE THAT SORT OF LIFE ISN'T WORTH LIVING.
But there is a different way to live. It is often put on a pedestal as the "desirable but unreachable" happiness of the Dalai Llama or Jesus or the Buddha. And the funny thing is, all of those happy, enlightened people said the same thing. "Anyone can do it." And you don't have to go join a monastery to do it. All it takes is getting the mind out of the way and getting real with yourself. Honesty and love are the key to happiness and everyone has to tools to bring it into their life.
The American Dream is bullshit. It has never and will never make anybody happy. The big house and the six-figure salary and two-car garage are just shiny veneers over a life of misery because none of those things provide what is actually meaningful. And the kicker is that it's so deeply ingrained that our great Christian nation will sit in church on Sunday and patiently listen to the preacher talk about how it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to find the kingdom of heaven, but the whole ride home we're thinking about how nice a pay-raise would be. And some people have the gall to call alien-theorists crazy. The 'crazy' label is really just another societal mechanism anyways. We all know that 'conspiracy-theory' is another word for crazy and 'new-age' is another word for bullshit, but have you ever thought about why?
It's because those are ways of thinking that are outside of the norm. There is nothing more dangerous to a belief system than free-thinking. That's why the Nazis organized book burnings and the Chinese communists persecuted intellectuals. Our society is no different. What would you say if I told you that we didn't need money, or cars, or television. The first thing to come in your mind would be reasons that I'm wrong. But are those ideas yours? Did you really create them or were they things you've heard, and accepted as fact, and regurgitated. I can tell you that I personally spent many years believing bullshit that people told me and I just accepted as true. There is a lot of resistance to change because there are many people who have incentive to keep things the way they are. There are people who have gotten very wealthy and comfortable off the the status-quo. You can think of them as the 1% if you like, but that's just a new term for a group that has been around for a very long time. The fact is that they don't want things to change. They don't want you to think differently. Because if you do, you might start thinking about how your 9-5 job sucks, about how you don't really care about that new BMW, about how who's sleeping with who in Hollywood doesn't fucking matter. And when we all start thinking about that, we start thinking about how things can change and it all starts to unravel.
All of the white noise generate by society is meant to keep us distracted, to keep us from focusing on what's really important. Ourselves. You and I are important. We deserve love, and honesty, and truthfulness and happiness. So do the people around us. My point is this: it's time to look beyond all of the fluff. It's time for each of us to dig into ourselves and truly seek happiness and fulfillment. There is no reason to settle for anything less because we absolutely can be happy and wholesome and loving and loved. We've just let other people convince us it's a pipe-dream. Well it isn't. And the wonderful thing all you have to do is worry about you. Love yourself and treat yourself with respect. Ask yourself what is truly important to you and seek it out. When I started loving myself I found myself feeling more love for my family and friends than I ever had. That's all it takes. And when everybody shifts individually, that's when the paradigm shifts
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