One simple question you need to ask yourself

December 20, 2012
Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile

Everyone has a catalyst. A breaking point where we finally say, “enough is enough” and finally begin to take action.

Maybe it’s watching your beautiful daughter be sexually assaulted by government agents for having committed the crime of flying to Disney World. Or having some government agency tell you what you can/cannot put in your body. Or having your son’s lemonade stand shut down. Or being sentenced to jail for collecting rainwater.

Many of us, though, are indoctrinated from birth to believe that our country is the best, highest pinnacle of civilization. So we’re programmed to hang on to the bitter end. Instead of taking action at the first sign of danger, we’ll wait… and wait… and wait… until we finally reach our breaking points.

This is unusual for a living species. Animals in the wild have a honed sense of danger. They survive because they listen to their instincts and take immediate action.

We humans, on the other hand, have decades of propaganda clouding our judgment. It’s been this way for most of history, in fact. In the past, we allowed ourselves to be enslaved to single individuals– kings, emperors. Now we’re enslaved by an idea.

This idea suggests that, simply because we happened to be born on a specific piece of dirt, that we can be saddled with obligations we never signed up for… to pay taxes, serve in the military, spend our entire working lives paying down the debts of previous generations, use a corrupt money system controlled by a tiny elite, etc.

The propaganda is so effective that people truly believe these are all the ‘costs of living in a free society…’ As if the society is actually free.

Yes, the West is replete with superficial conveniences– Starbucks-a-plenty, big box retail shops, TGI Fridays, sit-coms, and cookie-cutter subdivisions. But this all seems a pithy yardstick to measure freedom or quality of life.

In addition, the propanda is so effective that people even ask for their freedoms to be taken away, all so that the ruling elite has more control.

“Please bathe us in radiation to protect us from men in caves…”

“Please conjure infinite money out of thin air to protect us from bank failure…”

And now it seems to be “Please disarm the population to protect us from crazed killers…”

Each time this happens, national dialogue comes to a screeching halt. There is no debate over policy, and any dissent is branded as unpatriotic and disloyal.

History is full of examples of this, starting as far back as the death sentence of Socrates for rejecting the state religion, criticizing Athenian political leaders, and questioning the validity of Democracy.

When a society loses its capacity for intelligent discourse focused on facts and minority-held views… when a people loses the will to question authority… it signals a hastened decline into tyranny.

This is prevalent everywhere in the west today. Topics such as climate change, September 11th, ‘taxing the rich’, gun control, etc. are so sacrosanct that the mere mention of a dissenting opinion is ridiculed.

I understand that a man went on television recently, for example, to argue for freedom and the right to bear arms. He was lambasted on live TV as an ‘unbelievably stupid man’ who doesn’t ‘give a damn about the murder rate’.

It seems quite obvious now. There can be no discussion. And at some point, a reasonable human being has to reflect on the society that has developed around him and wonder, “Do I have anything in common with these people anymore…? Do we share any core values? Or do we simply share the same passport cover?”

It’s certainly a question worth asking… ideally before you reach your breaking point.

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