We have our minds that perceive reality. In it we are bombarded by distraction. From your phone to the TV to newspapers–well not those anymore for the younger generation, let’s call them what they are–tabloids.
You see your reality is uniquely your own. You can retreat to a mountain side and live by yourself for your life and enjoy whatever fantasy you’d like to play in your head.
But, when you come down off that mountain, you interact with others and with their reality. We have created wonderful systems for operating in conjunction with others realities. When we opt-in for greater and more complex social structures, we also interact with a greater and more complex inter-meshing of realities. The challenge then of course is to extract some type of similarity within the realities to create group coherence. Without the shared aspect, the shared variable, the group does not hold and it dissipates back into their separate realities.
We can visualize this clustering through network nodes. There can at times be a person who is the shared reality and that is the most complex grouping, a shared reality through the relationship you have towards another. The friend of a friend is the most powerful connector for it bases the connection through an individual–a fluid identity and interaction–rather than a fixed variable imposed on us like race or gender which is immovable (save for a particular type of surgery).
Politics is the art of manipulating these identities to coalesce around a particular person. That person is just as fluid as he/she needs to be in order to merge and be compatible with a group’s reality. This is why our inherent distaste for politics yet our affection for the politician when meeting him/her in-person is so hypocritical.
Say what you will about the current President of the United States, but as an American if he were to walk into the room and reach his hand out to shake yours would you refuse it? For those bold and delusional enough to argue yes you would refuse it, in so doing you are rejecting the President, the cornerstone of what your citizenship is based off of. And citizenship is one of the strongest and most abused realities imposed into the collective conscious. It is so powerful to claim that those in a land will abide by certain rules/realities and all those born in that space will follow those rules by very nature of their birth there.
National identity is taught and woven into identity from birth. If it isn’t the daily pledge it is the international “Games” like the World Cup and Olympics. But what if you don’t identify with your citizenship? This is one of the greatest dangers to the modern political system and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law and governance that country has established. Rebellion and rejection is one of the reasons why counter measures are so pervasive towards those who act up. In some instances the measures are protective for those who do follow the rules and in other cases the measures are created to set clear examples of what happens to those who don’t comply.
As technology advances and corporations grow to a power greater than a nation’s governance–a reality seen so strongly in our biggest corporations–we see that corporations actually have become the super power within the global economy–they are now fighting for control of the collective conscious’ reality. Are you more of a Google mindset or Apple or Facebook or Amazon or Alibaba/Tencent? Each one has a clear set of values and reality they are working to establish.
Through a domination of the international rules by an army of legal, tax, a lobbying professionals, corporations are incentivized to play regulations like a fiddle. This outrages the individual and middle class who thought there were measures in place to put large organizations in check–in reality all it did was make their own independence less. So they create grass-root efforts and put enough pressure on politicians–who live and die by election results. So, the politicians counter the corporation’s playing by making moves with a speed more closely related to an electric wheelchair, spraying 1000s of pages of legislation filled with such corruption inside of it that it spews out like a jelly-filled doughnut were anyone to bite into it.
The corporations break free of the clutches of government through hiring the best and brightest, arming itself with flexibility across it’s global offices. So in the passing of any new legislation, they’ve easily got 10 different contingency plans ready to go. The governments, stalled by lobbyists and needing to make sure they mesh with the realities of enough of their constituents to win re-election, weave a web of corruption filled tomes. These get passed through with as much skill as can be mustered for the personal financial reward of the politicians is so high that that really is the most important part of their job–fill the doughnut with their particular jelly and make sure America eats it. One clause on page 623 combined with another in page 742 allows a major donor to their campaign an unfair competitive advantage and keeps those campaign contributions flowing.
And that’s where newspapers and true journalists used to come in. Bite into the doughnut and absorb every mind-blowing, blood pressure raising ounce of corruption within those lines and expose them to a concerned public ready to act. Not anymore.
The journalists, often sitting is sparse conditions quite contrary to the other corporate and political counter-parties, used to diligently sift through and understand WTF is going on in the 1200 page legislation. For that is their job. The politician could care less as long as those two clauses pass and the title of the Bill “sounds good” for the mass public to unconsciously accept, because who would argue against a politician who voted to approve the “Love our Children Always” Bill. BTW, the reason the bill is so long is because each politician needs to make sure that he/she gets their clauses in there hidden amongst the impossible to read legalese–a further deterrent used to encourage the public’s disinterest in light of all these documents being “available to the public” [a far cry when a per-requisite to decipher the language is a law degree].
One only has to look at simple things such as the the specific isolation of race horses as a specific asset class for depreciation in our tax code to know just how absurd the entire outcome of the confusing, expensive, inefficient process is. Unfortunately, our modern journalists are mob provocateurs grabbing pitchforks at every opportunity who think it’s the appropriate course of action to change the system with pitchforks, mob tactics and rhetoric rather than through intense understanding of the facts and doing the hard work of filtering through the actual mess created to provide astute insights and resolutions.
Mobs are of course the form of feed that politicians have been craving. For mobs are demonstrative of an outcome that reduces the infinite complexity of our differing realities into a simple through-line known as group identity that can be cut up and served for dinner between the hors d’hourve and entree course at a lavish member’s only establishment.
The more distracted we as individuals become only furthers inhibits our independent thought for our thoughts follow the reactions of the distraction. And the more we coalesce around simple group identity issues taking up our internal space, the more the uniqueness and awe of our individual realities start merging into a unified reality. And thus the easier we are to cut up by analysts and be eaten by politicians. In order to win an election, a politician needs to make sure he/she appeals to one serving of the Pacific Northwest carrot group, two-thirds of the Southwest broccoli group, 7 servings of the midwest beef group, and wash it down with 3 glasses of Northeast Lager.
The hardest part of politics is to corral a group of wishy-washy cats with different thoughts, agendas and realities, but through infusing purposefully egregious thoughts into our psyche, we take the bait and solidify around a cause–taking one staunch stand in one direction or the other. Now, we are as easy to chop and unmoving as raw celery is on a cutting board. In the modern political landscape with the pervasiveness of technology, the spread of analytics, and the gamification of the system, you are a piece of celery. Unmovable, crunchy, and optional.
Don’t be celery. Think for yourself. Create your own reality. Make your own decisions. Engage in thoughts you only wish to engage in. Live the life uniquely you. Or not. Perhaps you really enjoy being celery. #nomnom
The irony in me pointing this out is that is further perpetuates it as a reality. So instead of ending the article with a pessimistic soothsaying conclusion, here’s the reality I am painting.
Find our own unique ways to infuse more moments of independent thought into our daily life. Be it an artistic creative expression that allows us to create or an internal moment of thoughtlessness through meditation.
Each of these allows us to disconnect from the noise and distractions that have consumed our servers. If you think of each person’s mind as a server and the collective as a server farm, how much of that farm is filled with distraction that continues to move us down a reality of distracted and disconnected with other humans?
Instead, focus on the small allocated portion of “blissful moments” in life. No matter what you felt about Cavanaugh, you aren’t ending discussions or thoughts feeling blissful even if it’s with those that agree with you, you’re left with a bitter taste in the mouth one way or another.
What are some thought patterns you can come up with that will allow you to be blissful in both the thinking, discussion and action of (for thoughts become words become actions)? Start filling your server with more of those and eventually we will collectively engage one another with a compiled reality that is more blissful than it currently is.
If you have 80% of your thoughts and reality filled with anger and you interact with another person whose reality is also 80% anger, the dominant energy of that interaction is going to be anger. Ever hear of a story that goes: Two Angry People Walk into a Bar…and they have an amazing uplifting time together filled with joy and bliss? Nope.
This is why children and dogs are so important for humanity, for they are most times innocent and blissful which remind you of those qualities within yourself, and in so doing, it makes those other moments worth it.
Population control would drop quickly if the demeanor of a child were that of a CNN reporter’s. Would you really opt to spend many years of your life taking care of a dog if it constantly pointed out derisive things like Sean Hannity?
The only reason they are where they are is because people listen to them. Turn them off and enjoy time outdoors, with your children, etc. and support local newspapers and quality journalism.
Let those people do the hardcore research, sifting through the corruption and keeping politicians in check beginning at the city level. As the smaller units of political responsibility gets bolstered, it will eventually work it’s way into the larger regional, state and national scope. The more newspapers are able to pay based on the worthiness of a reporters work, the more effort and quality journalism will be reintroduced, as competition no longer becomes anyone with a blog.
You can read about it in the morning times as you sip coffee and enjoy family time, knowing that behind the article is an entire infrastructure of responsibility and hours devoted to the article–not 15 minutes to get the most eyeballs.
When you enjoy the coffee and family time, you get that 80% anger down to 5%. I do advocate staying on top of things especially locally, as otherwise it is merely ignorance–which is not cute–but there’s a clear distinction between staying informed and staying obsessed.
If you were to choose staying obsessed with the problems of the modern political landscape and staying obsessed with gratitude of the joys and wonders of life like puppies and children in real life, which would you choose? Which would you rather attract in conversation with others? How would that reality look?