[1106] Mercedes Baby

I think the most powerful reason you would ever state you are concerned about someone "poisoning minds" is that you know, whether you wish to state it explicitly or not, that people are dumb as fuck and your own mind has been poisoned.

Joe Rogan is a moron. Joe Rogan has always been a moron. If you're worried that the moron is telling other morons to take advice and find commonalities with Alex Jones, Aaron Rogers, or other morons, you gotta move on through to accepting the depth of the moron pool we're swimming in.

Then what? What's your responsibility if this is the environment? Upvote the reddit post? Complain? Hashtag campaign? Traditionally, it seems you forget to vote, fail to organize, refuse to create systems or long-term accountable intelligent competitive environments. We've taken our institutions, history, and barely-true story of ourselves for granted. Trump, the nationalism around the globe, idiots like Rogan: these are the natural consequences of y/our bullshit.

You want "things" to be better and trust that the conversational or intellectual pollutants don't reach deadly toxic levels? Stop enabling them. Don't listen, first. Don't ignore the reasons they take hold and get popular. Don't stop asking yourself how you're complicit or in what area of your life you sound just like them.

You're not better than the craziest dumbest worst influence you can point to. You're not even good at hiding it. That's what we're fucking up. You don't have to be Alex Jones-level crazy to live in denial, lie, feel morally and righteously entitled to your small window on the world, or artfully construct narratives of who's to blame. I've seen museum curators on 60-minutes sound like meth addicts. The real drug is the story you're telling about yourself.

My "liberal," "educated," "not crazy" "friends" over the years have proven as lazy, judgmental, disingenuous, full of shit, and unhelpful as any genuine cunt I've ever met. I bet their private self-sacrifices or donations or rainbow flag sticker serves as a healthy pat on the 'ol back about how stalwart they are in their defense of a deliberately vague sense and hope for a brighter future. So much fucking complaining, in the same style over the same shit as we just repeat the same fuck ups that got us here.

It will take commitment, work, accountability, sacrifice, truth, networking, painful bravery, and decades of time in the face of incredible odds to claw back any remote sense of order or safety or sense. You think our zeitgeist of exhaustion, anger, distraction, excuses, ascendant authoritarianism, and reinforced motivated denial are up to the task? "My" people aren't mine, talking in whispers or cliches. My environment is primarily one of isolation, day-by-day, and desperate pleas for genuine engagement. You think I give a fuck about Joe Rogan in any real way?

I care about the "good natured" people in my professional orbits who lie to my face about how happy they are for me or how concerned they are about their clients. I care about the "friends" who bemoan "society" but can't be bothered to preserve or build one that cares to have me in it. I care about opportunities I've pursued or attempted to provide people only for them to have been resented, destroyed, or ignored. I care about how hard it is to find leaders. I care about how daily stories of success or accountability, the only building blocks that will work, get washed away by complacency.

1 in 10. I still maintain that 1 in 10 is the rule you can apply up and down levels of focus or hierarchy as to why anything works or doesn't anywhere. There's 1 person, doing 1 thing right, along 1 domain, and 9 intersecting with their effort to fuck it up. Within that 1 person, they have 1 thing, the story they tell about themselves, they'll overburden to account for the 9 other things they're fucking up.

You might be a people person and a terrible manager, so you and everyone you know will get roped into the story of how nice you are as your 1 not-dipshit employee keeps the business alive.

You might be a smart person with zero insight as to how people speak leading you to be naive and missing a crucial piece of what informs your ability to self-evaluate. The story of your smartness will do the heavy lifting unconcerned with wisdom or unknown unknowns.

You might be a "normal" or "boring" person, self-described. The connotative boost to your held-harmless posture let's you "just" say things as though your words and behavior are devoid of consequences.

Why am I confident I could listen to Joe Rogan for 10,000 hours and never find myself shaking Alex Jones's hand and excited to explore "mere questions" about Sandy Hook, vaccines, or whatever latest conspiracy comes spewing out of their asses? What's my brain doing that yours isn't? What's my brain doing that you don't trust someone else's to do? What's my brain doing that you can't recognize or define for yourself? I'm asking questions of myself. I'm asking questions of you that 9 out of 10 are going to ignore and pretend never got asked.

Why?

You're exhausted. You're angry. You're isolated. You're confused. You're distracted. You're lazy. You're a liar. You're scared. You're cunty and condescending. You're not wise. You're not smart. You're working on the reactionary justification impulse to downplay and dismiss my accusations, if you're reading this at all, before you even get to the end of the paragraph let alone piece.

I'm exhausted. I'm angry. I'm isolated. I'm confused. I'm distracted. I'm lazy. I'm a liar. I'm scared. I'm a cunt and condescending. I'm not smart. I'm not wise. I felt and suppressed a reactionary impulse because I'm both reading and writing as an accountable process of contextualizing and sanding off the sharpest edges of those true statements. It's not "whether" they're true, it's "how" they're true and what your process is to account for them.

When I'm exhausted, I pause. I don't stop entirely. When I'm angry, I say so, then write, then contextualize and search for a better definition of what I think I'm angry at. When I'm isolated, I make plans so I have things to look forward to that put me out in the world. When I'm confused I read more about the topic and ask questions. When I'm lazy, I apologize for not taking the time or putting in the effort. When I lie it's to protect myself from entities or people I don't respect or who maintain power over me. I'm scared that I'm more psychologically motivated by retribution and demonstrating how I'm right than almost anything else. Is being a condescending cunt not self-evident? I'm incidentally informed about a handful of things in any given moment that are constantly evolving. My awareness of that is about the extent of my wisdom.

Whatever peace I might maintain gets threatened by an email, shitty driver, being hungry, or sometimes even the weather. By disposition I'm not less reactionary. I'm no less informed by early trauma. I'm no less piecing together messy and incomplete pieces of a story about myself and alleged desires and perspective on how to achieve them. No matter how much I achieve or how quickly, I'm impatient. I'm demanding. I'm suffering my seemingly unfair and unreasonable expectations constantly. Accepting and building that awareness into how I navigate the world is my salvation. It doesn't take magic. It's just personal responsibility. I think, on the whole, we are practically and "spiritually" devoid of the concept. Whatever amount of it we have, it's in service to the 1 in 10 dimension that makes us feel the best.

As as average non or skim-readers reflexively like to point out to me, I don't "seem" to look, sound, or feel the best. Yeah. Thanks for nothing.

[857] Slipping Through

 My mind has been very busy lately, and I think this is the 5th time I'm trying to write and get sorted out this past two weeks. I would consider it a privilege to conceive of the layers I'm thinking about as simple “drama” to be handled with a meme or spa day. Instead, I'm idling with much to do, which indicates I haven't settled on a direction that is going to give me peace.

The first-world “problems” are: 1. Mild labor dispute that is in limbo with whether or not I wish to quit immediately, or stick it out for a few weeks/months and build a little nest egg. 2. Being on the look-out for appliances to either repair, break down into parts, or scrap with the guidance of queued Youtube videos. 3. Hit various neighbors with preliminary fliers discussing DCS, rights, and actions I would like to take to hold my former office accountable. 4. Do yard work and shed assembly. 5. Promote myself as “an extra hand” and begin building a network for odd-jobs.

My ideal situation would be to not think about my new job at all, not have it at all, and focus on more self-serving and exploratory things. I don't have the fliers for either the business promotion or the information passing. I have a dryer lined up to be picked up at 5. I haven't found the head space for yard work for some reason. That same sensibility is undermining my enthusiasm for any potential convoluted or time-intensive tasks I may discover as I advertise.

I'm also stressing out about “getting bigger.” I've set a lot of really low bars in my obnoxious behavior, shit I've written about, or very confusing or damning sentiments I've shared that reduce in the minds of those who provide feedback as “no” or “negative” or “not trying to fuck with” or “he doesn't care or can't be trusted.” The first and easiest form of attack when someone starts to get big (or a big head) is to go after their character. I have really cool, important, and rare things about me that I do not see enough of in other people that makes me want to stand tall and demonstrate how we should all be. I also regularly question to what degree I'm a psychopath and feel really good intense things about revenge, power, and influence.

The sympathetic justifiers in you will regard this check and reticence as indicative of a better-natured animal striving to face or overcome his demons. The fellow psychopaths will know part of the magic of being a perfect performer is the ability to convince yourself.

As such, the check I've built into this behavior is to make things about something independent of me. If people who I recognize as having better instincts, proclivities, and habits than me are on board, perhaps I've transcended the innate selfishness into something good or better. If people can dictate their individual reasons for agreeing, disagreeing, or the contributions they feel comfortable making, the narrative shifts from any personal grievance or ego, and becomes about a holistic expression of a commonly regarded problem/opportunity to address in varying systematic ways. I didn’t just manipulate you.

I'm wary of adding people on facebook, as superficially as they may treat the platform with their flood of second-hand thoughts and pictures. I want to protect a certain image of myself as a, blunt, consummate professional who can keep it about the task, mission, or responsibility without all of the extra baggage that comes with being human. Is this a wise thing to do? I suspect not so much given how compelling overlaid narratives compel people to stop thinking and start adopting cliches for their work or behavior. (We care about the children! I love my job! I’m helping save lives!)

I wish to respect where I'm coming from without believing it will always be best suited to define or solve a problem. Maybe all of the things I threatened to do to be a consequence aren't my job. They feel like my job, and I get a certain degree of provocation or encouragement. Can the underlying needs be addressed? Can the principles shine through? In a culture arrested by the psychology of entertainment, is there even an opportunity for people to recognize what should happen and why? It'd be fun to watch The Nick Show for a while, right? I bet you could really believe in the message, but less so if I don't package what may be asked of you in something small, entertaining, and convenient. None of that would excuse my responsibility, but it would be worth respecting in how I shape the messaging.

I perhaps retain a mythical conception of significantly better-than-they-actually-are people I wish could be the face it's hard to tarnish. The irony being the traits I exalt make them considerably less likely to be the kind of persistent dick that provokes the fight. Alone, I can never make an accurate enough assessment of where I fit in on some grand scale of “acceptable human.” The larger the audience, the greater the impulse to perform. It's why I'm desperate for the opportunity to show off the work, highlight the low-key star power of others, and build independent expressions of power and control. The environment otherwise wishes to isolate, subjugate, and contain.

The easiest analogues of my concern are, as I went to type them, seemingly regarded as petty or indicative of a further-removed problem that's not really mine. Do you care if MLK fucked every girl he could? Are you bent out of shape about Michael Jackson being a sexual predator or John Lennon abusing Yoko? I don't consider sex bad or incompatible of marching for human rights. I watched thousands of people dance in unison to Thriller in downtown Lexington last year. Yoko's pretty annoying.

Of course there's no real justifying or excusing bad behavior, and being open sexually isn't the problem as much as any degree of lying or abuse of power that might've accompanied it. No one deserves to get beaten up, especially in a relationship, and I think butt-fucking kids is the last thing on anyone's mind as they march behind zombie Michael Jackson. But this speaks to the psychological scales we employ. How big of an artist do you have to be for all of those things to be just messy details? How great of an orator, in a sense, gets to absolve themselves of their sins? Consider Alex Jones or Trump and his enablers.

I don't want to be let off the hook, but I don't want to get distracted with the fallout we've come to know from “cancel culture.” I worry that when the character attacks come, I won't have built up enough meaningful work to do in lieu of constantly playing PR games or reading comment sections. You watch people routinely get torn down for perfectly innocuous or even fair points, regardless of their impact in areas of considerably more consequence. It simply doesn't register as worth it to go out on a limb, face “scrutiny” better understood as exploitation and drama porn, or risk the mild stability or calm of your life.

As much as I want “my job” or responsibilities to be more clearly defined, I don't think that's ever going to happen. As much as I want to be told what to do, forgiven, or made to feel comfortable about some path over another, I'm who it comes down to. It's my job to be as honest I can be to give us all the best tools for navigating our social and emotional worlds. That's step one in all of my incessant writing. Step two is to act. I can't know what will be of most consequence and don't pretend to be a utilitarian. I don't know if I'll ever be justified or understood. I do know the pains or regrets of not being accountable to an active working ethic that knows how to speak to things which are fucked up. How DCS treats people is fucked up. My yard's incomplete. I need to know more about appliances. Go.

[788] Information Age of Hysteria

Another day, another round of opinions on Jordan Peterson. I also read a killer piece by Matt Taibbi about the “Russia scandal.” I think maybe the easiest way to start is just to talk about labels.

Briefly, if you don't already know my reticence for the connotation and presumption that goes along with “trigger” words, nothing I write, nor will ever write, is going to register with you. The amount of times I put “truth” in quotes, attempting to discover the process of churning through my thoughts more than proclaiming the surety of my views, is instructive. I pick words that feel hot, and build a narrative around them. This is how we attempt to grasp the world around us. Is a tree a tree? Or is it bark, roots, leaves, etc. How you understand “tree” is going to determine many more things about how you use it or the place it occupies in your life.

How many words do you think we use that are much broader and more confusing than “tree” routinely? I've gone after “feminism” and “privilege.” I don't like when words that used to be pretty deliberate, like rape, become generalized indictments for miscommunication or unwanted and inappropriate attention i.e. “rape culture.” How many things in the news start with “the war on,” as if war is an easily accessible and sustained violent attack you can invoke with impunity about any imperiled topic? “Anti-Leftist,” “alt-right hero/darling,” “pseudo-intellectual,” the “ists” and “isms” of political shades, and general besmirching of character via scorn for alleged followers and “enabling” or “giving a platform.”

You can write, endlessly, using a combination of the same techniques to “critique” literally anyone or anything. Absolutely none of it does you any favors merely because you are able to deliver your “evisceration” with the pompous indignity that could only rise today to parody. There are many things that have contributed to what I'll posit as the “cultural decline in our capacity to speak and think clearly,” but a daily helping of unsubstantiated nonsense from our most popular news and info-tainment options doesn't help.

Even recognizing that we're playing into an ignorant hand becomes impossible, as “fact-checking” becomes a lurid task of retractions and nose-thumping a barrage of insinuations and accusations while the work to suss out truth goes ignored. “Whistle-blowers” and “alt-media” attempt to hijack the ceded space to tout their perspectives (more true because they're tinted with oh-so-justified doses of emotion and “outrage”), virtue signaling and dog-whistling Dixie.

There's such a stark contrast between the “hit piece,” and the methodical breakdown and cited explanation of a topic. There is no opinion piece you will find that casually refers to Jordan Peterson as “alt-right” that will have the examples demonstrating the label. They'll skim a phrase out of context. They'll poo-poo away hours of video expanding on where his grievances lie. They'll latch on to something misspoken or perhaps genuinely worth apology, and then proceed to ignore the apology.

This is the criticism popular thinkers are making of the Left. You can't continue to play judge, jury, and executioner who presides over the entirety of someone's life, and put them into a box of perpetual scorn and dismissal. This generalized habit reflexively dismisses not just what the other person you despise is thinking, but how they got there. If you refuse to attempt to understand how someone thinks, it suggests to me you're unwilling or unable to think for yourself. That's the impetus for free speech. That's surviving the cringe of listening to Ann Coulter or Alex Jones speak.

There are consequences to inciting anger and violence from positions of power. That is different from hearing the attempt to incite, and having a plan or disposition to put it aside. Censorship doesn't protect you from the obligation to learn why you're thinking is incomplete. The broader culture will always figure out a way to spite you, dig up the taboo, or act like it's the protector and purveyor of “unseemly truths,” while the snowflakes melt. This is the heart of my contrarian personality, and a psychological place I think we occupy at large (Trump is fucking president) when we've been fucked with and ignored for too long. The “right” is trending around the world. The self-righteous of every ilk zero in on “guns” or “transgender bathrooms/pronouns” as if those are the real topic.

It's your fundamental insecurity and lack of personal responsibility. That's the story of humanity. Justify for yourself, and pillory what you don't like or understand. We've psychologically distanced ourselves from accountability writ-large. Anonymous facebook hatred. “Self-taught entrepreneurs” and “influencers” serve to legitimize attention for its own sake. The only thing to learn anymore is how to exploit and brand. You label something “bad” with words that “trend,” or you capitalize on fantasy courting Pyrrhic victory. Who cares if the leaps and inferences you made didn't pan out? Who cares if you say it's “cute” an over-worked waitress needs 3 days on the job to afford your jeans? What's really lost if it gave me more followers, likes, clicks, and traffic?

I grow less tempted to be obnoxious every day because I don't believe there aren't consequences. No matter how you started something, if it was “just for fun,” that fire can get out of control. Just because every one else was doing it, doesn't mean they deserved the reach they got. I'm thinking of tech companies. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or should be allowed to, the tacit approval of waves of ignorant masses notwithstanding. Here I think of Gavin Newsom suspending the death penalty. I don't care what the majority thinks either if it was my innocent ass on the line about to be executed. I care about wasting money and the grander cultural narrative regarding vengeance and State power, but in the immediacy, fuck all that noise.

I don't see it getting better. I actually see violence and other life-threatening or dramatically altering consequences before we find a “collective” chance at survival. You can't attack the basis for grasping existence and think “everyone” is going to get “wise” about their failed “wokeness” and start to zero in on the words that never bother to give them pause in the first place. When a narrative style becomes embodied, that's colloquial reality. Trump repeats. That's the “magic” of his madness. That's the secret of people slowly growing more and more insane losing the ability to reflect. We retweet, and carry the sentiments onto our “news” and otherwise sources of information. We're suffering a mass psychosis of our own doing by not taking a thousand beats to breath, parse, and prove.

Even with the best information still available, I don't think we'll be saved. Noam Chomsky is still speaking. Matt Taibbi is still writing. Spatterings of comedic and reporter voices are “doing their best” to summarize and explain without stoking insanity flames. So what? Me and the old people with time enough to go to book store reads and lectures will know? Hippies and Bohemians will get to scoff until their safe-spaces are in the crosshairs? We're all breathing the same air. The whole system's immune system is implicated. I'll be doing my best from a field in the middle of nowhere.

[398] Merciful Masters

I suppose I'm cheating a bit in that it's really easy to start thinking about a lot of things once you've been engaged by a conspiracy “it's all about mind control, maaaan” documentary. Nonetheless, I feel an itch and I think it'll tie to other things I hope to unravel.

First, it seems very obvious if not preferred that someone's in control. Whether it's in a war and you're finding the pride to charge the battle field and take the first bullets so your brothers behind you can live on, or if you're looking for something to aspire to from mass marketing of the ideal living and family situation. We're a top down society in that sense. Something seems better than nothing. Being controlled or even enjoying in giving up control don't seem that bad in and of itself. Think about how elated religious people must feel...

Think of the idea of “herding cats” which is often a description about a group of atheists. You don't have to spend years of your life debunking myths and arguing with people online, finally overwhelmed with your knowledge and unable to escape it's conclusions. You can just be a random asshole who says “I don't believe in god.” Depending on where either of those two examples grew up, they could still find solace at an atheist convention, as if, because of sheer disbelief, that's how they'll form a friendship.

But they're still their own kind of cat. They still need a Dawkins or a feeling of fear or oppression that guides them to a place of common footing. They want their minds to be controlled as well, but by thoughts that can be characterized as "objective." These are people that wouldn't mind being told to go to school or get a job, but they're not going to trust the promises of a world unseen and without evidence.

In documentaries, especially like this one, I can't help but marvel at how sure of themselves each interviewee is. It doesn't matter if they're talking about a particular period in history, some influential character, or just from the pulpit of whatever board they sat on or place of insider knowledge. They give a presentation as if they're the authority. This isn't to say they know nothing or that their information isn't valuable or, genuinely, a form of expertise.

But it goes wrong. Take a random doctor from Harvard and let him say something about neuroscience. Now juxtapose that with Alex Jones explaining how the Bilderberg Group has been engineering schools to control your mind. You may want to forgo the grain and just swallow the salt shaker. But if you're informed enough about how schools have been funded, neuroscience, Alex Jones in general, and the people in charge of creating these groups and foundations who have a say in what gets taught, you can still begin to say something flirting with reasonable.

You're still stuck with fairly general ideas though. Should people who have an economic stake in how much you know be in charge of what you're taught? Probably not. Should leaders, who, as it basically comes with the territory are self-absorbed, egotistical, and often prone to sociopathy and psychopathy, be trusted to keep “everyone's” best interests at heart? Surely it happens, I doubt it's the norm. Do I want Alex Jones' perspective on ancient Greece or Plato? He's not my first choice.

The big secret that no one seems to want to say is that nobody trusts nearly anything they do. The ones who do are bred to. The rich kids or the spoiled kids who think and talk like Ayn Rand yet leech and never touch the kind of accomplishments her characters were shooting for. (The irony of Republicans touting her book and example is...staggering.) Though they have basically stopped the motor of government so here's a great example of leaders and the consequences of their interpretations.

Anyway, these mind control cautioners never seem to theorize about a world in which everyone's a raving lunatic with a megaphone explaining how you're not being controlled by the right parts of the machine. They rarely argue on behalf of awareness or changing some policy that sells people short. They just sort of lament this mongoloid hive mind that crashes into every layer of society. Mark their words, if we don't save ourselves, well, man, we're just never gonna save ourselves and that will be bad, bad news.

Drop out. If you're willing to ride your notoriety or your degree and claim a kind of authority on a topic, you have to bow and respect what your merciful masters set you up to have. If not, drop out. If you rely on ad revenue or a handful of rich fanatics to keep your voice afloat, you damn well expect their minds to be controlled by your outrage. Your institution gives you tenure and a platform, but for all your words of wisdom, you're being stamped out? You need Alex Jones to help you mold young minds or report on abuses of money and influence? If not, then who's being controlled where and what can we do to save them? It's the media? Okay, well, we'll leave that can of worms for another day.

I drop out to the best of my ability. I still get pulled over when my registration's expired. My master that day let me off with a warning. He was doing a pretty terrible job of reinforcing the idea of a police state I'd say. I don't even think he pulled his gun on me! But to listen to the news or to watch things like this, you'd think that it's even possible to exert such an exacting level of control and influence from the top. That for all the social upheavals and wars and even weather, it just takes billions of dollars to finally work out the science of controlling this world system.

I'd rather plead ignorance before fear. Fear shows a kind of precise naivety and heightened self-assuredness that seems to get us nowhere in conversation. Just onto the next blip from the next conspirator to fuel our anxieties.

And it's stupid to watch these things and say something like “Well, what they say does raise a lot of good points! Just ruminate on the overall idea but forget everything they're saying in service to it.” Um, okay, so we should probably drop acid or get really high and produce our own version that keeps the heart but drops the lies? Ya man, I don't like mind control and money is evil. Righteous. This sounds like a caricature, but I honestly don't know what else it would reduce to.

I could use a little more mind control. I actively try to avoid having a job. I've watched too many movies and read too many books to be too smitten by even the coolest or most novel ideas. I'd surrender to the machine if I saw any evidence that I could trust it. It can get pretty demoralizing to be a stray cat.

[214.9] Who's Really Deceiving

I just got done watching “The Obama Deception” by Alex Jones. There are a ton of thoughts rushing through me right now so if this is insanely disjointed or seemingly random, my bad.

I want to state first that I don’t agree with motivation through fear. When I watched this documentary, fear is the most resounding feeling I thought they were running with. I didn’t feel enabled, necessarily more informed about something specific, nor told how to do such abstract things as “get my liberties back” or properly juxtapose the histories of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao with Bush and Obama. It really does a disservice to a cause to draw such dramatic analogies of complex historical examples and say, “just go do your homework.” It doesn’t help your cause to have someone who may or may not know something about economics or the early history of our country, and also call global warming a sham or conspiracy. Yes, I will question their judgment and perspective much more because scientists not so motivated by politics and greed across varying fields and countries concur independently a fact not dictated out of a fearful and distrusting perspective.

With that said, some ideas the documentary presents do seem to make sense to me. For example, I have no problem believing there are a handful of rich people with all sorts of interests and future goals. I have no problem believing they don’t really care if I live or die. In the documentary it’s referred to as the Bilderberg Group. These are alleged as the people who cause financial crisis, start wars, and swallow the world in debt. I don’t like feeling that this isn’t hard to believe either. Do you remember when I asked why someone can’t just be “stupid” or “immature” they have to go on and compile it with a host of actions that make them look exponentially worse? Well, now I think I can apply that to our existence.

It’s not just good to be rich, you have to be SUPER

rich, and have a need to dominate. It’s not simply that you fucked up the economy once in the 1920’s or 30’s, it’s that you continue to fuck it up 90 years later. You can’t just employ one asshole with biases and ties to organizations that you police; you have to put someone like that at the head of every organization under your umbrella. It’s never one lie to one person, but a thousand to a thousand people. Negativity begets exponential negativity. Negativity only “exists” when you refuse to create or preserve something positive.

I try; I try ever so hard to view things simply. I felt overwhelmed trying to process the sea of “facts” and “documented material” I was swimming in while watching this. That isn’t to say that some parts didn’t show the actual documents, nor does it mean that some factual information wasn’t translated. What that does mean is those facts I feel comfortable denoting as such, consisted of the recorded speeches of campaign promises later contradicted, the reporting of “secret” meetings, and the actual sections of bills and reports highlighted on screen.

But let me go back to fear and make things simple. Take a situation where you’re sitting with your friends at a coffee shop. You see someone who isn’t a cop with a gun holstered. While you might not be completely freaked out, it isn’t hard to believe that you or a good portion of people around you might become uncomfortable. Why are they becoming uncomfortable? It’s because a guns sole purpose is to kill. That idea of a weapon does not bode good feelings, comfort, or togetherness. It preempts the idea that someone or something is dangerous. A coffee shop in Bloomington is an unlikely spot for such caution.

Weaponizing anyone or anywhere will only cause this effect en masse. Yes, you might feel comfortable around guns as you would a field of daisies because you were raised on them or just love to shoot. I would probably get off on the idea of shooting shit too, let alone an opportunity to blow something up, but I would gladly forgo that feeling if no one else had to do it with a gun either. So, when I see a war, I think automatically bad. I know if I had bullets flying by my head, it would suck. I know that the idea of accidentally killing a random kid or “innocent” person isn’t good. I know there are people that want us dead. I know there are ideologies that call for my death and people planning on using their weapons to do it. I think there are better ways.

Switching gears a bit, I want to talk about the “war” for ideas and information. I have to say, even as a person who fights to stay objective, it was pretty hard to try and sift through information I thought I might find semi-reliable, and shit that was absolutely ridiculous, while watching this documentary. If it was hard for me, and is still hard to really swallow and make sense of, it will be damn near impossible for most. I’ve already stated that the tone I got was fear, which means fear is presumably all anyone will feel if they don’t have the will or mind to pick it apart and dig deeper.

But again, the war of ideas can be fought simply. If in fact there is a secret sect of people who are willing to control us, then, as the film calls for, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and direct our actions appropriately. If we can say to ourselves, “A gun would not make this scenario better” and put the gun away, no one trying to put a gun in our hand is going to succeed. If we can understand that no single person can possibly enact the kinds of promises that Obama made, then we can stop celebrating the collective ignorance about saviors. Also, we can stop demonizing the puppet put in place to convince us. We need to persuade ourselves of better ideas about what it means to be rich and healthy. We need to persuade ourselves, and this is the sickest thing misunderstood, that as we suck away money or attention towards the things that make us heroes, we suck away our reasons to live.

I’ve said that I’m celebrating our species demise. I can’t begin to persuade myself that things will get better as long I see how we go about establishing our “beliefs.” When you believe in a god for example, despite every single good thing you can attribute to it, you are disposed to magical, impossible, fanatic thinking and when something emulates that, you will be disposed to trusting it. This isn’t because you are stupid; this is because that is how brains work. I’m not trying to insult my religious friends; I’m trying to scream from the rooftops BIOLOGY.

Very practically speaking, if we take what the documentary says on its face, very important implications come out of a few scenarios. There have in fact been bills that have called to restrict or prohibit gun access to the” not convicted of a crime” public. It starts with those on the no fly list, it ends where? Now no, I don’t believe we should have the guns in the first place, but it’s at this point that I think we get into a situation of self-defense. If cops become federalized, if the military actually is being used to destabilize countries, if we are in fact being driven by corporate interest into a depression, I’d shoot a mother fucker or two myself if I was in that specific of a proverbial corner. But, things don’t have to get that complicated.

Every person in the military is a father, mother, brother, sister etc. There is no such thing as the “military” there is a collection of people with various ideals and reasons for joining an organization they either believed in or believed would help their life. Super soldiers follow orders, individuals make decisions. I can’t think of a single person I know who is in the military or has been that would comply with oppressing or fighting people in this country for government or corporate interests. Does that mean they wouldn’t? No, but I find it so unlikely I’ll state it for the record and chance at being proven wrong.

Before someone controls you, you have to give them something. What our elected officials, what your religion, your school, and your clothes company all want is your trust. This is why trust, for me, is the most important idea possible. It is the most respected thing to keep, and the most powerful thing ever abused. We trusted Obama; that was our folly. Well before him we trusted ourselves to know what to trust. We trusted that Federal Reserve meant actually federal and an extension of the government, not a private company. We trust that people give a fuck because we insolate ourselves around the few that do about us most often. The “awakening” as it’s referred to, needs to be an overt display of our reality, our nature, and our potential. Consciousness razing is more than becoming a bleeding heart for cancer or starving children.

The irony here seems to be that it already exists; we just refuse to accept it. It’s not a movie when you hear of genocide and/or people starving. Every time someone says, “It’s 2010 and we should be past this now” is only speaking to denial, not technological or moral maturity. We are in a war. We are killing innocent people for oil. We are poking holes in our atmosphere. We are bankrupting people before they are born. We are polluting our food. We are just a bunch of stupid fucking apes. Every complicated issue with its years of history, context, cause and effect, yada yada boils down to we are stupid fucking apes. This is why I just kind of “am” about our existence and factual in my assessment of it. I try to live and hold ideals in spite of my reality. That doesn’t mean I don’t accept it, it means I assess, idolize, and express the best parts of it.

This is what I mean when I tell people to wake up. This is why my thoughts are always racing. This is why I say things matter and other things don’t. This is why I feel like I have any authority what so ever over anything and appreciate people who are willing to engage the discourse or express the ideals. When you hear a person say “This bill prevents so and so from spending money or such and such organization from doing that” in an interview outside the building where a group of people are defying that bill, the bill doesn’t do shit. You’re reciting something stupid. You’re wasting your time. The bill did its job by getting you to recite what it is allegedly supposed to do The reality about the governmental body, law process, and nature of “regular” people to want and believe in it is just an “oh, duh”’ away.

What’s the motivation for a 125 people to control the world? Who cares!? What can happen when 1 person controls too much? Ask yourself this question about your shitty boss and your shitty job. What’s their motivation? It’s to maintain his or herself. Be it supporting a family, paying off debt, or just getting the bills to shut up, it’s not hard to imagine. To a greater degree, I’ll guess this is those rich peoples’ motivation as well. They understand what 7 billion confused, ignorant, pissed off, ideological, etc. people can do if destabilized. If they didn’t, I don’t imagine they would care to be in the business of destabilizing. The real “sin” of theirs is not making things simple and living humbly. And honestly, I think this is the only way to combat that problem regardless of the motivation or intention on our lives.

This is only possible with that sense of personal responsibility, accountability, and sense of being “awake.” You have to make your own rules that follow simple principles. Be specific and honest. The reason people are allowed to complicate an issue with platitudes like “it’s not black and white” is because they refuse to get specific. Is a belief in a god good or bad? That’s the wrong question. Does this person’s belief in a god create more positive in their life and the lives of others than it does destroy? Potentially. Make no mistake, because it does indeed destroy something, but what it’s destroying can still exist and even grow in the mind of someone else. Also, when whatever is being destroyed is contained in the mind or collective consciousness, it brings the “fight” to a much safer and tolerable landscape. I would be much more content with a world where everyone but me believed in a god, but no one wanted me dead or to kill themselves in service to it.

If there is one service you can do for yourself or your country it is to make people be specific. Don’t allow thousand page bills to be passed in an hour. Don’t believe everyone, particularly you, is entitled to everything; this ranging from the nominal and obvious things like guns, to abstract notions of respect and love. The idea that people would refuse to even acknowledge and change themselves scares me way more than a police state or Illuminati-esc super group pulling strings. One means our generation, or maybe foreseeable generations, will get fucked, the other means we literally will never care to know how to stop it.