I've been recommending to clients, friends, and customers to not follow the news. I've told them that following the news, unless it is sports, show-biz or celebrities will just cause stress because it is designed to do that and by inducing it poison our minds with poisonous ideas and fake facts that have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with the power-elite holding power. And sure enough after endless repetitions of big and small lies, disinformation, misdirection and slight of hand up becomes down and blue becomes red. The power-elite, who own and run the media, can throw out anything they choose and the average citizen worn-down by generations of commercials and propaganda will salivate when the bell is rung. No need to think critically just follow the bouncing ball and sing together with your corporate overlords whose message is carefully crafted for your demographic. This way, you avoid conflict with your family, your friends, your coworkers and your bosses. You don't ever notice the obvious, the Orwellians are always the other guy not your side.
For me, I did not have a deep problem with following politics--I was brought up with not just politics but foreign affairs in a diplomatic family. So I became a nerd. Early on as a teen-ager I moved from wanting to go to Vietnam to opposing the war when I started reading about Vietnam, it's culture, history and the events that began with the attempt of the French to re-establish control of Vietnam, the French defeat in 1954 and then the Geneva Accords of 1956 which, I found out, the US violated and refused to implement because it knew the leader of the revolt against the French, Ho Chi Minh would have won that election and he was a Marxist. I was shocked because I was brought up to believe that the US was the champion of democracy and freedom and wanted people to determine their own fate rather than be dominated by more powerful conquerors like the Nazis and the USSR--there it was in black and white. The US replaced the French as the new colonial power so I opposed the war from about 1966 onwards. One thing led to another when I realized the media was not reporting accurately that there was no "light at the end of the tunnel" and the US was at war there for other than the stated reasons. Gradually I started investigating other events like Jim Crow, our genocidal policies towards the Native people where we did precisely what we accused the Soviets of doing which was to seldom honor any treaty with native peoples who we regarded as animals.
As time passed I began to understand that the official story on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassination were cooked up fantasies and 9/11 proved to be more of the same. I learned the US routinely overthrew governments, assassinated popular leaders, allied itself with the most corrupt and brutal segments of any population whether in Latin America or places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Everything the government and media declared as true was, in fact, false and this information even before the internet was not that hard to find. Anyone investigating most of these events would have had the information they needed particularly after the Church Committee hearing of the late seventies that brought what we suspected were the policies and activities of the CIA were even worse than may of us thought and, in fact, subsequent research showed me that those hearings did absolutely nothing to inhibit the CIA except that they now used more contractors and learned to be very far away from any oversight such that today, the covert arm of the CIA operates in complete secrecy even from the President and, as is the case today, even is carrying out operations against the current President--of course, couldn't happen to a nicer guy but still this is not what we want or do we? I think the answer is yes. Those who I shared my left-leaning values now want a coup d'état and a move towards more war abroad and coercive policies at home (political correctness, limiting speech, forcing people to violate their religious principles etc.).
I am clearly wasting my time attempting to present my ideas, my proof, my evidence and well-considered opinions as a result of my studies in social-science, history, and many other studies that I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to in my lifetime. Very few are open to this and I now realize that I have actually gone about all this ass backwards. My analysis and deep reading of culture and history (the list of influences are too long for this essay) caused me to come to one conclusion. We live in a post-rational age and my mourning for its passing is useless and is just arguing with reality--an argument I can't win nevertheless I've insisted on trying to win it in some twisted Quixotic way.
The advantage, I've found, to this age is that people are hungry for meaning, hungry for some spiritual connection with their fellow humans, animals and all sentient beings--in fact, since I sense and now have rational reasons for believing, all the universe is sentient. The reality is that people want some kind of cohesive and coherent mythical framework and mora order to operate in. This confusion over values and the meaning of life makes us all hungry not for facts but the deeper aspects of life. I know that the only path forward is through spirituality. That path has also been one I've pursued and am now comfortable teaching. My attachment to truth in an age that values only myth is a weakness I will try to overcome. There will always be those who pursue truth but the narrow truth expressed in politics is, I realize, not very valuable except as a spiritual practice. Thus, as one healer showed me, dislike for a political figure like George Bush II was not a good spiritual place to be and he taught me to love my enemies. This is a hard work for me but I need to change that focus so that all those that I oppose, those that seek war, who value cruelty over compassion, who think insults are better than dialogue, who want to destroy nature, who murder people, all of them doing thing that I see as bad or evil, I must love every one of them. I have been show this, I have had the teaching given to me by visible and invisible teachers and now is the time to practice that compassion rather than go on like the obnoxious uncle trying to wake up the family to the danger of the Federal Reserve and the rule of the finance oligarchs. No one cares, really, They want food for the soul not a lecture on how wrong they are.
For me, I did not have a deep problem with following politics--I was brought up with not just politics but foreign affairs in a diplomatic family. So I became a nerd. Early on as a teen-ager I moved from wanting to go to Vietnam to opposing the war when I started reading about Vietnam, it's culture, history and the events that began with the attempt of the French to re-establish control of Vietnam, the French defeat in 1954 and then the Geneva Accords of 1956 which, I found out, the US violated and refused to implement because it knew the leader of the revolt against the French, Ho Chi Minh would have won that election and he was a Marxist. I was shocked because I was brought up to believe that the US was the champion of democracy and freedom and wanted people to determine their own fate rather than be dominated by more powerful conquerors like the Nazis and the USSR--there it was in black and white. The US replaced the French as the new colonial power so I opposed the war from about 1966 onwards. One thing led to another when I realized the media was not reporting accurately that there was no "light at the end of the tunnel" and the US was at war there for other than the stated reasons. Gradually I started investigating other events like Jim Crow, our genocidal policies towards the Native people where we did precisely what we accused the Soviets of doing which was to seldom honor any treaty with native peoples who we regarded as animals.
As time passed I began to understand that the official story on the JFK, RFK and MLK assassination were cooked up fantasies and 9/11 proved to be more of the same. I learned the US routinely overthrew governments, assassinated popular leaders, allied itself with the most corrupt and brutal segments of any population whether in Latin America or places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Everything the government and media declared as true was, in fact, false and this information even before the internet was not that hard to find. Anyone investigating most of these events would have had the information they needed particularly after the Church Committee hearing of the late seventies that brought what we suspected were the policies and activities of the CIA were even worse than may of us thought and, in fact, subsequent research showed me that those hearings did absolutely nothing to inhibit the CIA except that they now used more contractors and learned to be very far away from any oversight such that today, the covert arm of the CIA operates in complete secrecy even from the President and, as is the case today, even is carrying out operations against the current President--of course, couldn't happen to a nicer guy but still this is not what we want or do we? I think the answer is yes. Those who I shared my left-leaning values now want a coup d'état and a move towards more war abroad and coercive policies at home (political correctness, limiting speech, forcing people to violate their religious principles etc.).
I am clearly wasting my time attempting to present my ideas, my proof, my evidence and well-considered opinions as a result of my studies in social-science, history, and many other studies that I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to in my lifetime. Very few are open to this and I now realize that I have actually gone about all this ass backwards. My analysis and deep reading of culture and history (the list of influences are too long for this essay) caused me to come to one conclusion. We live in a post-rational age and my mourning for its passing is useless and is just arguing with reality--an argument I can't win nevertheless I've insisted on trying to win it in some twisted Quixotic way.
The advantage, I've found, to this age is that people are hungry for meaning, hungry for some spiritual connection with their fellow humans, animals and all sentient beings--in fact, since I sense and now have rational reasons for believing, all the universe is sentient. The reality is that people want some kind of cohesive and coherent mythical framework and mora order to operate in. This confusion over values and the meaning of life makes us all hungry not for facts but the deeper aspects of life. I know that the only path forward is through spirituality. That path has also been one I've pursued and am now comfortable teaching. My attachment to truth in an age that values only myth is a weakness I will try to overcome. There will always be those who pursue truth but the narrow truth expressed in politics is, I realize, not very valuable except as a spiritual practice. Thus, as one healer showed me, dislike for a political figure like George Bush II was not a good spiritual place to be and he taught me to love my enemies. This is a hard work for me but I need to change that focus so that all those that I oppose, those that seek war, who value cruelty over compassion, who think insults are better than dialogue, who want to destroy nature, who murder people, all of them doing thing that I see as bad or evil, I must love every one of them. I have been show this, I have had the teaching given to me by visible and invisible teachers and now is the time to practice that compassion rather than go on like the obnoxious uncle trying to wake up the family to the danger of the Federal Reserve and the rule of the finance oligarchs. No one cares, really, They want food for the soul not a lecture on how wrong they are.
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