July 5, 2016

Inter-Dependence Day

What does “independence” mean in 2016 America?  What does it mean to sing, “for the land of the free, and the home of the brave,” from within a modern surveillance police-state and ‘teenage wasteland’?  Ever satisfied with half-measures and half-truths, gimmicks and hot air, we collectively handed over our futures to narcissists in every area of socioeconomic life and category of human endeavour.  Even in many academic circles, it has been long forgotten that it is a logical fallacy to weight the validity of information based on the credentials of its source.  Successive American generations sold their souls and their childrens’ futures for short-lived and hollow gains.  We abdicated our personal responsibility and freedom, for the illusion of greater security and convenience of “authorities” and “experts” controlling every aspect of our lives for us, including how to think.  But most of all, we have failed to raise our children with love, compassion, understanding, and encouragement, and through our own example to become strong-willed, free-thinking, responsible, self-sacrificing, and honorable people.  If you believe at all in the idea that, “it takes a whole village to raise a child,” then it’s not hard to comprehend why our “civilized” society has disintegrated from within.
 
Over the course of the 20th century especially (in correlation with the rise of consumerism, federalism, and corporatism), successive generations of parents have increasingly abandoned their children’s futures out of their own selfishness and willful ignorance.  (Note also: neglect works just as well as abuse.)  The evidence literally stares us in the face, in the form of all the countless eyes of children staring back at us — the tens of millions of children trapped in “adult” bodies — their minds never having been nurtured and guided into genuine pscyhological maturity.  Rather, in truth, all these young and middle-aged “adults” going about their American lives are deeply wounded, neglected, and abandoned adolescents who merely cover their frail psyches behind the masks they create for themselves and each other.  They are ultimately fear-rooted (-driven) personalities because their growth was stunted or blunted by the negligence and neglect of others.  Fear was the language in which they were raised, and rejection.  Their natural, innate innocence and loving natures were routinely ignored, or even attacked, by the many adults they looked up to.  What surprise can it honestly be for people to see that hostility, bigotry, and greed are an exponentiating result?
 
What the hell happened, you often ask yourself…  Deep down, you already know why: we are all deeply interconnected with one another but have been acting like we are not.  Look in the mirror, my fellow Americans — yes, all of us are to blame.  "You reap what you sow" is somehow an unclear concept to many people still, even as they stand in their very own pile of shit, day in and day out.  People have become increasingly lazy, distracted, arrogant, spoiled hypocrites.  People have increasingly turned a blind eye to problems festering in their own homes and communities.  People have become overwhelmingly disinclined to put in the degree of effort required to reap the rewards they rationalize themselves to be worthy of anyway.  People have allowed parasitic ideas and corrupt thinking patterns to take root in and unravel our families and communities from within, by virtue of the costly indulgences of apathy and arrogant presumption.  People have chosen to be lemmings, guided by the hands of egomaniacs.  People have shirked their moral duty to their communities, as citizens receiving communal benefits, by failing to think for themselves and stand up for what they know in their hearts to be right and noble.
 
People want greater democracy, but are satisfied with handing over the country to an aristocratic oligarchy of narcissists.  People want sanity restored, but are satisfied with being handed a binary choice of a criminal elitest and a fascist bigot to choose for the presidency.  People rail against how corrupt the system is, but are satisfied with staking their childrens’ futures on nothing but the delusional optimism that the system will somehow “right itself” without actual effort on their part.  The American Dream will never be more than a fantasy until we wake up from our drunken slumber to see reality as it truly is.  The first step to addressing a problem is to recognize the true, root nature of the problem.  Guess what, the real problem is how most people have been made to perceive the problem.
 
You have likely been misled into thinking the fundamental problem with this country has something to do with groups of “other” people or which political party is in power, when it is you who are responsible for creating the world you wish to inhabit.  Nothing will be fixed so long as the majority of people believe “someone else will fix it.”  See this attitude for what it is: cowardice.  Also, consider taking the log out of your own eye before helping another with the speck in theirs.  The moment we finally choose to take personal ownership for how we live our own lives and each treat one another, we will truly deserve to celebrate Independence Day.  We must be brave enough to be free.

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