Groupthink

It came upon mankind one day. As we sat in the innocence of the worlds way. A person saw that if people think others all want something, they will go along with anything. From that day forth groupthink was the weapon of the leaders. A tool so effective that it would fit into the hands of any deceiver. Every nation that was ever established, was upon this notion mostly brandished; like a sword in the light, the people could only stare with a mixture of wonder and fright. Their own power multiplied by the ability of their leaders to lie, and the inability of anyone to cry: 'this isn't what we we want, it is only a imposed thought!'. All the wars and tribulations, of all peoples and nations. It is the charisma in voices, and the inability of people to make their own choices. A power so immense that once unleashed, it ravaged the world like some demonic beast. For good or ill, we have opened this Pandora's Box. People today fill the air with talk. Saying that what is shall go away, and that we have hope for a better day. But all the while they are in denial, of the nature of what makes us defile, ourselves and our reality. It's the gang mentality. Perhaps some day we will once again revert, no longer allow them to pervert, our souls and minds. Free our selves from the illusion of time. Maybe even the notion of an individual life, and thus avoid the charlatans incessant strife. We ate of the fruit, we took Prometheus' fire, but do we have the ability to forsake the liar. The spectacle we create may be great, but this madness must abate. It will either be us, or the earth that shakes us, from this historic dream. From the well of sorrow we never had to drink, only overcome this thing we call groupthink.

Lines in Rhyme for Our Time

sitting in rooms
breath in the fumes
of this fabricated age
the world is now a stage
a showroom from which to sell
the sound of the stock market bell
listen, talk, call, watch, work, buy, drive
to make it in this new world you must strive
don't try to combat the madness with your will
for if you do you're insane, and you'll get fed a pill

'tis a fatal embrace
joining the new race
becoming a hyper consumer
an itinerate information boomer
no more time for precious introspection
this new world requires your constant attention
in a reality spreading like aids whole world wide
believe my warning, there's no where to hide
the world of natural beauty still exists
as long as some resist, it shall persist

sine quo non

We stand on the precipice, looking down into darkness so immense that we can not comprehend it and think it is something imagined; a horrible dream that can never come true. Telling ourselves that our materialism doesn't really define who we are, but in reality it is as much of a religion as any the world has ever produced. A faith so expansive and complete that it justifies all. We rape the earth with such avarice and viciously lash out at our fellow human beings for reasons no one else understands. Caught up so totally in this religion we can't even acknowledge that our society is crumbling and is only propped up by our evangelical cause distracting our attention to far away places where people are dying for our faith and because of it. Everything has become a commodity, even ourselves. We know nothing of life but insist that we are in a position to educate others, and do so with a passion that defines so many other religions. Soon it will all come to an abrupt end. Like children we shall awake to find the desolation we have created and only be able to weep for our multitude of sins. A rain of tears so long in the making that it will wash away all the lies and assumptions. Propelling us to forever forsake our once precious faith for that of sustainable survival. For in the end there is only life, and without it, nothing.

Idealism

"You are all already Buddhas. You need to achieve nothing. Open your eyes."
-Shakyamuni Buddha
As far as I've ever been able to discern, the two most distinct types of people are those who believe in what this quote says, and those who are incapable of holding such high opinions of humanity.

Threshold Theory

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history." That brilliant quote comes from that most profound of Philosophers, Hegel, and within it lies the fundamental paradox of modern history. We are now at a faze in which everything is carefully documented and preserved for the benefit of future generations. There's only one small problem with this, collectively we consistently prove incapable of doing so. It is universally accepted that it is impossible for people to write history until at least 25 years after an event occurs. This is primarily explained on the basis of the unavoidable nature of bias when one is closely linked to the times in which one lives. This is probably true, but I prefer the explanation given by the Threshold Theory. It rather simply states that the vast majority of people will choose not to accept a fact if it causes their brains to reanalyze to many previously accepted concepts, and thus no matter how valid the observation they are confronted with is, they will necessarily disregard it and/or switch into apathy mode as a subconcious defence mechanism. This is most commonly expressed through the expression: "I'm not ready to accept that". A lie readily accepted is often very difficult to discard. For example, most westerners still believe in the concept of Western Civilization as positive, or at the very least necessary, force upon the world. This is something that western culture has accepted as a fact since the time of the Renaissance. Well, despite all our achievements in the realm of science and art we refuse to admit that the only thing we really have ever had on the rest of the world is an indisputable ability to visit organized violence en masse upon peoples. But accepting this would go against years of schooling and generations of arrogance; and thus most people can't acknowledge this rather glaring fact that uneducated people in the so called Third World are completely ready to accept as fact. Another good example of this is how we call our essentially Imperialist and racist behavior as 'peace keeping'. Once again claiming a sort of moral and logical superiority to the people we are bringing our 'peace' to, even though we have sometimes ostensibly rejected these notions (e.g. today's Europe). We are getting to the point in which we starting to regard some of our assumptions as mistaken, but only in part, the broader underlying thesis is still maintained and preserved as indispensable. Although you might 'not be ready to accept this', you better damn well believe the people who call themselves your leaders do, and furthermore, sustain their authority through it. By heaping more and more lies onto the mountain of previously accepted lies, they are ensuring that most people will never be able to move beyond these notions in their lifetime. Don't think for a second that I think myself above this cruel aspect of the human psyche, or even that I'm saying something original by pointing it out. I merely like to discuss such things as a process of self awareness in which I hope to encourage in myself and others the idea that accepting anything as a 'truth' is just going to lead to your mind getting attached to it and basing a lot of subsequent 'truths' on it. We aren't born with these notions, and I'm fairly confident we don't get to keep them when we die, so why take them so horribly serious in between and play into self-serving leaders hands?

SCREAM

Monkeys and monkeys and monkeys called men

reveling in cacophony and sin

call it corrupt, call it madness

no matter how much you see there's something you miss

It sorta makes sense

crazy and random and oh so intense

keeps you paying attention to the charade

don't cry be scarred or even complain, enjoy the parade

My attempt at veracity

It isn't always easy to be honest with others, but it's a far more difficult thing to be honest with oneself. Some days however, you get just the right brain chemistry going to be able to accept it all. Such is today for me. I am looking back on my previous posts realizing how much I have been pontificating and how little I have actually been expressing of who I am. What incites me to make my assertions of truth is to see people in recent history making the same mistakes over and over again, all the while claiming to have progressed so far. "To be rational is so glorious a thing, that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.". John Locke said that, and I feel that it pretty much sums up the arrogance of western thought. I can't help but believe that most people are pretty decent, and if they're not then it's usually easy to see why that is too. Perhaps I'm just a fool for hoping that some day we are going to reach a point when rationalism or altruism trumps such emotions as fear, selfishness and greed as the primary motivation for peoples actions. Maybe I should just accept the verdict of the great Buddha that suffering is inevitable as long as there is desire. It all just seems completely self imposed through stupidity and ignorance. It's hard for me to watch so many people resort to drugs and alcohol to get them through each day. There is nothing wrong with drugs as a recreational tool, but when we need them every day just to keep going, that's something different. What are we coming to when the only reason we voluntarily socialize anymore is just to get intoxicated? Am I such a ridiculous idealist in thinking that humans should be capable of more? I'm sorry, rhetorical questions are about as useful as pontificating. All I'm trying to say here is that I think we could be so very happy if only we had the ability to discipline our collective behavior. I don't like the sort of top down authoritarian way that the communists tried to do it, it must be organic to my thinking to have any chance of success. But once again, I must concede that such high minded hopes for our world are just my way of coping with this rambling symphony of sadness we call a country.

The Fear

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."
-Shakespeare (Julius Caesar Act II, scene 2)
I recently went to an event put on by a group of intellectuals who attempt to tell the truth where the media tells lies, a noble endeavor. This particular one was about the fallacies that were told about 9/11. Well anyway, before it began a man jumped up onto the stage and began to shout about how these intellectuals will only tell you the temperature of the water but not how to dry off. He proceeded to expound that all the talking in the world accomplishes nothing and that if we really cared about what our leaders were doing we would start a general strike that would bring our government to its knees. This man was of course booed and physically forced to leave after about 30 seconds. I might have been the only one in the audience who truly felt for this poor guy who actually thought that people really want to stick their necks out to precipitate change. Marx once wrote that "the workers have nothing to loose but their chains", which was true at one point. Now the workers of bourgeois America have a life of unparalleled extravagance and ease. This is the primary reason, even if they deny it unto the grave, that such intellectuals content themselves to just talking a lot and patting themselves on the back for how well they talk. They would never dream of sacrificing such a luxurious life for the great unknown of revolt, no matter how many foreigners or poor peoples lives our government destroys. They are simply afraid of a life in which everything they have known would simply vanish and they would have to learn how to survive without television, SUVs, cell phones and all the other consumer distractions. How have we grown so weak and servile? Our founding fathers had a lot to loose by rebelling against England, and many of them lost it all in the struggle, but they did it anyway.