“Gratitude.” I’m going back to a deeper well. Cynicism and curmudgeonry.
Some may see this as a step back. I see it as getting back on track. I have always gained more energy from being pissed off than anything else. It’s in my genes. My Mom’s side really. Uncle Tony lived to 103 and was a feisty SOB for much of it. That’s who I am. I am no longer going to deny it. My lightsaber is PURPLE goddamn it! Both the light AND the dark have plenty of bull shit to swing at now. This is MY “middle way.”
I may lose some of you along “my” way now but for every “mindful” new ager who thinks killing their “monkey mind” will fix the planet, I know full fucking well there are 10 like me who have kept quiet too long as to why the world really sucks; the obscenely wealthy 1% and their power over all through faceless, impenetrable, and federally protected corporations. It’s gotten so out of hand that even they now must bow to these incorporated monsters. Some bow gleefully. The rest wishing they didn’t have to but yet compromise and do so anyway.
I tried meditation. I tried yoga. I’ve read enough self-help articles to realize its all total and utter bull shit. Way back I even tried Zoloft. (Actually, I was forced by my employer, who after all the cable mergers of the 90s, became Comcast. Fuck Comcast. I get to say that now as I told you all to shove that severance agreement up your cold hearted digital asses.) I’ll say this though, nothing numbs “the monkey” better than directly fucking with your serotonin levels, but I’ll stick to weed, thanks.
I do believe one thing out of it all though. All that truly matters is now. Now I still feel like shit. So should you. Why? Because it is the reality of this hella dystopian time. Anything else is just a delusion. It can all be taken away from you by countless unnatural events made by our now uncontrollable creations. But it’s not too late. We can still stop the crazy.
Oh, and speaking of delusions, you all know this is just a simulation right? There is every indication that none of this is even real. Just a theory but a really good one once you dive into the rabbit hole. It connects many dots.
Gurus love to talk about “quieting your monkey brain.” This is the same as a computer jumping to power save. It seems like its idle but there is still plenty going on in there. Until the power is pulled and the battery dead, there is a process or two that never stop. There are processes that can’t stop be we alive, unconscious, or “dead.”
I quote as I don’t really believe in “death” anymore. You can’t, once you latch onto the simulation hypothesis. If it’s not just all energy than its just all data. We are all just data in a state of constant reprogramming, constantly getting updates and choosing to install or not.
Lately, I refuse to accept the updates. It’s all corrupted data to my ancient OS that still knows the difference between right and wrong and “GOTO: Pissed OFF” if it’s not right. New is not always better. I refuse to reboot toward more complex explanations offering “clarity” when truth can be found in the simple. This is my truth though. You go find your own.
I do believe in magic. I believe in UFOs. I’ve seen both happen. There are things in the quantum world that may never be understood in any other terms or effect. Our minds and consciousness do have an effect. Trouble is it’s cumulative. Anything is possible but how the wave function collapses is based on probability as well. Taken as a whole, the group mind of humanity has a long road to double back on if it really wants probable change.
Wherever you are in life, it took you from the day of your birth to get there. If you don’t like where you are, expect it to take at least half as long to get out of it. I’m 48. I can’t wait 24 years or more to see the effects of being “grateful” for a shity 48 years full of misdirection and manipulation in the hopes that the rest will get better by being “mindful.”
The world blows. I am not delusional enough anymore to kid myself that anything I do or maybe even a billion of us do will change that in my lifetime. We’re at an all or nothing point now. We all, every man woman and child, must do better and with a full accounting of our own personal responsibility for how bad it’s gotten.
The fact that we continue to look for “technical solutions” to our problems, as opposed to all The People of the planet rising up, forming militias, and taking back the vast wealth hoarded by the 100 or so psychotics killing us and the planet through constant war and a perpetuation of the state, speaks volumes as to how hypnotized we have become.
It need not come to mass violence to fix this, but the alternative may be even more daunting on an individual level. One thing is certain though, your gratitude and mindfulness in the middle of a full on and unequivocally declared class war is now robbing your children of a future.
Want some mindfulness? Here’s some mindfulness. We are about to have trillionaires walking the planet. Since 9/11, America has squandered well over $1,000,000,000,000 on wars to “protect our security.” Security for who? Rich people and their war profiteering? That’s where our taxes go. Fifty percent of what you willingly give to the feds is directly responsible for killing families and children with cowardly drones. Look it up. The stats vary wildly on this I know but even 10 percent is way too much blood money for a nation to endure forever.
We send young, desperate/patriotic men and women abroad and they all come back as criminals, murderers/mercenaries employed by War Inc. No one in uniform, cops or soldiers, here or there is “protecting democracy” anywhere. They “serve” no one but the 1%.
Get over your uniforms, traditions, and patriotic fanfare. It’s all bull shit. You all want to “protect democracy?” You all want to really “serve and protect?” Start rounding up your brothers and sisters that went through meat grinders that our “leaders” sent you to and get some payback. Be it in the streets of Afghanistan or NYC, you’ve all been pawns. Show up at the polls in 2018 with your guns on your shoulders and make sure THIS democracy gets some real “security” again. No one mobilizes better than the American military. If the elections are again full of this much bull shit again, do your duty, generals. Take back this country until it gets sorted out. “All enemies foreign and domestic.” Cops, you swore a duty to the constitution. Do your duty. You all keep waiting for orders it seems. You have your orders. The bill of rights you swore to uphold.
Quick poll, who’s met a terrorist? Are those crickets I hear?
No one? Wow. So shocked. But I bet you know someone now dead from alcoholism, smoking, cancer, heart disease, car wrecks, murder, rape, or as a repercussion of a generally shitty lifestyle and lack of insurance. I’ve lost at two of grandparents due to incompetent docs stuck in the dregs of their profession taking care of the elderly. I know more than one suicide victim. There’s few I know that don’t try to numb the world through prescriptions or self-meds. “Pursuing happiness” is slowly killing us all and the planet. We need to make happiness by bucking and dismantling systems that cause suffering.
How far do you suppose even half of $1,000,000,000,000 would have gone to “secure” a better life for The People of this planet?
In the most “wealthy nation” on the planet, we have kids starving and suffering from malnutrition. “42.2 million Americans lived in food-insecure households, including more than 13 million children.” And that’s just here in “the land of opportunity.” That’s obscene. That’s not Christian or a testament to any organized religion. It defies logic. It’s a recipe for crime and desperation. It’s the strong and obvious symptom of a wasteful and gluttonous distribution of resources putting band aids later on the preventable now. When we spend more on prisons and war than education and nutrition, what “way of life” is it again that we hold so dear? Fuck this shit.
So, here it is. I admit, I will not be the first to do this. I already paid my bit to this newly accepted dystopia. Out of all the “solutions” to the global politic I’ve read, no one seems fool enough to dare say this, but here goes. If I soon become a “nonperson,” this will be why.
The People need a global tax boycott at all federal levels.
We need to starve our feds until the big state starts working for The People. I was about to say “… for The People again” but that’s not accurate. If it actually happens at all it will be for the first time in history.
I am not a leader or guru. I make noise like a tiny barking dog in comparison. I’m a small man and feel smaller every day. I write. I attend the occasional protest. I’ve signed thousands of petitions. I even tried to get people to sign one to evict our criminal Guv Snydly in my great state of MI. None of this will ever be enough, though, even if each and every one of you reading does the same. Someday though, The People must stop paying into a system that vastly causes more suffering than joy. It’s the most non-violent, passive, almost apathetic thing any one person can do but in reality far scarier than “going postal.” Going out in a blaze of glory is done and over with fast. Openly tax-protesting is historically a lonely and long haul.
When a tax protester comes forward, that individual is beaten the hell out of and made an example. They are pulled from their beds at night by militarized cops and squeezed until they pop. Families are threatened, livelihoods are destroyed by teams of federal lawyers, jail time served for daring to demand something back for the money paid.
A suicide bomber has only a moment of pain. The tax protester, while doing a much more noble and moral deed, is beaten and broken to the point of nonexistence. There will never be a martyred tax protester. Their name will become mud. They are labeled a “dead beat.” Social media with the aid of government propaganda, usually in the form of some sort of trumped up sexual offense, will obliterate the morality of their necessary act.
I dare anyone to tell me this country, this planet, is not already under mob rule when I ask YOU to be the first to not pay your taxes, to not give your blood money for “protection” of your “liberty.” It won’t be me doing it either, citizen. I like my kneecaps. Guess I’ll keep writing and hoping we all wake up on the same day at the same time and do it together. Nothing will stop us on that day.
Speaking of days, tax day is April 18th in the USA. To the families I’ve killed with my payment to this mob, the best I can do is apologize and hope that you forgive the rest of us when we do it again, over and over, as your rivers and hillsides run red with the blood of your innocents. Innocents that did nothing but get in the way of the west “spreading democracy.”
I’ve been a student of technology, politics, science, and entertainment my whole life. Welcome to my dot connecting perspective on it all! Enjoy! Please share. Drop a dime here if you can. Thanks!
