Society...
crazy indeed.
I hope you're not lonely, without me.
There is a serious problem within our society.
Yea no shit, there’s lot’s of them. In this article however, I’m gonna nail the fuck down into one of them that (I don’t wanna say anything I’m gonna regret here buuut…) I believe is the core problem.
And that is, ladies and gentleman……..
Dissatisfaction.
To clarify more, I mean not so much the feeling that ‘things are bad now’ but more the feeling that ‘things will be good after x happens.’ Now, you say, “I’ve already read The Power of Now, and yet I’m still here on the internet Googling ‘how to be happy’ so you fucking better give me something better than that cocksucker.”
So let me give you the goodstuff. This ideology of wanting and grasping at certain objects or situations which is the bed-rock of our consumerist society is essentially that of a control-freak. It is the ideology of wanting things to be a certain way, and getting upset if they turn out not exactly as planned. It leads to a feeling of profound unsatisfaction on an individual level, not to mention moral corruption on behalf of those who win from this system, and abject poverty on behalf of those who lose in this global game. What then, you ask, ‘O wise teacher of the interwebs’ is the alternative. Well… you’re probably not gonna like it, but it’s relinquishing control. It’s the feeling of free-fall where you have absolutely zero control over your safety or livelihood, but nor do you have any worries. It’s that feeling when you’ve lost your phone, wallet, and keys while out partying, and upon realising that you are up the proverbial creek and lacking a paddle, you let go of any attempt to make the world as you would like it (aka with your keys in your pocket.) Then you go one further, you champion you, and you let go of any concept of how you would like the world to be and realise that you’re free. That’s the feeling. The freedom of things being so bad that you don’t even try to fix em. The freedom that lies on the other side of a huge clusterfuck.
This ideology of not giving a fuck is exactly what you wanna bring to your everyday life. Now I’m a man of balance. No I’m not, but I know you are, so I’m gonna say that there is no need to ditch your partner, children, and middle-class job and go and fuck hot mid-twenties German travellers, (even though this is what you really want.) Yep, you can find some middle ground and actually incorporate this into your everyday life. And once you do, you might be able to enjoy a life with less anxiety, and less need to work all day to earn less money to buy less stupid fucking shit to put in your stupid suburban home to satisfy your stupid fat partner.
So listen up, there’s a very excellent and very weird book called Ishmael. It talks about different societies, and the essence of it is that in Western society, we developed agriculture in order to live through famines (storing grain) and prepare for the future in order to (in a sense) thwart nature. Many traditional societies took what came, and if that happened to be a famine then lots of them died. So look I’ve never lived in a society apart from a 21st century one, and I’m guessing they were often pretty barbaric sexist, violent and etc, so I won’t glorify them. I think what we have now is incredible, HOWEVER, there are surely positives and negatives to both approaches. Our society at the moment is dealing with mental health epidemics… We’re lonely, sad, fucked up and insecure. We are running scared. We are afraid of being seen alone or as friendless in this society. We are scared of the other humans in the society (who are just as scared of us.) In our brains are ALL SORTS of primal messages and fight or flight responses being sent off by the dozen because we are born into unsafe environments with so much stimuli, that our little monkey brains (that we think we have control over) are energetically and enthusiastically fucking us with a nine inch dildo right in the pooper yes sir!
So Ishmael tells us that while we (termed ‘takers’ in the book) lived through famines and developed this gargantuan global civilisation and dominated the world, the other societies (the ‘leavers’) starved during famines, or got dominated or absorbed by us, and have largely ceased to exist. So, you ask, where is the virtue in that? Well the point is that while they were alive they weren’t crippled by the anxiety and depression and general existential uncomfortability that we are.
So how did we get like this, and how can we get back to a more relaxed style of doing things which doesn’t involve postponing one’s happiness until a time in the future which never arrives?
Well there’s many ways, and here’s one I made earlier.
The story of humans:
We decided we wanted control over our food source so we made agriculture and began storing grain. We built dams and began storing water. We became concerned about productivity and began specialising in certain monotonous tasks and skills, and thus entered a large system wherein everybody relies on the rest of the system to provide it with services, because the individual has given up their own means of production in order to increase efficiency of the whole.
Then we went further and created pensions and Super accounts to ensure that in the unforeseeable future we would be prepared for a disaster, because the system had convinced us that we needed to spend our spare money which we would ordinarily have saved, on superficial bullshit in order to elevate one’s social status above the other members of society. Isn’t that a strange concept. A bunch of monkeys sitting on the ground, and the one that has the most objects or the largest objects or the shiniest objects surrounding it is deemed the coolest?
So somehow we became increasingly disconnected to any form of actually providing for one’s own needs, and reliant upon this huge system to provide. Then this system began to be less of a system to serve the individual, and more of an entity in and of itself. The people who formed it for their own benefit originally, had lost control of it, and now, born into it without seeing its origins are unable to understand why the fuck they have to be part of it.
And don’t get me wrong here, this system did not arise from some Illuminati who wanted it to be this way and control the whole thing. It arose, in fact, from the human psyche which is has an incredibly strong and irrational drive to keep its owner safe, and does so by any means necessary X.
So there are two themes running here… there is the theme of control and fear of the future, which I believe we need to relinquish…. and there is the theme of a system which, born of that human fear and desire to control, was created to serve the human, however no longer does so.
The story of humans will be continued.
Now this is a theoretical article and I’m not going to go and tell you how to start achieving this state of letting go and giving up and pure freedom, but if you look around I’m sure you’ll find a way.
If you do need any pointers, I’d start with a fucking acid trip and learning to backflip… the split second in time after jumping up and backwards but before initiating the arm-swing and tuck is a moment of pure freedom.
Good luck, the world depends upon it.
Peace and love xoxo