Everybody loves to believe that their thoughts and feelings, their perspectives and judgments are solely their own. We truly believe that our thoughts and feelings about everything come from inside our own heads, concluded by virtue of our own intelligent analysis, and are certainly not in any way influenced by outside attempts to force those conclusions to come to us by design. We dismiss those who tell us that we are all submerged in a literal sea of influence and manipulation, claiming that we are much too smart to be fooled by such obvious ploys.
Yet, the evidence is overwhelming that we are indoctrinated to the point of passive servitude. We have come to accept the unacceptable as normal, so used to being used and abused, pushed around and disrespected, gouged, lied to, cheated, predated upon and harassed by corporations and government alike, that we simply tense up for the beatings when they come, and then battered, we go on with our day as usual. We no longer expect a fair shake. This is the new norm.
The insults and rip-offs straddle the whole spectrum of American life. Who among us hasn't been blatantly ripped off by a company? Who hasn't been gouged by a greedy bank? Who hasn't been outraged by the disrespect we're shown when we call for customer service and the companies don't even pretend to be interested in doing the right thing?
The reality is that if you're ready to lay your money down somewhere, there is always a living breathing human being ready to take your money. But after the sale there is no one around and no one who cares. There is no one ready and waiting to assist you with a problem you were handed along with your shoddy, imported product. When we call companies or even our own local government offices, it is increasingly rare that our calls will be answered by a living, breathing human being who's job it is to actually help us with something. Getting the run-around is the new norm. We no longer expect satisfaction when we lay our money down. We know better.
The power has been transferred from the people to wealthy special interests, and business has infiltrated government to the extent that they are one and the same. All of the common sense restrictions that kept companies from becoming voracious, rampaging beasts have been erased from the books and now we are regularly being lied to, cheated, used and abused at the will of big business and big institutions and are unable to defend ourselves. Our government calls it deregulation and free enterprise. It's nothing of the kind. It's a criminal smorgasbord and we're someone else's free lunch.
We've come to know that our democracy is a sham and that voting is a hollow and pointless exercise. We neither choose the candidates or what they'll do when they're elected, and those who we elect are increasingly disinterested in doing the right thing for us, or doing the right thing at all. Our own government treats us as irrelevant, and that is the new norm.
Americans go bankrupt and lose everything due to an illness or injury because very few of us can afford the staggering costs of medical care. Our medical system is ranked in the 40th percentile globally, a spot so shamefully low that the insult of those high costs is even more outrageous. Greedy insurance companies are deciding our health care instead of our doctors or ourselves, not because it's any of their business but because they are in the business of not paying out for our legitimate claims, and this arrangement allows them to deny most claims out of hand while our loved ones suffer and often die. Our health care system is broken and every bit as cheaply produced and predatory as the rest of corporate America. We know the government will do nothing about it, because they are profiting by letting this go on. This is the new norm.
The scams and scandals of Wall Street have reached mind boggling proportions, with so many miscreant bankers and gargantuan financial parasites pulling off patently illegal rip-offs that we literally cannot keep up with them all, and there is no way to stop them or prosecute them. The thieves have stolen so much of our wealth that they can afford to take years playing legal games to keep their cases from ever reaching a courtroom. It would bankrupt the country to attempt to fight these criminals in court, and we cannot afford it. We can't afford justice anymore. This is the new norm.
Sadly, this short list barely skims the surface. There is literally no end to the ways we are being ripped off and forced to take it with the government's absolute blessing to the thieves and thugs eating away our health, happiness, security, and hope. Congress has never had lower approval ratings from the American people who have become thoroughly and totally disgusted with the whole charade.
But how many of us have ever picked up the phone to express our outrage to our elected representatives? How many of us have written letters to let companies know that their unethical tactics are despicable? How many of us have filed complaints with the FTC, or gone to small claims court to fight outrageous fees not for the money but on principle because the situation is flatly unjust and unethical and they shouldn't get away with it?
Every time we shut up and sit down they win. We are angry but immobile, somehow resigned to expect nothing to improve. We are caught in a twilight zone of coming to grips with the unfathomable. It's that cognitive dissonance thing. We have no field of reference for a crime spree of this magnitude, for such open disdain for the people, and such egregious treatment from those who's salaries we pay.
We're slowly learning first hand that to trust what this government has become is naive and pointless. We're grossly uninformed about the most pressing, urgent, pertinent things our government does because the media is the government too and all they do is lie. Getting ourselves informed is a gargantuan effort and that's an outrage too. Yet millions and millions of us who need only to stand up and start shouting still do nothing. Many are still making excuses for government, and many are still of the belief that the next president will fix everything. By and large we are a huge nation of defeated, overwhelmed, distracted, ignorant, disconnected, paralyzed people who have no clue whatsoever what to do.
We know what we'd like to do. What is it inside our heads that makes us think we cannot do what is so sorely needed? How can this be true for so many millions of people? Is it just a strange coincidence?
We all get up at the same time every weekday morning to engage in work to get money. Is that a coincidence? Do we all do this because we thought about it and came up with the idea all by ourselves? Men wear pants but only women wear dresses, we all know that, but how do we know that and why does it matter? Did we all just think about it and decide it must be so all by ourselves?
We all go to school for 14 solid years, sitting still in our chairs, facing forward, listening to the teacher but having no say over what we will listen to. We accept the assertions of those who stand before us as if they were our masters, while we sit at their command, and listen as they tell us that they are the rule makers who know better than we do, what is good for us and what is required. We accept our obligation to be obedient and silently consenting of whatever they lay out for us. Even when we hate it we still go along with it.
In school we accept the terms of our own powerlessness and legally required obedience to authority without ever considering that no one is our master and that we do not have to comply with anything if we choose not to. But sensible thoughts such as that one have a corresponding indoctrination that tells us that in no uncertain terms, our failure to comply and obey is established grounds for punishment. Failure to obey is such a serious transgression that we may even end up in prison.
Required conformity is no small thing, it is taken very seriously by those who want our compliance. We should wonder why that is, and how it fits into the idea of Freedom and Democracy.
Is this really the best way for us? I'm not seeing how doing it their way has benefited us at all over the last half century. Isn't it really the best thing only for those who want us deeply conditioned to accept the authority of others over our lives? Those who do not want us talking to them as equals, else we'd be demanding fair exchanges of pay for our labor and a whole bevy of things that we'd be much better off having than going without. Yet we believe that to stand up and demand what's fair for us is disobedient or outrageous. It's very bad behavior to demand what's right and fair. It's quickly becoming illegal to refuse to submit to unfair conditions. Having no choice appears to be the new "Freedom".
When standing up for our own best interests feels uncomfortable to us, when disagreeing is a criminal act, we are most definitely indoctrinated to the point of servility.
Why do we all believe our authorities to be men of good will and aboveboard character, dedicated to serving and protecting us? What do we base this perception on? Why do we accept that men in suits and uniforms are different and more important than we are? What makes us believe there is any validity to such a bizarre idea? Why do we feel that we have no choice but to accept life on their terms and may not freely reject their terms and refuse to cooperate or participate? What's wrong about doing that? Yet we do think it is wrong, and that just doesn't make sense. Is that an accident?
By and large the vast majority of us accept without question a universe of indoctrinated perceptions, beliefs, and values that are externally created and fed to us without us even realizing it. We fail to notice that we are being recreated in the image of good citizens and consumers, obedient to authorities, unquestioning of officials, believing only in the goodness of those we pay to keep the country functioning smoothly. We retain this undying, unjustifiable faith even when the country isn't functioning smoothly at all, even when we're threatened by skyrocketing costs of living, a deteriorating infrastructure, job losses in the millions, and two wars under way costing us a trillion dollars already with a third war on the horizon. Will we ourselves, or will our children march off to a war against another country that isn't bothering us and poses us no threat? Will we still be true believers in the goodness and wisdom of leaders who have brought us to the edge of total ruin? Are we brainwashed? Ya think?
We are strongly conditioned to respond on cue to countless symbols and logos, sound bites and pictures, a complex stratagem of multibillion dollar ad campaigns and big media, pop music, movies, and election campaigns. Even the sound of a newscasters voice immediately triggers the appropriate mindset and sets us up to be in the proper receiving mode. These cues don't just evoke a conditioned response they also evoke a deeper corresponding mass indoctrination.
Voluminous cues dominate our lives, expertly crafted and designed to hook into us at multiple levels and make us believe that we are actual participants in the process of self-rulership. But it is all illusion because very few of us have created any part of the world we live in. We are not participants, we are forced into acceptance and pushed into agreement, even given "both" sides of every argument to choose from. Far from being representative of our interests, needs, and lives, the provided sides are not there to give us choice, but to prevent us from choosing from all of the other choices that we will not be given. The viewpoints and realities that directly reflect our own best interests are invisibly relegated to irrelevant nonexistence.
Instead of recognizing the ploy, we internalize the belief that if they aren't talking about it, it must not really matter. We think of corporate media as the representatives of officialdom when the truth is, the only thing that's official is our own take on things.
The entire cacophonous madhouse we live in exists at the desire of others who profoundly profit as they build their version of the world. A world that suits their interests, not ours. A world that benefits themselves, that we have little to no say over, but that we are paying for in total. We have paid for every single thing we see around us, we have paid every penny that makes the rich rich, but how much do we benefit from any of it? Corporate entities have grown wealthy and criminally powerful beyond our ability to comprehend, while we are working harder and longer and getting less and less back from the whole thing. Yet, we think of all this as normal.
The reality is that we are very deeply indoctrinated to be who, and how, we are, so much so that the mere thought of stretching beyond the boundaries we live within, is too scary a thought to ponder.
Is all of this just an absolutely amazing coincidence? A nation of self-thinking people who all come to the exact same conclusions that often can't even be supported by evidence other than the fact that we somehow believe what we believe and so insist it must be right. We conform in so many ways, not of our own accord but because we're driven to accept and even desire conformity, to see conformity as necessary and good. We are indoctrinated through and through. If we are willing to face that and then decide whether or not we wish to continue being indoctrinated, we will at least have done enough to say that we have been honest with ourselves.
Part 2: Indoctrination
Endless and pervasive advertising. So called public relations firms. Public and private education. Television programming. Economics and markets. Political speeches. Religious programming. The corporate news media. Scientific research. Medical practice. Lavish funding and praise for enforcement entities. Pharmaceutical companies. Child protection agencies. Courts of law. Experts and professional journals. The list is virtually endless. These and many others have established a total grip on our minds in literally every single conceivable way. Each and every one of these things does something much more insidious and destructive than most of us could ever guess. These are all elements of systems of indoctrination and these interlocking systems of control quite effectively and thoroughly dictate every aspect of our lives, and even down deeper into the control and framing of our thoughts and values.
The goal of indoctrination is intellectual conformity. It seeks to subjugate, limit, or even entirely eliminate the critical and creative thinking aspects of the inductee and to replace them or otherwise restrict them to remaining within the confines and conformity of the doctrine.
Doctrine is not to be expanded upon or in any way altered except by the sole decision of the highest ranking authorities of that doctrine, regardless of the merit, validity or worth of any uniquely conceived ideas from mere, unauthorized lesser members or outsiders. To be indoctrinated is to accept doctrine, not to create it, change it, challenge it, or in any way impinge on its current dominant configuration.
It is always wholly and completely improper to be able to prove any part of doctrine to be incorrect. This is a process that must be undertaken with tremendous skill, and depending on the doctrine, it could take decades before changes are made, even though the need is long over due and glaringly obvious. In some doctrines the mere suggestion of invalidity can bring a world of woe to those who would dare express such a thing, no matter how right they are.
Because it literally requires an individual to abandon, alter or subjugate much of the self in order to embrace doctrine instead, it is necessary for the indoctrinators to offer a benefit idea, which will supposedly be of greater value than retaining a sovereign, independent, un-indoctrinated self. They will begin by explicitly devaluing the entire concept of the sovereign individual, defining intellectual independence as vulgar ignorance that can only lead to ineptitude and failure in life. Well honed propaganda is used to sell the idea that conforming to doctrine is the only path to personal salvation, whatever that perceived salvation may be.
Salvation comes to those in medical school only upon the successful absorption of the current and prevailing medical doctrine which must be accepted as the sum total of all valid knowledge that is worth having. Anything outside of officially approved doctrine must be dismissed as foolish, or harmful, or purposely misleading. Regardless of how compelling, interesting, or valid outside ideas are, if they are not official doctrine they must be ignored, dismissed and even framed as dangerous, fraudulent or criminal. To even listen to outside ideas is so deplorable that doing so is the same as confessing one's own incompetence. Nonconformity to doctrine is incompetence. Actual incompetence within the accepted boundaries of doctrine is not incompetence, it is something else entirely and it is usually defended with great arrogance and asserted to be perfectly reasonable and acceptable performance. It is the doctrine which must be held sacred and the indoctrinators which must be deferred to unfailingly, right or wrong, no matter what common sense, ethics, legality, or plain truth may dictate.
Doctrine is about retaining control of the intellectual content of whatever territory it claims the exclusive, official ownership of. It is never about expanding the content and it is always against bringing in anything new or anything that proves the doctrine deficient or questionable. It is more abhorrent to defy doctrine, or to defy the rules and procedures of established hierarchical doctrine, or to fail to defer in all ways to the hierarchy of the indoctrinators than it is to let innocent people get hurt due to that doctrine. It is more important to protect the myth of the perfection and infallibility of the doctrine than it is to protect life itself. Indeed, the indoctrinated are expected to endure persecution, imprisonment, even death to defend their doctrine. They have long been obligated to take the fall for their fallen icons in order to spare them the indignity and shame of being revealed to be hypocrites, liars and all manner of unethical cowardly losers. The strangest thing about it is that people are so willing to do that, to protect and defend what amounts to a sham.
Doctrine is not there to benefit the student, though it will always claim that benefiting the student is its primary, selfless goal. It is there to control both the student and the entire body of knowledge, speculation, investigation, action and inquiry into that area. It's no surprise that science and big religion are quite similar along these lines. Science is very much a religion, a religion of control. And religion itself, when it is indoctrinated and turned into something specified by others, is also about control.
In no way will indoctrination seek to give something to the student to empower them in their own freedom and assist their personal evolution. It only gives them as much as they require to carry out indoctrinated duties within the allowable parameters and generally disallows or frowns upon bringing one's own unique creative thinking to the task. If everyone was running around creatively thinking and improving on every aspect of doctrine, the doctrine would no longer be controllable, and the need for conformity would no longer exist. Claiming the right to control depends on the belief that only certain individuals are qualified to determine the rights and wrongs of everything related to doctrine, and control is the entire point. It is the last thing indoctrinators of any kind would ever be willing to give up in any degree. Control is essential therefore conformity is essential. Doctrine and conformity are two sides of the same coin and one without the other is impossible. Where there is conformity there is indoctrination.
Indoctrination despises variance from "the book", and vigorously punishes those who would dare to bring variation to doctrine. It is interesting to notice how important "the book" is to doctrine. The written words of doctrine take on relevance they would not otherwise have, and those in the indoctrination industry point to their written down doctrine as though it were proof of its validity.
Written down doctrine is held out as much more than just proof, it is proof that can be used to back up claims of superiority. When written down or printed, doctrine becomes a solid object, and a solid object cannot be denied. Words turned into physically existing things do not need to be proven, they exist. There is nothing to prove. In reality the only solid object is the ink that has dried on the paper it is sitting on. The doctrine itself, the meaning of the words the ink has shaped on the paper, are not related. The doctrine is not the ink and the ink is not the doctrine and neither of them in any case have any connection to truth. They are all separate unrelated things, one a solid object and the others are thoughts. Written words may or may not be true but that must be determined separately. What is not a given is that all written words represent truth or facts. They very often don't.
The written word is no more or less accurate, truthful or important than the spoken word. When the speaker is unknown, the validity of his words can only be proven to be true or untrue by checking them for yourself. One's willingness to believe something is true does not mean it is true. This is simple common sense. So "the book", whether it is religious, scientific, political, historical or otherwise doctrinal, cannot be seen to have any more validity, truth or significance than that which the reader personally verifies.
Even when steps are taken to obtain personal verification, it may appear to prove something to be true or not true, but depending on where the person goes to find verification and what those sources are, he may in fact find information that is itself something to verify. If the information he uses to verify "the book" comes from indoctrinated believers in "the book" then it won't really verify anything. It will only repeat the doctrine from another source that presents itself as objective when it is in reality an arm of indoctrination. It can work the other way too, proving something true to be untrue because the source is not objective but a strong opponent of the truth. It takes a lot of work to verify anything these days. One unvalidated second opinion is scarcely enough to prove anything true or untrue.
The confusing thing about the indoctrinated is that there are those who sincerely embrace and believe in the doctrine and in all of the surrounding control structures. They don't recognize those structures as controlling or confining and they strongly desire to stay within the approved boundaries of their doctrine. Stepping outside of approved boundaries is something so bad that most indoctrinees would never even think about doing it. To them boundaries have been defined as something good for them, something that will help them stay in "the truth", something that will protect them from the confusion of conflicting outside information which must by definition be wrong. If it was right it would be a part of the doctrine, and it isn't, so it's bad. Checking that out for yourself makes you bad then, and believers in doctrine will do anything to remain "good". They see it all as something that has been put together specifically to be good for them and their trust for it gives it the validity it will in reality lack. And all doctrine has much in the way of lacking validity.
When we encounter those who sincerely believe doctrine, and we perceive them to be very good people at heart, it is difficult to show disrespect for their beliefs because we don't want to cause upset just for the sake of doing so. Yet it is the true believers that allow doctrine to remain dominant in our society. Where we often come face to face with our own common sense distrust of enforced doctrine lies in the proof of the high level indoctrinators themselves acting in ways that are blatantly contradictory to what they represent as truth. They will be the ones caught in scandals of ethics and cover ups of wrong doing.
There is much criminal conspiracy in doctrinal leadership because the fact of the matter is, doctrine is fully not what it sells itself to be. It is simply nonsensical for any person or group to assert that they know everything about something, or that their opinions are better than other opinions, or that they alone have all of the right answers. No such situation has ever existed. If it did, it would be born out by facts and a perfect unbroken record of always being correct, just, valid and agreed upon by all, and there is no such thing. Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to say that all doctrine is imperfect and must be questioned.
Doctrine is taught and reinforced with much ritual and injected pomp and circumstance to sell its validity because frankly, it lacks so much validity that it cannot in whole stand up to any serious scrutiny. There are always many voices who are not allowed entrance into the cathedrals of the believers who would speak compelling and provable truths that are in direct contradiction to that doctrine.
Enforced doctrines could not exist without the concerted effort to silence all those with evidence to the contrary, which can be done in many ways. From censorship to character assassination to threats, lies and even death suffice it to say that where big doctrine exists, big crimes are holding it up.
The little guy, the individual true believer who is able to transmute some satisfaction in any genuine way from enforced doctrine is a testament to how hard we will work when we really want something, and how capable we are of making due with what we've got, remaining within the very restrictive confines we are given.
What's not surprising is that no present prevailing big doctrine out there today can lay one single claim to any equally big good work done. None of them have created any general improvement in life on earth for people, nor solved problems that have plagued humanity for ages. They will all lay claim to benefits that have been achieved by the hard work and dedicated efforts of individuals, but the organized institutions of doctrine are never the direct force that worked to benefit others. The formal institutions of doctrine are self-interested, selfish, detached things that are focused on the immediate goals of gaining and retaining their power, propagating their mythology, and performing the symbolic rituals that identify them and their claims to the intellectual territory they claim to be the official representatives of. They often do little to nothing for their own indoctrinated followers, not in any official capacity. The direct good that is done is always the result of individuals giving of themselves while the greater organization takes the credit and the goodwill that comes of advertising those acts of decency, selflessness and generosity. The institutions proper never miss a meal though many of their followers go hungry every day.
The institutions of big doctrine have grown into a force that has an ever increasing grip on the day to day workings of the world, and in the direction we are all headed as a society and as individuals. Yet, there is less justice than ever, and more dishonesty. There is more back door dealing and secrecy than ever, and less open and honest talk that includes and invites everyone. There is more finger pointing, blame, hypocrisy, incivility, distrust, and division than ever before. The individual is slowly being transformed into a member of a hive collective, being fed messages of indoctrination without even realizing it. Those pervasive messages encourage conformity to some doctrine or another, stated or unstated, overt or hidden, and sell that conformity with less than honorable tactics. Tactics which have been perfected to a fine art that few are able to recognize or resist.
If the purveyors of big doctrine had anything worth having they would not need to lie and cheat and engage in overt control over what others have to say about them. They would not demand special rules that excuse their questionable behavior. They would not demand to receive special privileges or insist that they must be treated as superior to others with no obligation to consider the input of others or even to respect the lives of others. They would be far less engaged in self-gratification and idolatry and more engaged in actually doing good for others.
They do no good at all for anyone of their own accord. Doing so is so unusual as to be remarkable. What is done is always done for a fee, for a price, or for reasons that are unknown to even their own general membership. The costs of maintaining and supporting the idols of big doctrine rarely, if ever return that value in kind. The organizations of big doctrine are not designed to give or return anything of value, only to collect as much value from others as they possibly can.
Meanwhile the individual purveyors of big doctrine are prospering far beyond the average person. Bathed in wealth and luxury, power and control, serving only themselves and those few who control their strings, they present themselves to the public as nothing more than dedicated servants of their fellow man; while nothing could be further from the truth.
But then doctrine is not about truth, it's about power and control, and only those who control us can make us believe and accept that truth is irrelevant and reality is what they say it is, not what we can see with our own eyes. To one extent or another, knowingly or unknowingly, we have all been infiltrated by those who seek to have power and control over all of us, over each of us, not to benefit the whole of man or nations, but only to benefit their own selfish ideological lusts.
In Closing
The purveyors of doctrine are inside your head. They want you passive and silent. They want you to feel defeated and to believe that what they want is inevitable and impossible to stop. So widespread and pervasive are these messages of control that our individual minds and thoughts are overwhelmed and drowned out.
The entire point of the eternal bombardment with 24/7 messaging is just that, to prevent us from thinking and acting based on our own values and reasonable, wiser best interests. And the more indoctrinated we become the less we are even able to remember that there is no such thing as one right way, or organization, or political group or individual person who can righteously decide all for everyone else.
It's an impossible and ludicrous position to assert, yet this is the prevailing assertion of our times. It is only those who are titled, elected, official, incorporated, wealthy and on television who have the answers. It is only they who can create the world we live in, and it is only they who are qualified to decide what our world and our lives must be. We are no longer able to immediately reject such assertions for the nonsense and insult that they are. Indeed, we believe it is all true and that we are powerless, voiceless, and out of order should we stand up and disagree with any of it.
We are in danger of becoming the permanent indentured servants of the titled, elected, official, incorporated, wealthy and televised personalities of the day. The bottom line is there is much more to life than servitude. Servitude is the last choice, and the worst possible situation for anyone to be forced into, or be willingly indoctrinated into accepting. As adults it is never for our own good to be obedient to anyone. Obedience is a fabrication of the indoctrinators who have sold us the lie that obedience equates to being a good person, and in fact the opposite is true. It is up to each individual to decide what being a good person means and to live their lives based on those heart felt and deeply held personal beliefs. This is how we learn and improve not only ourselves but our whole world. This is the only way to genuine progress and success.
To have such a concerted effort underway to take that away from every last one of us should be a wake up call like no other. We are under attack by people who literally want to take us from ourselves, and use us to their advantage. They are accomplishing this with wild success only because they are excellent liars and we are conditioned to accepting everything they say and automatically denying everything we think and feel that's different.
One would have to ask what the point is of having a life, of even being born, when we know we are totally unique individuals who will never be here again but are in every way discouraged and prevented from being unique. We are here to bring our unique thoughts, perspectives, ideas, creativity and actions to the world and to affect our own small corner of the world we live in with our unique presence. That is the contribution we can all make in this life. If we fail to do that, then why are we here? Were we born to obey? Were we born to not exist? Were we born to be ideological slaves to those who seek to control everyone and everything in the world? Are we here to not have any say in creating the world we all live in, and to not share in the wealth or any of the benefits of our grand concerted efforts?
It is not hard to understand why many of us lack confidence in our own ideas, thoughts and perspectives, and because of that lack of confidence we feel it may be better to just go along with the flow. But that would be wrong. It is always a mistake to go along with something that harms us, cheats us, offends us, belittles us, silences us, dis-empowers us, takes what's rightfully ours, denies us justice, or treats us as lesser beings. It is always wrong to allow such things to dominate us because they will soon dominate everyone.
The belief that some are better than others is the truest path to self-deception and the total, irreversible destruction of our beautiful world. That erroneous belief is what is at the very root of all of the pollution, injustice, deceit, lies, corruption, racism and wars that prevent this world from being what it could be. We will never reach our real potential on this earth as long as we agree to be bound like slaves, mentally or physically, to the will of external controllers. If we believe that we must bow down to ridiculous self-appointed superior others in order to be okay in this life, we cannot reach any potential at all.
That is precisely the reason that only acceptance of doctrine and our obedience to doctrine is all we will ever be taught or shown or have modeled to us. That is the reason we are never encouraged to participate, to think for ourselves, to stand up and walk away from what is unacceptable or degrading or patently unfair. That is the reason for the growing inequity and double standards of the great machine we all live in, and work for, and labor under, and build, maintain and pay for with our money and our lives. It would cause those who desire control of all more than anything in the world to lose their control. Our indoctrination serves them. It only serves them. And it does so to our collective and individual detriment.
Those who control us are ordinary men. They are not endowed with any gifts or wisdom or abilities beyond what the rest of mankind possesses. They do not know more or understand more or see more. They are simply concerned with their own goals and desires for their own gratification. They sell themselves to us as greater beings but that is always a lie. No one knows more about the world, about life, about reality, about the mysteries of beyond, or about our own selves than we do. No one has a leg up on us. No one is better qualified to make judgments that affect our lives than we are. And we do not owe anyone our agreement or our obedience. We are not born obligated, we are only told we are.
Only we are qualified to decide our lives for ourselves. Only we will bear the brunt of our actions, only we will feel our feelings, cry our tears, feel our joy and suffer the consequences of what we do, even when what we do is based on the orders of someone else. No one else will ever take our consequences for us, and frankly, no one else should ever be giving us orders of any kind. The very idea of others dictating our lives to us is just all false on its face.
We must reconnect with the simplest truths and remember the reality of what life is, and what it means. What's really important and meaningful to us is what's really important and meaningful. That cannot be dictated to us by others and the very idea of it is asinine. These things are up to us to decide, and are no one else's right to attempt to take away from us or manipulate or alter. Doing so is the greatest theft that can be committed, the theft of the independent self, that which we are, and are meant to be. I'm just sure we don't owe anybody that.
It's gotten to the point that it's very hard to tell when what you think and feel is really yours or someone else's. The only way to be sure is to close off all of the outside influences for a long enough time period that you are able to find your inner silence, and begin filling it again with what you want to have in it. You have to be able to hear yourself think, and take the time required to have that incredibly important part of yourself refreshed, alive and in control of your own life and being.
Shut off the outside influences, and listen to yourself. Shut off the TV. Shut off the radio. Throw out the big media magazines and newspapers. Stop feeding the beast. Shop local and small. Do it your own way, not theirs. Inform yourself, learn to discern, and decide for yourself what's important and what's not, what's right and what's wrong, and what you will agree with and what you won't. Allow creativity into your life in a very real way by deciding for yourself how you will refuse to comply with anything you do not want to comply with. That's your birthright. At least it is if you are free. Shut them all out and in a while you'll probably be thinking your own thoughts, thinking clearly again or perhaps for the very first time. It's worth it. What else is there? What else is worth doing?
We will not miss out on anything by shutting them out because they have nothing that is real. They have nothing whatsoever that speaks to our personal lives directly. What they're going on about is always and only about themselves and what they want the world to be for themselves.
Not shutting them out means shutting ourselves out of our own rightful lives, surrendering our own creativity, values and free will, denying our own sense of right and wrong, laying down for them, and living life on our knees to people who couldn't care less if we live or die. You know it's true. Why should anyone ever have to agree to anything so outrageous?
We can stop the ceaseless racket inside our heads, stop the compulsion to believe them, stop fearing them and fearing what would happen if we stopped letting them control our perceptions, values, actions, thoughts, and life.
We must either decide to reclaim and express our sovereign selves and determine our own lives course or accept that it will be done for us, to the benefit of others.
We can live in a world of our own creation. We can do anything we want to do with our lives. There is no natural law that says otherwise, indeed, that's why we are here. We can do anything we like anytime we like in any way we like, that's what the reality of life is. It's in choosing to do what's right, what's fair, what's just and honest and decent that makes the world the very real place we all live in. This is why we have values, why we speak of character and kindness and sacrifice. It's all about making the world a good place for others, not just selfishly bashing our way to wealth and privilege without conscience or concern for the harm we do others. Clearly, the character of those who would control us all is comprised of every bad human quality and devoid of all that is good and necessary, and even of simple common sense. We do not have any obligation to put up with it.
We can do what's already being done in different ways, better ways, or we could choose to not do them at all. We can define for ourselves what is right and wrong, fair and unfair, just and unjust. We can do things the way we want them done. That is our human birthright.
We can do this together, but it starts by doing it alone. By understanding that the world is ours, not the private property of a few corrupt, psychopathic men. We are not the indentured obedient slaves and lessers to those who control every aspect of modern life by controlling what we see, think and hear, by declaring all values to be their values, all rules to be their rules, and all beliefs to be their beliefs. If they can do that, so can we. It is not their private world, it is our public world. We can have it any way we like. That's the reality and the truth they don't want you realizing and they've taken great pains, and continue to take them every single day, just to ensure you never do realize it. The playing field really is level any time we decide it is. They want it all for themselves. It's up to you to decide whether or not to give them your rightful share.
Our way is more than likely a better way than theirs, across the board. We the people share interests and values that the controllers ignore and denigrate. We can change that. We can change a lot simply by rejecting all of the indoctrination and instead living our own lives with all of our heart and mind and free will, creating the world we want to live in, without them, without listening to them, without deferring to them, without caring what they want or say, just by doing what we know is right, what we know we want. We can change it all and make it good for everyone.
It's true and you know it, deep inside you know it. None of us can affect the momentum of this great controlling machine by ourselves, but each of us by ourselves can reject control and refuse to participate with what we know is wrong. Arise and stake your claim. Yes it could be dangerous but all things considered, do we really have anything better to do?
Yet, the evidence is overwhelming that we are indoctrinated to the point of passive servitude. We have come to accept the unacceptable as normal, so used to being used and abused, pushed around and disrespected, gouged, lied to, cheated, predated upon and harassed by corporations and government alike, that we simply tense up for the beatings when they come, and then battered, we go on with our day as usual. We no longer expect a fair shake. This is the new norm.
The insults and rip-offs straddle the whole spectrum of American life. Who among us hasn't been blatantly ripped off by a company? Who hasn't been gouged by a greedy bank? Who hasn't been outraged by the disrespect we're shown when we call for customer service and the companies don't even pretend to be interested in doing the right thing?
The reality is that if you're ready to lay your money down somewhere, there is always a living breathing human being ready to take your money. But after the sale there is no one around and no one who cares. There is no one ready and waiting to assist you with a problem you were handed along with your shoddy, imported product. When we call companies or even our own local government offices, it is increasingly rare that our calls will be answered by a living, breathing human being who's job it is to actually help us with something. Getting the run-around is the new norm. We no longer expect satisfaction when we lay our money down. We know better.
The power has been transferred from the people to wealthy special interests, and business has infiltrated government to the extent that they are one and the same. All of the common sense restrictions that kept companies from becoming voracious, rampaging beasts have been erased from the books and now we are regularly being lied to, cheated, used and abused at the will of big business and big institutions and are unable to defend ourselves. Our government calls it deregulation and free enterprise. It's nothing of the kind. It's a criminal smorgasbord and we're someone else's free lunch.
We've come to know that our democracy is a sham and that voting is a hollow and pointless exercise. We neither choose the candidates or what they'll do when they're elected, and those who we elect are increasingly disinterested in doing the right thing for us, or doing the right thing at all. Our own government treats us as irrelevant, and that is the new norm.
Americans go bankrupt and lose everything due to an illness or injury because very few of us can afford the staggering costs of medical care. Our medical system is ranked in the 40th percentile globally, a spot so shamefully low that the insult of those high costs is even more outrageous. Greedy insurance companies are deciding our health care instead of our doctors or ourselves, not because it's any of their business but because they are in the business of not paying out for our legitimate claims, and this arrangement allows them to deny most claims out of hand while our loved ones suffer and often die. Our health care system is broken and every bit as cheaply produced and predatory as the rest of corporate America. We know the government will do nothing about it, because they are profiting by letting this go on. This is the new norm.
The scams and scandals of Wall Street have reached mind boggling proportions, with so many miscreant bankers and gargantuan financial parasites pulling off patently illegal rip-offs that we literally cannot keep up with them all, and there is no way to stop them or prosecute them. The thieves have stolen so much of our wealth that they can afford to take years playing legal games to keep their cases from ever reaching a courtroom. It would bankrupt the country to attempt to fight these criminals in court, and we cannot afford it. We can't afford justice anymore. This is the new norm.
Sadly, this short list barely skims the surface. There is literally no end to the ways we are being ripped off and forced to take it with the government's absolute blessing to the thieves and thugs eating away our health, happiness, security, and hope. Congress has never had lower approval ratings from the American people who have become thoroughly and totally disgusted with the whole charade.
But how many of us have ever picked up the phone to express our outrage to our elected representatives? How many of us have written letters to let companies know that their unethical tactics are despicable? How many of us have filed complaints with the FTC, or gone to small claims court to fight outrageous fees not for the money but on principle because the situation is flatly unjust and unethical and they shouldn't get away with it?
Every time we shut up and sit down they win. We are angry but immobile, somehow resigned to expect nothing to improve. We are caught in a twilight zone of coming to grips with the unfathomable. It's that cognitive dissonance thing. We have no field of reference for a crime spree of this magnitude, for such open disdain for the people, and such egregious treatment from those who's salaries we pay.
We're slowly learning first hand that to trust what this government has become is naive and pointless. We're grossly uninformed about the most pressing, urgent, pertinent things our government does because the media is the government too and all they do is lie. Getting ourselves informed is a gargantuan effort and that's an outrage too. Yet millions and millions of us who need only to stand up and start shouting still do nothing. Many are still making excuses for government, and many are still of the belief that the next president will fix everything. By and large we are a huge nation of defeated, overwhelmed, distracted, ignorant, disconnected, paralyzed people who have no clue whatsoever what to do.
We know what we'd like to do. What is it inside our heads that makes us think we cannot do what is so sorely needed? How can this be true for so many millions of people? Is it just a strange coincidence?
We all get up at the same time every weekday morning to engage in work to get money. Is that a coincidence? Do we all do this because we thought about it and came up with the idea all by ourselves? Men wear pants but only women wear dresses, we all know that, but how do we know that and why does it matter? Did we all just think about it and decide it must be so all by ourselves?
We all go to school for 14 solid years, sitting still in our chairs, facing forward, listening to the teacher but having no say over what we will listen to. We accept the assertions of those who stand before us as if they were our masters, while we sit at their command, and listen as they tell us that they are the rule makers who know better than we do, what is good for us and what is required. We accept our obligation to be obedient and silently consenting of whatever they lay out for us. Even when we hate it we still go along with it.
In school we accept the terms of our own powerlessness and legally required obedience to authority without ever considering that no one is our master and that we do not have to comply with anything if we choose not to. But sensible thoughts such as that one have a corresponding indoctrination that tells us that in no uncertain terms, our failure to comply and obey is established grounds for punishment. Failure to obey is such a serious transgression that we may even end up in prison.
Required conformity is no small thing, it is taken very seriously by those who want our compliance. We should wonder why that is, and how it fits into the idea of Freedom and Democracy.
Is this really the best way for us? I'm not seeing how doing it their way has benefited us at all over the last half century. Isn't it really the best thing only for those who want us deeply conditioned to accept the authority of others over our lives? Those who do not want us talking to them as equals, else we'd be demanding fair exchanges of pay for our labor and a whole bevy of things that we'd be much better off having than going without. Yet we believe that to stand up and demand what's fair for us is disobedient or outrageous. It's very bad behavior to demand what's right and fair. It's quickly becoming illegal to refuse to submit to unfair conditions. Having no choice appears to be the new "Freedom".
When standing up for our own best interests feels uncomfortable to us, when disagreeing is a criminal act, we are most definitely indoctrinated to the point of servility.
Why do we all believe our authorities to be men of good will and aboveboard character, dedicated to serving and protecting us? What do we base this perception on? Why do we accept that men in suits and uniforms are different and more important than we are? What makes us believe there is any validity to such a bizarre idea? Why do we feel that we have no choice but to accept life on their terms and may not freely reject their terms and refuse to cooperate or participate? What's wrong about doing that? Yet we do think it is wrong, and that just doesn't make sense. Is that an accident?
By and large the vast majority of us accept without question a universe of indoctrinated perceptions, beliefs, and values that are externally created and fed to us without us even realizing it. We fail to notice that we are being recreated in the image of good citizens and consumers, obedient to authorities, unquestioning of officials, believing only in the goodness of those we pay to keep the country functioning smoothly. We retain this undying, unjustifiable faith even when the country isn't functioning smoothly at all, even when we're threatened by skyrocketing costs of living, a deteriorating infrastructure, job losses in the millions, and two wars under way costing us a trillion dollars already with a third war on the horizon. Will we ourselves, or will our children march off to a war against another country that isn't bothering us and poses us no threat? Will we still be true believers in the goodness and wisdom of leaders who have brought us to the edge of total ruin? Are we brainwashed? Ya think?
We are strongly conditioned to respond on cue to countless symbols and logos, sound bites and pictures, a complex stratagem of multibillion dollar ad campaigns and big media, pop music, movies, and election campaigns. Even the sound of a newscasters voice immediately triggers the appropriate mindset and sets us up to be in the proper receiving mode. These cues don't just evoke a conditioned response they also evoke a deeper corresponding mass indoctrination.
Voluminous cues dominate our lives, expertly crafted and designed to hook into us at multiple levels and make us believe that we are actual participants in the process of self-rulership. But it is all illusion because very few of us have created any part of the world we live in. We are not participants, we are forced into acceptance and pushed into agreement, even given "both" sides of every argument to choose from. Far from being representative of our interests, needs, and lives, the provided sides are not there to give us choice, but to prevent us from choosing from all of the other choices that we will not be given. The viewpoints and realities that directly reflect our own best interests are invisibly relegated to irrelevant nonexistence.
Instead of recognizing the ploy, we internalize the belief that if they aren't talking about it, it must not really matter. We think of corporate media as the representatives of officialdom when the truth is, the only thing that's official is our own take on things.
The entire cacophonous madhouse we live in exists at the desire of others who profoundly profit as they build their version of the world. A world that suits their interests, not ours. A world that benefits themselves, that we have little to no say over, but that we are paying for in total. We have paid for every single thing we see around us, we have paid every penny that makes the rich rich, but how much do we benefit from any of it? Corporate entities have grown wealthy and criminally powerful beyond our ability to comprehend, while we are working harder and longer and getting less and less back from the whole thing. Yet, we think of all this as normal.
The reality is that we are very deeply indoctrinated to be who, and how, we are, so much so that the mere thought of stretching beyond the boundaries we live within, is too scary a thought to ponder.
Is all of this just an absolutely amazing coincidence? A nation of self-thinking people who all come to the exact same conclusions that often can't even be supported by evidence other than the fact that we somehow believe what we believe and so insist it must be right. We conform in so many ways, not of our own accord but because we're driven to accept and even desire conformity, to see conformity as necessary and good. We are indoctrinated through and through. If we are willing to face that and then decide whether or not we wish to continue being indoctrinated, we will at least have done enough to say that we have been honest with ourselves.
Part 2: Indoctrination
Endless and pervasive advertising. So called public relations firms. Public and private education. Television programming. Economics and markets. Political speeches. Religious programming. The corporate news media. Scientific research. Medical practice. Lavish funding and praise for enforcement entities. Pharmaceutical companies. Child protection agencies. Courts of law. Experts and professional journals. The list is virtually endless. These and many others have established a total grip on our minds in literally every single conceivable way. Each and every one of these things does something much more insidious and destructive than most of us could ever guess. These are all elements of systems of indoctrination and these interlocking systems of control quite effectively and thoroughly dictate every aspect of our lives, and even down deeper into the control and framing of our thoughts and values.
The goal of indoctrination is intellectual conformity. It seeks to subjugate, limit, or even entirely eliminate the critical and creative thinking aspects of the inductee and to replace them or otherwise restrict them to remaining within the confines and conformity of the doctrine.
Doctrine is not to be expanded upon or in any way altered except by the sole decision of the highest ranking authorities of that doctrine, regardless of the merit, validity or worth of any uniquely conceived ideas from mere, unauthorized lesser members or outsiders. To be indoctrinated is to accept doctrine, not to create it, change it, challenge it, or in any way impinge on its current dominant configuration.
It is always wholly and completely improper to be able to prove any part of doctrine to be incorrect. This is a process that must be undertaken with tremendous skill, and depending on the doctrine, it could take decades before changes are made, even though the need is long over due and glaringly obvious. In some doctrines the mere suggestion of invalidity can bring a world of woe to those who would dare express such a thing, no matter how right they are.
Because it literally requires an individual to abandon, alter or subjugate much of the self in order to embrace doctrine instead, it is necessary for the indoctrinators to offer a benefit idea, which will supposedly be of greater value than retaining a sovereign, independent, un-indoctrinated self. They will begin by explicitly devaluing the entire concept of the sovereign individual, defining intellectual independence as vulgar ignorance that can only lead to ineptitude and failure in life. Well honed propaganda is used to sell the idea that conforming to doctrine is the only path to personal salvation, whatever that perceived salvation may be.
Salvation comes to those in medical school only upon the successful absorption of the current and prevailing medical doctrine which must be accepted as the sum total of all valid knowledge that is worth having. Anything outside of officially approved doctrine must be dismissed as foolish, or harmful, or purposely misleading. Regardless of how compelling, interesting, or valid outside ideas are, if they are not official doctrine they must be ignored, dismissed and even framed as dangerous, fraudulent or criminal. To even listen to outside ideas is so deplorable that doing so is the same as confessing one's own incompetence. Nonconformity to doctrine is incompetence. Actual incompetence within the accepted boundaries of doctrine is not incompetence, it is something else entirely and it is usually defended with great arrogance and asserted to be perfectly reasonable and acceptable performance. It is the doctrine which must be held sacred and the indoctrinators which must be deferred to unfailingly, right or wrong, no matter what common sense, ethics, legality, or plain truth may dictate.
Doctrine is about retaining control of the intellectual content of whatever territory it claims the exclusive, official ownership of. It is never about expanding the content and it is always against bringing in anything new or anything that proves the doctrine deficient or questionable. It is more abhorrent to defy doctrine, or to defy the rules and procedures of established hierarchical doctrine, or to fail to defer in all ways to the hierarchy of the indoctrinators than it is to let innocent people get hurt due to that doctrine. It is more important to protect the myth of the perfection and infallibility of the doctrine than it is to protect life itself. Indeed, the indoctrinated are expected to endure persecution, imprisonment, even death to defend their doctrine. They have long been obligated to take the fall for their fallen icons in order to spare them the indignity and shame of being revealed to be hypocrites, liars and all manner of unethical cowardly losers. The strangest thing about it is that people are so willing to do that, to protect and defend what amounts to a sham.
Doctrine is not there to benefit the student, though it will always claim that benefiting the student is its primary, selfless goal. It is there to control both the student and the entire body of knowledge, speculation, investigation, action and inquiry into that area. It's no surprise that science and big religion are quite similar along these lines. Science is very much a religion, a religion of control. And religion itself, when it is indoctrinated and turned into something specified by others, is also about control.
In no way will indoctrination seek to give something to the student to empower them in their own freedom and assist their personal evolution. It only gives them as much as they require to carry out indoctrinated duties within the allowable parameters and generally disallows or frowns upon bringing one's own unique creative thinking to the task. If everyone was running around creatively thinking and improving on every aspect of doctrine, the doctrine would no longer be controllable, and the need for conformity would no longer exist. Claiming the right to control depends on the belief that only certain individuals are qualified to determine the rights and wrongs of everything related to doctrine, and control is the entire point. It is the last thing indoctrinators of any kind would ever be willing to give up in any degree. Control is essential therefore conformity is essential. Doctrine and conformity are two sides of the same coin and one without the other is impossible. Where there is conformity there is indoctrination.
Indoctrination despises variance from "the book", and vigorously punishes those who would dare to bring variation to doctrine. It is interesting to notice how important "the book" is to doctrine. The written words of doctrine take on relevance they would not otherwise have, and those in the indoctrination industry point to their written down doctrine as though it were proof of its validity.
Written down doctrine is held out as much more than just proof, it is proof that can be used to back up claims of superiority. When written down or printed, doctrine becomes a solid object, and a solid object cannot be denied. Words turned into physically existing things do not need to be proven, they exist. There is nothing to prove. In reality the only solid object is the ink that has dried on the paper it is sitting on. The doctrine itself, the meaning of the words the ink has shaped on the paper, are not related. The doctrine is not the ink and the ink is not the doctrine and neither of them in any case have any connection to truth. They are all separate unrelated things, one a solid object and the others are thoughts. Written words may or may not be true but that must be determined separately. What is not a given is that all written words represent truth or facts. They very often don't.
The written word is no more or less accurate, truthful or important than the spoken word. When the speaker is unknown, the validity of his words can only be proven to be true or untrue by checking them for yourself. One's willingness to believe something is true does not mean it is true. This is simple common sense. So "the book", whether it is religious, scientific, political, historical or otherwise doctrinal, cannot be seen to have any more validity, truth or significance than that which the reader personally verifies.
Even when steps are taken to obtain personal verification, it may appear to prove something to be true or not true, but depending on where the person goes to find verification and what those sources are, he may in fact find information that is itself something to verify. If the information he uses to verify "the book" comes from indoctrinated believers in "the book" then it won't really verify anything. It will only repeat the doctrine from another source that presents itself as objective when it is in reality an arm of indoctrination. It can work the other way too, proving something true to be untrue because the source is not objective but a strong opponent of the truth. It takes a lot of work to verify anything these days. One unvalidated second opinion is scarcely enough to prove anything true or untrue.
The confusing thing about the indoctrinated is that there are those who sincerely embrace and believe in the doctrine and in all of the surrounding control structures. They don't recognize those structures as controlling or confining and they strongly desire to stay within the approved boundaries of their doctrine. Stepping outside of approved boundaries is something so bad that most indoctrinees would never even think about doing it. To them boundaries have been defined as something good for them, something that will help them stay in "the truth", something that will protect them from the confusion of conflicting outside information which must by definition be wrong. If it was right it would be a part of the doctrine, and it isn't, so it's bad. Checking that out for yourself makes you bad then, and believers in doctrine will do anything to remain "good". They see it all as something that has been put together specifically to be good for them and their trust for it gives it the validity it will in reality lack. And all doctrine has much in the way of lacking validity.
When we encounter those who sincerely believe doctrine, and we perceive them to be very good people at heart, it is difficult to show disrespect for their beliefs because we don't want to cause upset just for the sake of doing so. Yet it is the true believers that allow doctrine to remain dominant in our society. Where we often come face to face with our own common sense distrust of enforced doctrine lies in the proof of the high level indoctrinators themselves acting in ways that are blatantly contradictory to what they represent as truth. They will be the ones caught in scandals of ethics and cover ups of wrong doing.
There is much criminal conspiracy in doctrinal leadership because the fact of the matter is, doctrine is fully not what it sells itself to be. It is simply nonsensical for any person or group to assert that they know everything about something, or that their opinions are better than other opinions, or that they alone have all of the right answers. No such situation has ever existed. If it did, it would be born out by facts and a perfect unbroken record of always being correct, just, valid and agreed upon by all, and there is no such thing. Therefore it is perfectly reasonable to say that all doctrine is imperfect and must be questioned.
Doctrine is taught and reinforced with much ritual and injected pomp and circumstance to sell its validity because frankly, it lacks so much validity that it cannot in whole stand up to any serious scrutiny. There are always many voices who are not allowed entrance into the cathedrals of the believers who would speak compelling and provable truths that are in direct contradiction to that doctrine.
Enforced doctrines could not exist without the concerted effort to silence all those with evidence to the contrary, which can be done in many ways. From censorship to character assassination to threats, lies and even death suffice it to say that where big doctrine exists, big crimes are holding it up.
The little guy, the individual true believer who is able to transmute some satisfaction in any genuine way from enforced doctrine is a testament to how hard we will work when we really want something, and how capable we are of making due with what we've got, remaining within the very restrictive confines we are given.
What's not surprising is that no present prevailing big doctrine out there today can lay one single claim to any equally big good work done. None of them have created any general improvement in life on earth for people, nor solved problems that have plagued humanity for ages. They will all lay claim to benefits that have been achieved by the hard work and dedicated efforts of individuals, but the organized institutions of doctrine are never the direct force that worked to benefit others. The formal institutions of doctrine are self-interested, selfish, detached things that are focused on the immediate goals of gaining and retaining their power, propagating their mythology, and performing the symbolic rituals that identify them and their claims to the intellectual territory they claim to be the official representatives of. They often do little to nothing for their own indoctrinated followers, not in any official capacity. The direct good that is done is always the result of individuals giving of themselves while the greater organization takes the credit and the goodwill that comes of advertising those acts of decency, selflessness and generosity. The institutions proper never miss a meal though many of their followers go hungry every day.
The institutions of big doctrine have grown into a force that has an ever increasing grip on the day to day workings of the world, and in the direction we are all headed as a society and as individuals. Yet, there is less justice than ever, and more dishonesty. There is more back door dealing and secrecy than ever, and less open and honest talk that includes and invites everyone. There is more finger pointing, blame, hypocrisy, incivility, distrust, and division than ever before. The individual is slowly being transformed into a member of a hive collective, being fed messages of indoctrination without even realizing it. Those pervasive messages encourage conformity to some doctrine or another, stated or unstated, overt or hidden, and sell that conformity with less than honorable tactics. Tactics which have been perfected to a fine art that few are able to recognize or resist.
If the purveyors of big doctrine had anything worth having they would not need to lie and cheat and engage in overt control over what others have to say about them. They would not demand special rules that excuse their questionable behavior. They would not demand to receive special privileges or insist that they must be treated as superior to others with no obligation to consider the input of others or even to respect the lives of others. They would be far less engaged in self-gratification and idolatry and more engaged in actually doing good for others.
They do no good at all for anyone of their own accord. Doing so is so unusual as to be remarkable. What is done is always done for a fee, for a price, or for reasons that are unknown to even their own general membership. The costs of maintaining and supporting the idols of big doctrine rarely, if ever return that value in kind. The organizations of big doctrine are not designed to give or return anything of value, only to collect as much value from others as they possibly can.
Meanwhile the individual purveyors of big doctrine are prospering far beyond the average person. Bathed in wealth and luxury, power and control, serving only themselves and those few who control their strings, they present themselves to the public as nothing more than dedicated servants of their fellow man; while nothing could be further from the truth.
But then doctrine is not about truth, it's about power and control, and only those who control us can make us believe and accept that truth is irrelevant and reality is what they say it is, not what we can see with our own eyes. To one extent or another, knowingly or unknowingly, we have all been infiltrated by those who seek to have power and control over all of us, over each of us, not to benefit the whole of man or nations, but only to benefit their own selfish ideological lusts.
In Closing
The purveyors of doctrine are inside your head. They want you passive and silent. They want you to feel defeated and to believe that what they want is inevitable and impossible to stop. So widespread and pervasive are these messages of control that our individual minds and thoughts are overwhelmed and drowned out.
The entire point of the eternal bombardment with 24/7 messaging is just that, to prevent us from thinking and acting based on our own values and reasonable, wiser best interests. And the more indoctrinated we become the less we are even able to remember that there is no such thing as one right way, or organization, or political group or individual person who can righteously decide all for everyone else.
It's an impossible and ludicrous position to assert, yet this is the prevailing assertion of our times. It is only those who are titled, elected, official, incorporated, wealthy and on television who have the answers. It is only they who can create the world we live in, and it is only they who are qualified to decide what our world and our lives must be. We are no longer able to immediately reject such assertions for the nonsense and insult that they are. Indeed, we believe it is all true and that we are powerless, voiceless, and out of order should we stand up and disagree with any of it.
We are in danger of becoming the permanent indentured servants of the titled, elected, official, incorporated, wealthy and televised personalities of the day. The bottom line is there is much more to life than servitude. Servitude is the last choice, and the worst possible situation for anyone to be forced into, or be willingly indoctrinated into accepting. As adults it is never for our own good to be obedient to anyone. Obedience is a fabrication of the indoctrinators who have sold us the lie that obedience equates to being a good person, and in fact the opposite is true. It is up to each individual to decide what being a good person means and to live their lives based on those heart felt and deeply held personal beliefs. This is how we learn and improve not only ourselves but our whole world. This is the only way to genuine progress and success.
To have such a concerted effort underway to take that away from every last one of us should be a wake up call like no other. We are under attack by people who literally want to take us from ourselves, and use us to their advantage. They are accomplishing this with wild success only because they are excellent liars and we are conditioned to accepting everything they say and automatically denying everything we think and feel that's different.
One would have to ask what the point is of having a life, of even being born, when we know we are totally unique individuals who will never be here again but are in every way discouraged and prevented from being unique. We are here to bring our unique thoughts, perspectives, ideas, creativity and actions to the world and to affect our own small corner of the world we live in with our unique presence. That is the contribution we can all make in this life. If we fail to do that, then why are we here? Were we born to obey? Were we born to not exist? Were we born to be ideological slaves to those who seek to control everyone and everything in the world? Are we here to not have any say in creating the world we all live in, and to not share in the wealth or any of the benefits of our grand concerted efforts?
It is not hard to understand why many of us lack confidence in our own ideas, thoughts and perspectives, and because of that lack of confidence we feel it may be better to just go along with the flow. But that would be wrong. It is always a mistake to go along with something that harms us, cheats us, offends us, belittles us, silences us, dis-empowers us, takes what's rightfully ours, denies us justice, or treats us as lesser beings. It is always wrong to allow such things to dominate us because they will soon dominate everyone.
The belief that some are better than others is the truest path to self-deception and the total, irreversible destruction of our beautiful world. That erroneous belief is what is at the very root of all of the pollution, injustice, deceit, lies, corruption, racism and wars that prevent this world from being what it could be. We will never reach our real potential on this earth as long as we agree to be bound like slaves, mentally or physically, to the will of external controllers. If we believe that we must bow down to ridiculous self-appointed superior others in order to be okay in this life, we cannot reach any potential at all.
That is precisely the reason that only acceptance of doctrine and our obedience to doctrine is all we will ever be taught or shown or have modeled to us. That is the reason we are never encouraged to participate, to think for ourselves, to stand up and walk away from what is unacceptable or degrading or patently unfair. That is the reason for the growing inequity and double standards of the great machine we all live in, and work for, and labor under, and build, maintain and pay for with our money and our lives. It would cause those who desire control of all more than anything in the world to lose their control. Our indoctrination serves them. It only serves them. And it does so to our collective and individual detriment.
Those who control us are ordinary men. They are not endowed with any gifts or wisdom or abilities beyond what the rest of mankind possesses. They do not know more or understand more or see more. They are simply concerned with their own goals and desires for their own gratification. They sell themselves to us as greater beings but that is always a lie. No one knows more about the world, about life, about reality, about the mysteries of beyond, or about our own selves than we do. No one has a leg up on us. No one is better qualified to make judgments that affect our lives than we are. And we do not owe anyone our agreement or our obedience. We are not born obligated, we are only told we are.
Only we are qualified to decide our lives for ourselves. Only we will bear the brunt of our actions, only we will feel our feelings, cry our tears, feel our joy and suffer the consequences of what we do, even when what we do is based on the orders of someone else. No one else will ever take our consequences for us, and frankly, no one else should ever be giving us orders of any kind. The very idea of others dictating our lives to us is just all false on its face.
We must reconnect with the simplest truths and remember the reality of what life is, and what it means. What's really important and meaningful to us is what's really important and meaningful. That cannot be dictated to us by others and the very idea of it is asinine. These things are up to us to decide, and are no one else's right to attempt to take away from us or manipulate or alter. Doing so is the greatest theft that can be committed, the theft of the independent self, that which we are, and are meant to be. I'm just sure we don't owe anybody that.
It's gotten to the point that it's very hard to tell when what you think and feel is really yours or someone else's. The only way to be sure is to close off all of the outside influences for a long enough time period that you are able to find your inner silence, and begin filling it again with what you want to have in it. You have to be able to hear yourself think, and take the time required to have that incredibly important part of yourself refreshed, alive and in control of your own life and being.
Shut off the outside influences, and listen to yourself. Shut off the TV. Shut off the radio. Throw out the big media magazines and newspapers. Stop feeding the beast. Shop local and small. Do it your own way, not theirs. Inform yourself, learn to discern, and decide for yourself what's important and what's not, what's right and what's wrong, and what you will agree with and what you won't. Allow creativity into your life in a very real way by deciding for yourself how you will refuse to comply with anything you do not want to comply with. That's your birthright. At least it is if you are free. Shut them all out and in a while you'll probably be thinking your own thoughts, thinking clearly again or perhaps for the very first time. It's worth it. What else is there? What else is worth doing?
We will not miss out on anything by shutting them out because they have nothing that is real. They have nothing whatsoever that speaks to our personal lives directly. What they're going on about is always and only about themselves and what they want the world to be for themselves.
Not shutting them out means shutting ourselves out of our own rightful lives, surrendering our own creativity, values and free will, denying our own sense of right and wrong, laying down for them, and living life on our knees to people who couldn't care less if we live or die. You know it's true. Why should anyone ever have to agree to anything so outrageous?
We can stop the ceaseless racket inside our heads, stop the compulsion to believe them, stop fearing them and fearing what would happen if we stopped letting them control our perceptions, values, actions, thoughts, and life.
We must either decide to reclaim and express our sovereign selves and determine our own lives course or accept that it will be done for us, to the benefit of others.
We can live in a world of our own creation. We can do anything we want to do with our lives. There is no natural law that says otherwise, indeed, that's why we are here. We can do anything we like anytime we like in any way we like, that's what the reality of life is. It's in choosing to do what's right, what's fair, what's just and honest and decent that makes the world the very real place we all live in. This is why we have values, why we speak of character and kindness and sacrifice. It's all about making the world a good place for others, not just selfishly bashing our way to wealth and privilege without conscience or concern for the harm we do others. Clearly, the character of those who would control us all is comprised of every bad human quality and devoid of all that is good and necessary, and even of simple common sense. We do not have any obligation to put up with it.
We can do what's already being done in different ways, better ways, or we could choose to not do them at all. We can define for ourselves what is right and wrong, fair and unfair, just and unjust. We can do things the way we want them done. That is our human birthright.
We can do this together, but it starts by doing it alone. By understanding that the world is ours, not the private property of a few corrupt, psychopathic men. We are not the indentured obedient slaves and lessers to those who control every aspect of modern life by controlling what we see, think and hear, by declaring all values to be their values, all rules to be their rules, and all beliefs to be their beliefs. If they can do that, so can we. It is not their private world, it is our public world. We can have it any way we like. That's the reality and the truth they don't want you realizing and they've taken great pains, and continue to take them every single day, just to ensure you never do realize it. The playing field really is level any time we decide it is. They want it all for themselves. It's up to you to decide whether or not to give them your rightful share.
Our way is more than likely a better way than theirs, across the board. We the people share interests and values that the controllers ignore and denigrate. We can change that. We can change a lot simply by rejecting all of the indoctrination and instead living our own lives with all of our heart and mind and free will, creating the world we want to live in, without them, without listening to them, without deferring to them, without caring what they want or say, just by doing what we know is right, what we know we want. We can change it all and make it good for everyone.
It's true and you know it, deep inside you know it. None of us can affect the momentum of this great controlling machine by ourselves, but each of us by ourselves can reject control and refuse to participate with what we know is wrong. Arise and stake your claim. Yes it could be dangerous but all things considered, do we really have anything better to do?
Posts
Ang: I think your basic premise is unassailable.
ReplyDeleteAlways looking forward to your posts. Keep up the good work.
Brilliant article, thank you for opening doors.
ReplyDeleteWow. Thank you, Ang. :-)
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to say thanks for you brilliant articles.
ReplyDeleteNoel