What I see is that…
In recent times, there has been a surge, even more than usual, in what I simply refer to as ‘clickbait’ news. Almost daily, you can read all sorts of ‘outrageous’ or ‘it can’t get any worse than this’ stories, practically in every aspect of life. When someone posts such things, the comments there are worth a sermon; an astonishing number of people are in an incredible state. However, I don’t want to write about that right now. Instead, I want to discuss the ‘responsibility of wordsmiths,’ and what we should or should not do, write, or say.
It’s a bold idea from the outset that I feel like I have some insight, I have intuitions about how things are going, what is happening all around the world right now. Yet, I gather the courage because I felt compelled to share a few thoughts on the matter.
The other day, I watched the movie ‘The Big Short’ (about the 2008 crisis, from an interesting perspective, the same team also made ‘Don’t Look Up!’), and it actually inspired me to write. It’s theoretically about real events, where a strange genius predicted years in advance that the mortgage market would inevitably collapse, and a few made incredible money betting on it. What’s not interesting is that almost no one believed him, and the way the banking system and politics displayed astonishing stupidity and indifference, focusing solely on short-term profit. And that’s exactly how the world works, on both small and large scales.
With the fact that most people are unwilling to acknowledge that what they do every day, every minute, the decisions they make in their lives, directly influence the fate of the world. Starting with how and what we eat, how we manage our waste, how we treat and talk to others, how we behave, how we consume, how we engage in exercising our rights and responsibilities (which is amusing in itself), everything can fundamentally be traced back to how much responsibility we take for ourselves and our actions, how well we play the role of the blind, how much we look away, and how much we shift the responsibility onto something outside of us, be it a perceived or actual situation, entity, or power. (For many, of course, this is trivial, but I feel that these lines have a place now.)”
The easiest thing to say is that…
I can’t help it; it doesn’t matter what I do, because I’m just one person (as seven billion people say, right…). As my poor ex-father-in-law used to say quite bluntly, it’s easiest to be foolish.
Since I often talk about mindfulness, conscious presence, and similar topics, I feel responsible, perhaps slightly more so than the ‘average person.’ I’m not smarter, better, or more beautiful than anyone else, but perhaps I see a few things from a slightly different perspective than most.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories to an extreme degree, but I do believe in them to some extent. I don’t think there’s some evil ‘world government’ sitting on our necks, counting money with a diabolical grin in a secret chamber, but I do believe that corporations, banks, politicians are willing to do anything for profit, and most people operate the same way in their own small lives, just on a smaller scale. And all of this is more than enough to create the current situation.”
Ignorance is bliss
One of my favorite scenes from „The Matrix” is when the traitor has dinner with Agent Smith, and tells him that he’s fully aware that the juicy steak he’s eating and the expensive wine he’s drinking aren’t real, but „ignorance is bliss,” and anything is better than accepting reality. Yet, if in our own little lives, we all just paid a little more attention to what I mentioned above – how we live, what we eat, and so on – incredible change would come very quickly at every level.
Of course, this requires getting up from the couch, taking responsibility for ourselves, acknowledging that we’ve messed up in many ways, and starting to move forward in small steps. It means examining what we eat, how we harm ourselves, how we treat ourselves and our environment, and realizing all the things we’ve been preoccupied with that are completely unnecessary and unimportant. And yes, it will hurt at first. A lot. Second time around and third time too.
But then, slowly but surely, a sense of goodness starts to emerge, a kind of pride perhaps, and even your well-being might start improving. You might even experience something like slowly waking up, opening your eyes, and feeling like you’ve been in a dream so far. You start reconnecting with yourself, and eventually, you might even realize who you truly are.
It’s an absolutely wonderful feeling. It’s worth giving it a try.
A song by Xavier with love:
Creating a Dream
Xavier Rudd
Imagine every where was free to roam
Imagine if the trees could tell us where to go
Imagine that the sun could fill each lonely heart
Imagine confrontation never got a start
Imagine things will were always crystal clear
Imagine if the mind never interfered
Imagine we could fly with broken wings
Imagine if the heart could shed its skin
Please patience please patience please Im creating a dream
Please patience please patience please Im creating a dream
Imagine sacred sights were left to be
Imagine if true activists controlled tv
Imagine captain watson had the final say
Imagine if industry just had to obey
Please patience please patience please Im creating a dream
Please patience please patience please Im creating a dream