a reply to:
Mikehawk
You said
Until people realize that we are controlled by invisible people from behind the scenes who's only wish is to control us financially,
physically, mentally and spiritually, we are doomed to continue this pointless cycle of circular logic.
And how true I find that to be. However for me anyway that is just the tip of the iceberg. I think that for most of us life is just 'well this is the
way it is''. And we go on making the most of it all for ourselves and our own families. Working and playing and just making what we can in ''the way
it is'. Some people seem to like calling others in this state of existence ''sheeple''. When I first heard this phrase I thought ''oh, how cute'' ,
what a great play on words.
Then it dawned on my that it really was a derogatory label, a demeaning term which would only set me apart from those who had not reached the heights
of independent selfhood that I had achieved and realized that I was conditioning my own consciousness by making that specific distinction. You know
what I mean? That I was better because I was awake and they were not. Oh yes I was rather full of hubris too. Still am of course but now at least I
can laugh at myself some.
In my life I have run with extremely rightwing fundimentalists and then in the big swing with extremely left wing Marxists. Fortunately for me, in
both extremes I only ''ran' with them -in both cases for over 4 years,- that is the level of complete belief that both extremes required seemed to be
beyond my ability.
As to your problem, I don't see it as such. Part of my motivation in exploring both extreme sides of the political and existential spectrum was due to
my desire to help save the world. This had come about from a very young age of believing that helping, not only the family and the community and the
nation but indeed the whole world was paramount to being the good Christian I had been raised to be.
But then as I, as an individual, began to explore the roots of '' why so much help was needed that perspective of helping the world morphed into the
need to ''save the world''. At that time I was in my late teens and early twenties. I am now 70.
So in my youth, the 60s, there was no conservative uprising. There were only the liberal youth of the time that were going into the streets to call
out the alarm that society was on a collision course with the entropy of establishment mentality. And that the course of human existence could no
longer be allowed to just take it's own seeming mindless course through history, in that as the lemmings we so appeared at times to be, we were
heading ever closer to that proverbial cliff. Yes, of course. Believing this meant we HAD to holler out and do something to change the course of that
train with no real engineer.
So I now hold that both extremes are chimeras, illusions of selfhood that both seek to make over the world in their own images. It is now clear to me
that this will never happen. For one, the very thought that the rest of the world could be like me is just too egotistical That I might have some
deeper insight into the human condition that could butterfly effect into saving that world was just to hard for me to live with without bringing on
complete alienation and depression within myself when it was not coming about as I had envisioned. Oh yes, I have been wrong about much of the way of
things for most of my life.
Yet now, I do not see this as part of the problem, nor from what I read from you that you are part of the problem.
Over the decades I have heard over and over and over again from both left and right, ''all we have to do is for all of us'' to do this or that,
believe this or that, all of us act in concert and we can make it happen. I now say bolox to that. I will not happen and very possibly never could.
Sometimes I like to fantasize that maybe, just maybe back in my youth, had we worked harder to jump our train from one set of tracks to another that
held the possiblity of taking us further then we might be in a better world with a brighter future than what we see before us now. But then I realize
that was my old dream, my old dream from having been a liberal dreamer.
There was a song back in the late fifties by a fellow whose name was very close to mine. Mine is Terry McGuire and his name was Barry McGuire. His
song was a short lived hit. Back in those days most popular music was still in the ''teenage love'' and ''I got the best car in the world'' genres.
While the folk genre was singing out about social change, it was modest and kind. This guys song was dramatic and existential. His song was titled
''The Eve of Destruction''. It's clarion message was heard by most but quickly dismissed because it was just to frightening to really consider. But
silly me, his name being as close to mine as could be and me being a fledgling existentialist as I was at the time plunged into over forty years of
seeking for that which might come along and save us. Gurus, political leaders, populist groups, you name it. Even the movie or song that would come
along and make it clearer to all of us. But it ain't happened.
So I used to be a doom Sayer because I thought that perceiving our eminent species collapse just might be alterable. But you know what? I found out
that the universe will one day burn out and freeze. Before that our sun will explode and burn out everything within a parsec. And our little planet
will with us or without us will loose it's garden and life sustaining nature. And that the hope of moving off into space to save ourselves is a far
and remote possiblity which to my study is just one more pipe dream to keep us all working for the good of the corporations and the elites of the
world.
People here do not so much anymore seem to want to discuss and so I may have overly extended myself here, but what the heck, I"m an old liberal and
still hold out hopes that conversation with strangers my help us all. So if you feel to take any words of ''wisdom'' from me, get rid of that idea
that you are part of the problem because it all may be just as it can be and that extinction may be the only logical outcome of this short lived
combination of physical evolution and spiritual convergence.