Checking Out

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:26

There are some people you’d just like to spend a day with, share a coffee, share a beer or a few beer with. We all have a list. Chris Hedges would be one of those for me.

You can see the full video here.

Like me, he’s tramped around the playfields of dictatorships and pondered why we submit to their dictates and commands. And he is now convinced, like myself that we also live in a dictatorship. It’s a unique kind - a capitalist dictatorship but it still works the same. Keep the people mesmerized by shiny objects, cargo, fanciful ideas and a good spicy sprinkle of fear. Keep the people checking out so they don’t check into what you and your cronies have going on.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and you can fool all of the people all of the time too. Yes. You can. You just need to make them believe they are free. It’s the secret sauce. The most suffering slave was the one who didn’t know he/she/they were a slave. Who’d swallowed, who’d checked out.

As Odysseus found out - you must walk inland with your oar until you find a people who know nothing about the sea. Only then, shall you be with your brother and rest. So sayeth Tiresias. We are here on earth to act. To create a better world.

I’m amazed so few see the aspect that has drop by drop, year by year, eroded society - the loss of human agency. It has set our civilization towards ruin. And hell, now we have AI that can do everything for us!

It’s the Willy Lomanization of the world. Self-delusion. Flights of grandeur and fancy. Keeping everyone occupied with sidebars and false debates over race, identity, belief, righteousness when everyone really knows they are brothers, sisters and in the lightest, the deepest of their hearts that we are all one, human, equal, divine. Yet, the light shines on other reflective, distracting things. We fight, we hate, we war, we hoard, we spit, we divide, we cannibalize the world. Tracy Chapman cries in a corner somewhere, I’m sure. For all the bridges we’ve burned.

I’m sure in the whole realm of human existence, never have so many been feeling so hopeless, so helpless, so lacking in any ability to change the world or make a difference. It’s sad.

So don't be tempted by the shiny apple
Don't you eat of a bitter fruit
Hunger only for a taste of justice
Hunger only for a world of truth
'Cause all that you have is your soul

• All you have is your soul. Tracy Chapman

Give me a hug. Give yourself a hug. Gratitude. Pity for others. Give someone a hug. Stop listening to the noise. Turn things off. Walk away. Refuse to be a machine. Look at what is happening now and swim with it. Challenge yourself to find value in quality. Value art, the humanities. Refuse to submit to the mechanisms, the levers that propel us to turn everything into money, crush everything so it will squeeze into a bank balance.

And if all that doesn’t work, at least stop digging. Stand up and look up and see the light. Refuse to check out. Start to think of a way out.

We all have so much love to spare. We are all more than millionaires …

I’m regenerating myself. I’m going to be more naked and more alive in the coming posts. Just a warning. No more dressing, just the lettuce. Let us …

Lemmings

It's the fear.
The fear that gets them
running
and set in a frenzy.

But the problem is
how to keep them running.

Fear only goes so far
until it's just the norm and
the boogie man is no more.

So the solution?

A message packaged
with a little pretty red bow on top
- it's all about the bow
every salesman knows that
and you the product
will keep running
to get to that bow
to untie that bow
to honor that bow.

You'll keep running
or die trying
for that bow ...

But then it's the cliff
and you're of no use
you're dead in the air
just another
used up
product.

That's how this world
of order
works.

How they get
nice young men
to pick up guns
and rape pretty women
on far away shores.

How they get you to
buy what you don't need
or stay in your house
because they said so
and
"it's for the sake of us all."
and if you don't
they'll be no
pretty red bow
and we're all screwed then,
aren't we?

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.

One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. ~James Baldwin