I've noticed a disturbing trend lately; not just on ATS but in also in the work-a-day world of daily life. It's a subtle but dangerous consciousness shift. It's a re-arranging of the board pieces while no one was watching. The game is different now and no longer seems set up for people like me to win, place, or show.

I'm talking about the concept of people as "resources". Human resources. Human commodities. The viewing of our fellow man as a commodity has resulted in a natural tendency to treat them as commodities.

It is a cold, unfeeling, analytical view of a flesh and blood entity who has dreams, aspirations, ideas, creativity, stories to tell. By some dark magic or unseen hand such magnificent beings have been reduced to chattel.

We view them as products having come off the assembly line for our use or pleasure. If they do not meet factory standards (as set by ourselves-every man is right is his own eyes), then that human resource is "defective". They must either be sent away to be "fixed" or destroyed.

They must work so that we may continue to acquire and consume. They must have the moments of their life sacrificed for "the greater good" because they are not their own. As a human resource, they belong to all consumers.

If they balk at such inhumane treatment, they are stamped "defective"; ie, domestic terrorists, fringe lunatics, right or left wing nutjobs, useless eaters. They can not be allowed to continue their faulty programming and must be brought back into "correct" thinking.

Such corrections are done by ridiculing, belittling, minimizing, projecting, name-calling and other methods of emotional blackmail and societal ostracism. At least those are the techniques used by the amateurs. The professionals have more potent motivators: jail, mental institutions, forced medications, an economic system in which you comply or starve.

Over a dozen times this week alone I have seen individual groups selected for conformity training: "fatties", elderly, welfare recipients (and, by extension, single moms), smokers, homosexuals, atheists, Christians. The fatties were generally considered lazy, the elderly needed to realize the burden they were on society and off themselves, the welfare recipients/single moms were expected to starve and watch their kids starve too, the smokers needed to go choke to death on someone else's dime, the homosexuals were just plain creepy, the atheists were "militant", and the Christians were delusional zealots.

I left out a few categories but you get the idea. All these human beings were in one way or another a defective "resource". How can I consume a defective resource? In the minds of many today, the inability or unwillingness of one human being to be consumed by another is, in itself, a defect.

Just like the faulty headphone that squeaked painfully in one's ear causing them to smash it to the ground, the human being who didn't make the WhataBurger quickly enough needed to have a cone thrown at them or a gun pulled on them.

The human psyche is no longer a private sanctum for personal reflection or a shielded workplace to build character. There is no more mystery, mystique, or secrets. We pour ourselves out like drink offerings on the Jerry Springer show for the entertainment of others. We sell the memories of our most precious moments to the highest bidder. We sell our bodies to whoever can advance our station in life, making us a more valuable commodity.

The things I've seen argued here recently (as well as overheard at Borders or the Post office or grocery store) have all been based on the premise that some one else owes me something.

"That baby should never have been allowed to live. It's too expensive. Nature selected them to die so that I can have more healthcare dollars spent on me."

"I want to see that person tortured for the rest of their life."

(Neither of those above examples are actual quotes from ATS members,btw.)

In the above examples we see humans as resources to be consumed as a commodity or for recreation/entertainment. We see them as only valuable in what they can do for us or how they benefit our personal lives.

What has brought us to this point? Surely, I'm not the only one to notice the trend at dehumanizing? Is it lack of prayer in the schools? Is it because moms are in the workplace instead of raising children? Is it because gays have come out of their closets? Is it because there are more elderly and obese than at any time before in our nation's history? Is it a combination of these things or something altogether new?

I realize I have no place in such a world, nor do I desire one. Since the rules of the "game" of life seem to have changed, I and others like me am left with little recourse. We can drop out, cheat or change the rules of the game. I choose to change the rules. If I can. I am not a number. I am not cattle to be branded, herded or slaughtered for someone else's consumption.

I am a human being. I have a soul. I think. I dream. I laugh. I cry. I aspire. I am my own and no one owns me. I owe no one anything but the gift of my humanity I choose to share with them.

This life we've been conditioned to life is a rigged game and this thread is my opening move. Care to play?

WOW. S&F. Very nice thread. You are absolutely, correct. Or at least I believe you are. Interested in seeing how this will turn out.

We all know and experience this.
Unless you are independently wealthy, turning these rules into a game to be played, allowing you to walk out the building to live a real life, provides a healthier perspective.

I see people who self-identify with the job they have. That's a tragic mistake. It's an entirely artificial environment, completely contrived.



[edit on 13-10-2009 by SpookHunter]

Originally posted by whitewave
I recognize this very trend in myself at times and it's repugnant to me. I wonder what has stolen my peace and inner joy.

I have within the last ten years managed to regain my inner peace and it was no small feat as I had totally fallen into a mindset and lifestyle that everyone around me had subscribed to.

Watching 911 unfold live on my TV was an epiphany that seemed to awaken to something that was rotten at the very core of this world and that the word “civilisation” was a lie and when it arrived in history was just a perfunctory word for a new game that wanted to bind a loose nomadic society to a whole and part of the rule of that game was to degrade us to the level of a resource.

Recognising it was such a subtle thing that at first had not even been noticed but once I did perceive that I was a permanently hungry drone of mainstream news and a drooling drone of consumerism I realised I had a chance to regain my equilibrium and through determination I succeeded because even when I had been a drone I had suspected that something was very wrong.

It took 911 to realise I had empathy in the real meaning of the word and that I was not simply a number waiting to be told how I should feel by a media that waited to be told how to feel by a government that did not feel at all. This government could only see a way to spin a bad event to their suiting or bury something else while the eyes of the world watched something else anyway.

Seeing the political spin and jingoistic flag waving on a global scale in the aftermath of 911 I realised I was awake and I watched in horror as the world slipped once again into a new world war only this time it did so by the back door.

Originally posted by whitewave
It was that "idiot" driver that cut me off. He should have his license revoked and not be allowed to drive on MY road!
That rude woman who took the last jar of marshmallow cream when she's obviously so fat that she doesn't need it!

Exactly, I have been guilty of road rage and fast judgements in the past and in the end, fighting to calm down after man on man ranting for example I slowly started to realise that perhaps I might be sick. From that realisation I did determine that I was sick and it was the society, fickle friendships and countless other influences around me driving me crazy.

I had become too comfortable with just fitting inside the box that had been given me and I had learned to react like an animal reacts to a situation with the fight or flight attitude to life. It did not seem to take a great step to find that control and objective thought is easier to maintain than at first it might seem but working out the way, that is the trick as there are so many smoke and mirrors in society that it is easy to fail to find a better way.

Originally posted by whitewave
Yes, my friends, I'm mortified to admit that I have a dark stain on my soul. You're right, it's an eater society. We are consuming and being consumed.
When I stop to re-assess my over reaction to most situations and scenarios in my daily life, I realize that it comes from this entitlement mentality.

Happiness cannot be gained from retail therapy. The feeling is artificially created by those who live for profit. It is fleeting and it perpetuates the feeder mentality that seems to exist in everyone to some degree. Yet it needn’t even be like that as far as I can see.

I determined that maybe it would be better to stop hungering for things I just do not need and viola the problem was exposed and thereafter easier to excise. Since I have simplified my life, gave up drinking and smoking and long ago started to exercise my mind and body through meditation and gym work I have experienced only what I can say is recognition that the world I live in is not the world I want to be in. There is no choice in that regard however so I play the game but always with the knowledge that I am forced to play this game created by a government who see me not as an individual with a name but as a national insurance number and a post code - a resource!

Those of us who recognise the nature of the game are a demographic to fear because why else would they keep the rules hidden if they did not fear me and everyone else who is waking up to their deceit?

From my perspective the people I meet daily are unaware of the real things that should be concerning them like the social manipulations that I am sure are engineered from higher up and fed down to us via multiple media platforms. This despair is a balancing act that keeps us focused on the trivial without realising we could create a society that is not based on feeding an economy and pandering to our want mentality. If the real rules of the game could become exposed then we might be in with a chance and in this lifetime I hope a real chance does come.

Originally posted by whitewave
Somebody owes me for the inconvenience I SUFFERED when the coupon queen in front of me took an extra 3 minutes of my life waiting on her to check out her grocery total. I have been WRONGED by the ticketing officer who should know that I'm in a hurry, damnit!
These are not only injuries we do to our fellows but we wrong ourselves when we trade our inner peace for a false sense of justice. It is a sorry trade.

Justice is a strange thing in that for justice to work correctly it needs to be blind but saying that, when justice is blind then how can humanity really be a part of that and could it be given insight in the true sense?

Justice is all too often called upon like a deity when someone demands vengeance or it is called upon by the desperately despairing? I believe true justice cannot be determined in this life and created by beings that breathe because when our concept of justice is prescribed by those very beings it can and does dissolve into calls for death or a term of punishment in financial terms or cost to personal freedom.

Is that justice or is it vengeance under a veil?

This is the paradox I find myself in as I wish to know what justice is even though it is apparently prescribed daily in the courts. I see it as an entirely different thing. Who has the right to dish out such a thing even if the prescriber was authorised to do so by a group of peers? It seems to be a contradiction based on lip service, outrage and vengeance.

[edit on 13-10-2009 by SmokeJaguar67]

*continued*

The paradox is that without these contradictory laws many more would suffer as it seems that without vengeance or the threat of vengeance we are doomed to living in a society that literally would be a survival of the fittest, an unnatural selection where someone wants, he takes.

Unfortunately I believe justice is an illusion and there is and never was such a thing because to my mind the whole concept of justice is unnatural.

We are in realty as a species, creatures of war and vengeance. We demand restitution for slights under a banner of justice. We believe in natural justice and we believe in peace and freedoms.

What a contradictory species we are and it is this realisation that threatens to consume me but at the moment, I still have hope that the true nature of us will become apparent to more than just a few.

We will not change otherwise


[edit on 13-10-2009 by SmokeJaguar67]

OP is absolutely right. People are not resources or farm animals. You put into words what I have been thinking about for a while.


One thing I have noticed is that few, including me, can comprehend big numbers. Example "117 people were killed in a blast today on the railroad." (I made that up). We are so bombarded with negative news and statistics that we can't comprehend how terrible it is. "Oh, only a couple dozen civilians died." Stalin summed this concept up for us.

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."

Originally posted by whitewave
What has brought us to this point? I can't think of a time in recorded history when someone or a group of someones has not been ruler over the masses. From whence came this concept of lordship or ruler ship or the "divine right" to place yourself on a pedestal higher than those around you?

This is exactly the problem I methinks. Instead of a diversity of peoples coming together out of the wastes and hills, out of the forests and deserts with a common goal and purpose to work to create a better way to live, ideals of early civilisation tripped up catastrophically because the early rules that would enslave and bring about a terrifying age of carnage and conquest were hidden in the small print but probably always within view.

Something was lost, the ideals for a true civilisation in early times was subverted, an ideal degraded. It had been decided that instead of finding a way to help each other it would be better for a new and growing accumulation of people to serve a few who had learned to manipulate to their suiting.

I surmise that perhaps one individual of a particularly persuasive and charismatic nature came up with an idea and a purpose that revolved around serving their own genetic line and to add insult to injury he or she decided it would be better if it was assumed they should be served by all others because their gang was bigger and more aggressive and so had the power to say what was correct and what was not. The path was set and would lead us into an age of perpetual warfare, with each other, with our neighbours with the prize always based on coveting another’s.

The pattern of a future civilisation thus supplanted the real reason why an early civilisation had come together and I believe and it does not take a great leap to see that generations later the ancestors of this seductive speaker or cabal of speakers had somehow been given the right to have power of life and death over all within a domain whose mandate and authority existed only within the mind.

Originally posted by whitewaveThe idea seems to have trickled down and interwoven itself into every aspect of our society and cultures. It is now treason and treachery most foul to stand alone and refuse to be numbered among the ruler's assets.

Indeed to speak out is to risk being ostracised and/or targeted, classed as a hippy, a wacko, a leech or a traitor. In the earlier times it was common for those who found themselves waking up to be classed as a witch and worse. It can be said quite correctly that they are just labels and debasing words to force subservience from free thinkers but rulers throughout the ages with their many tricks had been clever to give these labels teeth in that if you fail to be moved to subservience after a period of renouncement even after you have been labelled thus, you will be taken outside and killed.

In our times we risk imprisonment, loss of earnings, loss of respect among peers and a loss of self and place within said so called civilisation. You rail against the machine and you do it with enough skill to be noticed will find yourself tumbling headlong down the social ladder, hitting every rung as you fall because vengeance is key and inextricably linked to punishment.

In some parts of the world risk to life and limb is still a very real possibility.

Originally posted by whitewaveEven in my relatively short life span I have noticed a shift in this trend. It's more like a landslide off a slippery slope that none of us noticed as we tumbled over the edge. Now I see the piled heaps of humanity broken on the jagged rocks of a failed ideology and struggle to drag my own corpse back up to the glorious peaks of an exalted mountaintop. I have little strength or vision to guide the bleeding and wounded around me.

The times we live in now are most dangerous times and not to recognise this is to live in real peril. Our civilisation is shuddering like a beast wracked with fever and those that hold power over us all can see the thread unravelling faster and faster, can see the game becoming exposed as a financial power base shifts. In the cities if you stress someone out enough, take away their reason for playing the game by taking away their job, take away their home and force them to rethink the reason for playing the game just maybe and just probably many of those people will decide to simply stop playing the game.

This is abhorrence to those that require subservience because how can free thinkers with a growing contempt for obnoxious and detached rule even be brought back into thinking like a resource? Once bitten, twice shy is not reality TV show and it is not fun to see our rulers white towers crumble but sadly I have come to realise that without a period of pain there can be no rebirth.

Originally posted by whitewaveWhen I stretch out my hand in camaraderie and friendship, I am rebuffed for my "ignorance" in not recognizing that all is well. Have we really fallen so far that we think the trash heaps of our existence are palaces?

Agreed and I have also noticed that friendship has become a commodity to the used to an end. Pick a side, be loyal and know true friendship that last forever. A wondrous ideal but sadly I have made many friends and never have they lasted all my life because as friendship settles into the long term, familiarity breeds contempt and before long the expectation comes to show support, to jump through hoops and pick a side over some perceived slight that never mattered in the first place.

Oh yes I know the nature of friendship in the context of this resource based life and I reject it. Happily I was born a loner and I am a loner forty two years later. I pick my friends based on what is in their head and heart and do not base it on what that friendship can bring to me in financial, power or resources.

Halfway through my time on this earth I can say I could count the “true” friends I made as numbering fewer than ten. Those who use friendships under false pretences fail to see that the friendship that they unthinkingly bleat “will be forever” is not going to last forever because they have unwittingly and perhaps unknowingly reduced it to the level of a click, a cabal that has no real meaning outside the drive for material things.

*continued*

Short terms goals and always filled with some sort of agenda that invariably leads to the hurt of another inside or outside that peer group.
Apart from my wife my best friend is a dog. I can trust my dog to be a dog with no wants except my love and my loyalty and thus she has it till her end.

Originally posted by whitewaveI don't recall such blatant disregard for human beings when I was growing up. Yes, there was ignorance and prejudice but it was unthinkable, nay, unimaginable that teenagers would set fire to a playmate over an issue of a few dollars. Who could have guessed that 9-12 year olds would lure a young girl behind a shed to gang rape her? Drive-by shootings did not exist. Car jackings were as yet uninvented. What has happened to us that we have rejected our own humanity?

Unfortunately I grew up fast because I grew up in many places. I never lived anywhere more than two years and everywhere I moved to I was disadvantaged by being seen as the new guy and thus new meat. Firstly in Pecham south London where I was bullied so much I thought I might have stepped into hell. During the fascist uprisings of the late seventies I was beaten for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and because I wanted to save my friend.

All part of the awakening process.

Moving home to Scotland after years of travelling with my family I found myself in Livingstone in 1982 and the violence of Knightsridge was something to make the strangest recoil. I suffered broken bones simply for speaking with a different accent, for choosing not to fill my sentences with expletives, because I wanted to read and focus on art.

The worm was starting to turn; I was seeing people for what they were and even as I was being forced to dance to the tune they danced to fell in love with the notion of vengeance and the concept of an eye for eye.
They would see that I could dance too and it would have been better to have left me alone because anyone can live a life of violence and bitterness but few can live a life where they respect the differences of their fellow human being.

Unfortunately I would not realise this for many more years because my awakening had been hijacked by having to swim in a world, prowled by skinhead thugs, jackals all, living lives based on violence and low level judgments.

By the time I had joined the armed forces I had turned into something else and was a part of the problem that plagues this society because I had assumed that violence was key and a respected part of what made a young man a man. Inside I was reeling because I was aware that this mindset had been forced upon me in the way that if you do not swim you will sink and in the sewer of that world I lived at the time if you sank you drowned and then got picked apart by the worst debasements of society.

Originally posted by whitewaveThere was a time when peace officers were the highest standard of manly virtues. Now they are called law enforcement officers and they dump wheelchair bound people onto the police station floor to frisk their pockets.

In Scotland police officers are seen as a double edged sword. I was once pulled over simply for maintaining eye contact with a particularly aggressive looking officer in a police car. I tend to show respect to police officers but inside I have little respect for them and I am simply playing a game of role-play... I enjoy playing the subservient citizen and them the law, wondering what I am hiding.
I am aware that those who rule gave these law officers the power to take me off the streets and that they do not serve me they serve those who rule. My taxes pay for them but for all that if it came to the crunch they will uphold the law and laws are made by those in power.

I pretend to have respect for the police but in reality I have something more akin to contempt and distrust. I saw with my own eyes an end to poverty protest in Princes Street gardens when a large contingent of these officers brought up from England had steamrolled through a crowd of people in order to move them on.

It did not matter that there were young children there mixed in with the protesters, they were at the gardens with their families on a day out and I noted a young Spanish woman was shrilly shouting at the police officers to have a mind for the children who had not been any part of the protests. She was ignored, barged aside and thrown to the ground and I saw what I saw, outraged beyond belief as I helped her to her feet.

Ironically and to my surprise I recognised the teacher as one of my daughter’s history teachers. In my opinion the police are simply agents of rule, the means to keep society rolling along and playing the game of subservience by intimidation.

Originally posted by whitewaveHave I really changed so much? Have you? Who or what has changed that reportings of these events are passe? How are we not horrified to watch the nightly news? We barely even listen. How are we not outraged to see the blatant theiving of our country? How have the mighty fallen!

Fortunately I do not shock easily and it was only a few years ago after the attack on the world trade centre that I regained a true semblance of empathy or even realised that I was as asleep as I might have imagined. I watch the news only when I happen to walk into the room and find that my family is waiting for the next instalment of the x factor. I might watch a new story but I rarely hang around as long ago I determined that the news on the box was not worth watching.

An agenda based news source is not worth spending any time as far my own opinion goes. They are as much a reason that people feed into the notion that they are free and that they live in a free society that fights for freedom and peace as much as the lies and spin doctors who spread those lies from downing street.

Originally posted by whitewaveLaws are for the lawless. Rules are for children. Grown, responsible adults need no such instructions or threats of reprisal.

I agree and yet there are those who have not realised that they perpetuate a system where more rules are created because they break those rules by causing misery by murder by burglary and by robbery. They allow those on high to come down us all and they say that we must lose another freedom because of this or that. In reality what they are really

*continued*

saying is we found a loophole that could be exploited by those who wish to rail against authority so in the name of freedom we are taking this away from you. The irony of government is so thick it needs to be trimmed daily with dedicated thought and reason but watching mainstream media just further ads a fog of deceit to the whole debacle.

Reality is a comedy of errors but no one is laughing anymore because the comedy is a black comedy.

Originally posted by whitewaveWe have sold ourselves as slaves; first to a putrid, innately flawed system of errors that appealed to our entitlement mentality and promised us a land flowing with milk and honey. Second, and more insidiously nefarious, we have sold ourselves into a deleterious philosophy that promises our own survival at the cost of everyone else's. We're trapped in a web of deceit.

We were lied to and deceit was perpetrated by people who made many promises that were never intended to be kept. It was all a part of the web of lies and part of a means of control to keep us asleep and oblivious to their real intentions. They want to take away national identity, they want to bring back a stronger feudal system because they realised that such a thing in these ages would bring in vest revenue. If we awake they lose a promising resource and they will kill to keep this hidden because the stakes are high as the lie is exposed.

Originally posted by whitewaveWe have sold our individual sovereignty for a corporate lie. The land of milk and honey is real enough but it was never meant to be shared with the masses. We have been robbed of our birthright. As we see the fat of the land slipping further out of our grasp, we have resorted to the same tactics that have been used against us, the great unwashed by those who claim some divine right to rule over men better than them.

Desperate times make the desperate do desperate things. Dig a hole or risk having one dug for you. I see it as a coming storm. I will find refuge out of sight but as soon as the lull comes or the full fury of it is expended then that is the time I will finally hope to be able to see a society where the rule that has kept us enslaved with promises of freedom will be no more and a real age of enlightenment can come.

I see the good in this global meltdown as in there must be a time of upheaval to enable change to come. I hope I have not misjudged this and find that the upheaval ends with me and mine breathing our last but I have been preparing for this for so long now I don’t know how to go back to be a sheep. I think I am ready but time will tell.

Originally posted by whitewaveWhat was the catalyst to bring about such a state? Have we been so long enslaved that we can't envision a life without chains from some source? How do we save ourselves when we're all in the same sinking boat together?

The catalyst I think was always there it was within you and me and everyone that breaths under these skies. We know what we want but we do not know how to vocalise it or mentally visualise such a thing and thus bring it about a utopia even if we had the means to do so right at this very moment. Utopia, heaven on earth or whatever other name you wish to give was never within our human experience so we cannot give it a voice or a vision because there is no frame of reference.

We can come up with a million different interpretations but there are in our reality eight billion different interpretations and each one may be someone else’s vision of a hell. That is our specific quandary in that as we have never known the thing we ache for we will have to search for it blind and along the way we will make mistakes.

My hope is that during our time of searching we do not slip as we slipped in ancient history and find ourselves once again listening to a charismatic person who leads us once again into a new age of subverted civilisation. In the name of peace and freedom, peace through superior fire power and peace through conquest of our neighbour and a renewed hunt for further resources.

If that day ever comes I will wink out of existence in the twinkling of an eye and I will visit this verse never again.

The distillation of these ponderous considerations is that no change for the better will come as long as we "lord" over our fellows. Rather than cutting one another down and undermining the aspirations of others, we're going to have to start speaking kindly to one another.

Words are powerful. They carry the weight of one's own authority. I have been practicing this as an experiment in my daily life and the results have been astounding.

When I find myself standing in a long que at the grocery store with other impatient and harried shoppers, I will compliment someone on something (anything). "I see you're buying healthy foods for your family. It's refreshing to see responsible and conscientious parenting in every day practice." They'll usually launch into some response about their child's peanut allergy or something but they will look less harried and impatient as they continue to stand there.

In a world of nearly 7 billion people, individuals need to be recognized. Not all can be brilliant composers or genius inventors. Some just make sure the trash gets taken out on time and that too is valuable. To recognize someone's individuality and contribution, no matter how small, is to acknowledge their unique humanity. Their contribution is not as a human resource for others to use up but as a "flavor" in this buffet of life. We all have something to bring to the table.

In a culture of learned helplessness and abdicated individual sovereignty, it is empowering to ourselves as well as to others to acknowledge the great diversity of ideas, dreams, aspirations and outward expressions we all harbor.

I saw a woman at the drug store in a hippy-type free-flowing skirt, tank top, sandals that was getting a lot of stares from shocked onlookers. It was not her wardrobe that garnered such attention but herself. She was heavily (but artfully) tatooed and completely bald-headed. I could tell she was slightly annoyed to be gawked at in this decidedly conservative town. In a voice loud enough to be heard by several people standing nearby, I looked her in the eyes, smiled warmly and said, "you're stunningly beautiful. no wonder everyone's eyes are on you. you look like you work out too. do you go to a gym here or have a home fitness program?" Everyone awaited her answer while trying to act like they weren't really staring at her. The tenseness of the situation had been diffused and she answered amiably.

The tenseness, imho, was caused by her flagrant lack of conformity. She had not submitted to the cultural norm. She had been expected to acknowledge her existence as belonging to the group but had refused to conform. I applauded her individuality.

Why do we prefer to tear one another down when it's so simple to build one another up? A kind word, a smile, a door held open, a small compliment. How hard is it to acknowledge the uniqueness of others around us and encourage it? These are simple things we can do that cost us no money and yet enrich others lives.

We had an ice storm a while back and many places of business were unable to open due to employees not being able to get to work and power outages. I had gone out to gather free wood from all the tree branches that had broken off from the weight of the ice and stopped in at Denny's to get a cup of coffee. The place was packed. Only 1 waitress and 1 cook were there. People were angry that the service was so slow and the minute I came in I heard people complaining. The poor, harried waitress tried to explain the situation but people wanted their eggs, damnit! and were in no mood to listen.

I went to the coffee pot and started refilling people's cups. It was obvious that I didn't work there since I was dressed like a lumberjack. When I passed the waitress, she looked mildly surprised but was too busy to scold me for "butting in". I smiled and said, "you look like you could use a hand. i'm not a professional like you but i think i can keep the cups full til you get caught up." I thought she was going to weep with gratitude.

Since I, too, was a customer I think it somewhat shamed the other patrons into less grumbling. Why would they expect "business as usual" when obviously it was a situation requiring us to all pull together and not be "waited on".

A few powerful words I've found that can diffuse many tense situations are ones that simply acknowledge one's humanity. Words such as "How may I help you?" or "you look like you're having a bad day" or "that must be difficult for you".

No one likes to be ignored or made to feel that they are not important. Why do you suppose that is? I think that instinctively we KNOW that we ARE important. Why do we get upset when someone says an unkind word? If someone says, "You're an idiot!" why do we feel the need to vindicate ourselves? Is it because we innately understand that words are powerful and that they can be as violent as physical blows? The violence done is just a matter of degree. Also, an attack has been made on one's humanity. To do violence to another human is against our highest values. It is punished in every society in the world.

Is it because the king's assets are being threatened and universally we agree to protect that which by "divine right" belongs to another? I think not. Obviously, we CAN all agree on certain things. Why can we not all agree to be personally responsible for ourselves and to build one another up?

I agree 100%.

And I would like all of you to know, I do not wish to own you.

I will see you for the true human being that you all are, and I refuse to treat humans as chattel.

We are the future. Once we change ourselves, the rest falls into place.

Tomorrow will be a brighter day for humanity, this I assure you.

I give something to all random people I meet, called RESPECT, and I have noticed that it earns me RESPECT as well.

This is how I am fighting the system. One person at a time.

OP you have a wonderful way with words. I love your writing style.

I agree with you. I first noticed this in 1989 when I started college...and the end result of employment seemed to be the main goal. The colleges would tout their "placement rates" and promise you a good job upon graduation. I found this disturbing even back then. It seemed to me the education was a way to wisdom and skill and that intrinsically should be the end result. I think the focus on employment debased the value of intellectual exploration and growth. Imagine if the USA founding fathers education was primarily so they could get corporate jobs? What a waste of a brain and soul.

New entertainment has also fostered this new idea...starting with Survivor...everyone is expendable except the most talented. No cooperation or value in community, simply survival of the fittest. This Darwinian idea has some dangerous ramifications in our world.

Peace is a state of mind. It is not just absence of opposition from without, it is absence of opposition from within. Yes, absence of opposition CAN equate to tyranny but it doesn't have to. Is there tyranny in your household? Or have you agreed to get along?

Have you agreed upon mutual goals and decided to work for the betterment of each other? If so, you undoubtedly experience peace in your household.

Can we not extend that practice beyond the borders of our house? There would need to be a unifying "theme" and that's where we lose people. Everyone has their own agenda, peccadilloes, "special exceptions", etc.

When tribal governments weren't warring with their neighbors for resources, it was a better form of government. When people are raised in a locality among people of their own kind, they tend to share views, values, ideas, customs and practices. Put those same agreeable people in a different tribe and they don't "fit".

We have a global government consisting of many tribes and the resources have all been divied up beforehand. We're just being told to shut up and sit down; like it or lump it. None of us "fits in". We all feel alienated. This is intentional. Keeps us from grouping together and fighting off the real tyrants.

Human beings do not turn into slaves willingly or overnight. It has required a multi-pronged approach: public education, public entertainment, regulations regarding behavior in the workplace, economics, and so on. We're being boiled to death one degree at a time.

It has become so common place to see it in government and their trickle down policies into our daily lives that others are beginning to learn the game and ply it against their neighbors; even against their own families.

I suspect most people whom I see behaving badly would strongly argue that they are good, kind and decent people. For the most part, they may be. It is a mindset. An ideology. A belief that one person owes another person something. That belief is liable to express itself at unpredictable moments. These are the same people that will trample you if someone yells "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. They'll feel guilty later but justify their actions as necessary.

Examples of honor I recall from history: Daniel Boone was entrusted with a collection of money from his town to be paid for something the town wanted and had to have imported. He was robbed on his way to the destination and spent the rest of his life paying back everyone whose money he lost.

Today, the robbed person would just shrug it off saying, "Well you should have had it insured." or "That's the risk you took". No personal responsibility. No recognition that the money represented time out of the person's life who earned it.

To know that you are free to live your life as you see fit, to grow and explore and experience all that you are willing to risk to be the human being you desire to be is a priceless undertaking. There is great peace in such freedom. Those who would enslave us are no longer just TPTB; they are our neighbors, our co-workers, our family members, sometimes even ourselves.

The pervasiveness of this rotting mindset has ensured the demise of the elite as they will eventually also be seen as just another commodity to be consumed. Especially since they will be the most well-dressed, pampered and best fed among us. They will be prize commodities for the hungry consumer.

While I rejoice to know that evil men will eventually get their come-uppins, I fear that all that will be left is a whole population of replacements that are no different.

For the sake of our very survival we MUST learn a new way; shake off this ancient paradigm of "divine right of rule" and learn to rule ourselves with discipline, honor, courage, righteousness. Not that we replace the dog-eat-dog with one of self-abasement in which everyone else is more important than ourselves, but an acknowledge of others being just as worthy as ourselves. It is truly the "golden rule" in action.