Old World and New World mentalities have very different ideas about what should guide your life and to what extent that guide should be regarded as an authority. Old World beliefs tend to be codified, they tend to be set out in texts, usually religious but not always, with set rules that followers are supposed to adhere to. Thou shall not do this or that etc. In contrast New World beliefs tend to be viewn as the opposite, with the focus placed more so on the individual, and the emphasis placed on choice, so much so that even the basic tenets of such beliefs are undefined, left for the individual themselves to decide.
In a world that is increasingly divided, membership of these two worlds has become almost exclusively religious in the former case and spiritual in the latter case. Spirituality in this context is used as a moniker to refer to people who in essence behave as if they have a religious belief but one that is independent of the traditional concept of God. In some cases you can go so far as to say Spirituality is the idea that you are God, not in an all-powerful context but rather in the sense of defining the highest authority. Old World mentalities preferred to conform to a system where the highest authority is not considered to be human but a being beyond that level of evolution. The trouble is no matter what those religions claimed no such God ever dictated verbatim what people should believe and how they should behave. The scriptures that are considered the first point of reference for each of those religions were, ultimately, written by Man. Men who claimed to know what God or Gods believed. The problem with that system is that ultimately it is defined by faith, not in any higher power as they claim, but faith in mankind itself and faith that those who came before were sincere in their divine affinity.
By contrast with Spirituality and the definition of the self as the highest authority, your beliefs become defined only by that which you can directly experience. That is incredibly limiting when we live in a world that is filled with many things we can never directly perceive and must accept what we are told. To quote the Matrix the doubt comes when you get uncomfortable with the way things around you are and it becomes most apparent when you interact with "the system" - "when you pay your taxes" - you have a rough idea of where your money goes but when you stop and question that you realise you don't actually know. As transparent as Governments can claim to be, you can't follow the money you paid to see what happens to it. You have to accept what you are told about where it went and what it was used for. Therein lies the inevitability of Spirituality, that it is not possible to be all knowing, all powerful, and the highest authority so long as you live in a system that has rules and regulations that you have no choice whether you follow them or not.
Spirituality I see as a craving from those who have left religion and abandoned its ideas but still want to hold onto the idea that their faith isn't ultimately placed in the hands of other people. Spirituality is the idea that no faith is needed in anyone but yourself, much like solipsism it asserts that the self is the only thing you can truly know and therefore everything else is debatable and you should seek to live a life that does not cause conflict with the self - in other words living a life where you listen to the spirit within you, or a spirit within the Universe itself as opposed to a divine being.
The problem I have with both of these ideas is that ultimately, they are all defined by faith, and who or what you place that faith in. Personally I'd rather live a life where that question is never answered. I would rather live a life where you do not assert either way an answer to the question of higher powers. I prefer to live a life that is perhaps best described as agnostic, which is to say that I am open to the idea of a God but have no evidence one exists, but do not assert lack of evidence implies the contrary to be true. One of the fundamental principles of the scientific method is that you can't assert a negative as true, you can only disprove evidence for a positive statement. This is how I prefer to live my life. By letting my beliefs be defined by that which I experience first hand whilst remaining open to the possibility of something more.
We Didn't Know
I am tired of this "We didn't know" attitude to Bexit being presented by people who were prominent Leave campaigners during the referendum. This attitude is incredulous. It's being used today specifically about the cost of Brexit as a report released said the cost of the "Max Fac" customs solution will likely cost UK businesses £20bn a year.
Google has a wonderful feature that lets you search within a date range, put in two dates and it will show you web pages and news articles that were published during that time. If you head over there and stick the 1st of Jan 2014 and the 23rd of June 2016 into it and search for "cost of Brexit" there are thousands of articles on the cost, their estimates are wide ranging but many government analyses, not just by UK governments but by other EU governments and by independent bodies all have figures close to what is being reported now.
There's a number of studies by academic institutions which looked deeply into the data surrounding this whole debate, including one by CEP the [Centre for Economic Performance] in the LSE [London School of Economics] called "The Consequences of Brexit for UK trade and living standards" - you can't get any more explicit than that with a title pointing out exactly what is being reported today. This paper was published in March 2016, 3 months before the referendum and it put the price of Brexit between £26bn and £55bn.
Those were their "conservative estimates" which were in the event of a "good deal" with their extreme being £127bn in the worst case scenario. Also worthy of note the professor who wrote the report didn't want to be in the EU so you can't even cry bias as reason for ignorance - the author is a eurosceptic not a europhile so you can't claim their report was made to try and sway people towards voting to remain.
This "we didn't know" excuse is complete narcissism, it's being used by people trying to squirm their way out of this mess without admitting they were wrong. "We didn't know" - you did know, you were told all of this before it happened, you just didn't care and didn't want to hear it and you can't claim you weren't told because we have the receipts. Your selective memory won't get you out of this one. Now you have to cough up and pay for what you voted for you're changing your mind because the reality is sinking in.
The worst part is you're doing it in the most infuriatingly obtuse way, rather than just coming right out and saying "I was wrong, this was a mistake" - which if you did it might actually sway the opinions of the people who only voted leave because everyone told them to and turn the tide of public opinion fast enough to stop this before it's too late. We already know a majority of people now believe this was a mistake and that number is growing and with the disproportionately high number of leave voters among the older generation and the grim reality of a 610k per annum death rate in the UK we also know it would be prudent to say well over half a million people who voted leave are now dead.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see this whole thing is a train wreck, considerable damage has already been done to our nation and our economy and we still have a slim chance of reversing it and that's being suffocated by narcissism and arrogance of the people who just won't stand up and say "This was a mistake" and for once in their life actually be honest with voters.
Google has a wonderful feature that lets you search within a date range, put in two dates and it will show you web pages and news articles that were published during that time. If you head over there and stick the 1st of Jan 2014 and the 23rd of June 2016 into it and search for "cost of Brexit" there are thousands of articles on the cost, their estimates are wide ranging but many government analyses, not just by UK governments but by other EU governments and by independent bodies all have figures close to what is being reported now.
There's a number of studies by academic institutions which looked deeply into the data surrounding this whole debate, including one by CEP the [Centre for Economic Performance] in the LSE [London School of Economics] called "The Consequences of Brexit for UK trade and living standards" - you can't get any more explicit than that with a title pointing out exactly what is being reported today. This paper was published in March 2016, 3 months before the referendum and it put the price of Brexit between £26bn and £55bn.
Those were their "conservative estimates" which were in the event of a "good deal" with their extreme being £127bn in the worst case scenario. Also worthy of note the professor who wrote the report didn't want to be in the EU so you can't even cry bias as reason for ignorance - the author is a eurosceptic not a europhile so you can't claim their report was made to try and sway people towards voting to remain.
This "we didn't know" excuse is complete narcissism, it's being used by people trying to squirm their way out of this mess without admitting they were wrong. "We didn't know" - you did know, you were told all of this before it happened, you just didn't care and didn't want to hear it and you can't claim you weren't told because we have the receipts. Your selective memory won't get you out of this one. Now you have to cough up and pay for what you voted for you're changing your mind because the reality is sinking in.
The worst part is you're doing it in the most infuriatingly obtuse way, rather than just coming right out and saying "I was wrong, this was a mistake" - which if you did it might actually sway the opinions of the people who only voted leave because everyone told them to and turn the tide of public opinion fast enough to stop this before it's too late. We already know a majority of people now believe this was a mistake and that number is growing and with the disproportionately high number of leave voters among the older generation and the grim reality of a 610k per annum death rate in the UK we also know it would be prudent to say well over half a million people who voted leave are now dead.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see this whole thing is a train wreck, considerable damage has already been done to our nation and our economy and we still have a slim chance of reversing it and that's being suffocated by narcissism and arrogance of the people who just won't stand up and say "This was a mistake" and for once in their life actually be honest with voters.
Nostalgia Covers the Cracks in Our Memories
There's a desire to relive the past that we all hold. No matter how forward thinking you can regard yourself to be, inevitably there are experiences in life that we enjoy so much in the moment that long after they come to pass we look back on them with fondness. This act comes with a feeling, an emotion that is quite odd and that is Nostalgia. I say it is odd because it is in essence a filter we place over our memories. Often it begins with clarity and they memory remains true to the experience, but with time the memory fades and becomes cracked and Nostalgia adds colour, fills in the cracks and smooths over the surface to create a new image, one that often ends up diverging from the experience itself.
With experiences that are lived in the moment and can never truly be relived, we are saved the heartache of reliving these moments only to find they don't match up to our recollection. However when it comes to media and forms of expression that have been preserved, even physical places, we are given the opportunity to indulge in our Nostalgia. In that moment we get to see what matches up to our memories.
The longer it has been since you last experienced these moments, the more likely it will be that your recollection diverges. It is perhaps for this reason that we often pick the things we love the most and regularly indulge in the Nostalgia. Whether that be music from decades past that we still listen to frequently, or old TV shows or Movies etc that we watch often, or Games we return to and replay to experience all over again.
Sometimes we forget so much of these experiences from the first time around that we get to experience them again as if it was for the first time all over again, but this is rare. In all my years of indulging in Nostalgia it is more common for the memory and the reality to diverge. Shows I watched and fell in love with as a child can seem incredibly boring to me now as an adult. Special effects that seemed amazing as a kid, now become more apparent to be illusions. Production quality does not degrade over time, the medium is preserved as it ever was, the only difference is that I am that much more aware of what is happening that the cuts and edits stand out, to the point where the illusion is spoiled. Even the impressions actors made, the perceptions of their personalities can change. Jokes that went over your head as a child in innocence now land and you see things in a new light - that can be good or bad. It can be good if it lets you experience a different point of view, or it can be bad if it feels out of place.
When we talk about remakes and reboots, we often like to think that the versions of the things we loved when younger were perfect, when in reality they rarely are. One benefit to seeing new productions is the enjoyment of seeing things updated and redone with a level of production and composition that the originals could never afford. Often the remake or the reboot ends up being truer to the creators original vision as they finally get to make it the way they had pictured it. Take any show that has been around for 10 seasons or more and compare the first and last seasons and often the change is immediate and apparent.
Nostalgia covers the cracks in our memories. Sometimes you have to reminded of the reality before you can let go of your opposition to progression. Sometimes we have to be reminded of how bad things actually were, in order to realise how good things have become and to have the desire for the things we loved to be experienced again by a new generation, in a new way, with a new vision. Who knows, it might even raise awareness of the originals and allow a whole new generation to experience those and judge them for themselves.
With experiences that are lived in the moment and can never truly be relived, we are saved the heartache of reliving these moments only to find they don't match up to our recollection. However when it comes to media and forms of expression that have been preserved, even physical places, we are given the opportunity to indulge in our Nostalgia. In that moment we get to see what matches up to our memories.
The longer it has been since you last experienced these moments, the more likely it will be that your recollection diverges. It is perhaps for this reason that we often pick the things we love the most and regularly indulge in the Nostalgia. Whether that be music from decades past that we still listen to frequently, or old TV shows or Movies etc that we watch often, or Games we return to and replay to experience all over again.
Sometimes we forget so much of these experiences from the first time around that we get to experience them again as if it was for the first time all over again, but this is rare. In all my years of indulging in Nostalgia it is more common for the memory and the reality to diverge. Shows I watched and fell in love with as a child can seem incredibly boring to me now as an adult. Special effects that seemed amazing as a kid, now become more apparent to be illusions. Production quality does not degrade over time, the medium is preserved as it ever was, the only difference is that I am that much more aware of what is happening that the cuts and edits stand out, to the point where the illusion is spoiled. Even the impressions actors made, the perceptions of their personalities can change. Jokes that went over your head as a child in innocence now land and you see things in a new light - that can be good or bad. It can be good if it lets you experience a different point of view, or it can be bad if it feels out of place.
When we talk about remakes and reboots, we often like to think that the versions of the things we loved when younger were perfect, when in reality they rarely are. One benefit to seeing new productions is the enjoyment of seeing things updated and redone with a level of production and composition that the originals could never afford. Often the remake or the reboot ends up being truer to the creators original vision as they finally get to make it the way they had pictured it. Take any show that has been around for 10 seasons or more and compare the first and last seasons and often the change is immediate and apparent.
Nostalgia covers the cracks in our memories. Sometimes you have to reminded of the reality before you can let go of your opposition to progression. Sometimes we have to be reminded of how bad things actually were, in order to realise how good things have become and to have the desire for the things we loved to be experienced again by a new generation, in a new way, with a new vision. Who knows, it might even raise awareness of the originals and allow a whole new generation to experience those and judge them for themselves.
Inspiration
What is inspiration? That's a deceptively simple question that often has very complex answers. To me, inspiration is when I feel the urge to create or to do something because of what someone else said or did, or perhaps something that happened which I experience causing me to feel the need to express something - that last point perhaps can be used to boil the whole thing down into one simple point: inspiration is the motivation of expression. Philosophically, and from a Scientific point of view, Causality is the idea that for every cause there is an effect, and concurrently for every effect there is a cause. I find that concept fascinating because of the potential to create a chain from any given point in all of space and time that you can choose as your starting point, and travel backward along a path of events back to the moment of creation of this Universe the first moment, divine inspiration it you are so inclined.
The interesting point for me that I can take away from this thought process is the realisation that everything in existence is interdependent and that ultimately everything inspires everything in one great paradox. I find humour in those moments when you see two people argue over the originality of an idea, where one cites a work as being breathtaking and innovative, and the other retorts that the original idea came from some other work. The idea of finality in that statement makes no sense to me after the realisation above, because that work they cite is the product of many others that came before it. If you follow that path you would have endless arguments citing each preceding work.
While this path is easy to trace when it comes to concrete ideas that have rigidity to them, it becomes harder to trace back fluid ideas, abstract concepts, and notions that are derived from moments of epiphany, where the creator came to some great and sudden realisation of knowledge. Epiphany is a black box to the effort to trace a clear path from present form back through to the conception of an idea. Sometimes it can be a gap where we can see the path before and after but not what happens inside the box. Sometimes it is a dead end, with no clear indication of origins to the path other than the plenitude of ideas and previous works that fed into the black box up until that point.
Music is perhaps one of the most "mystical" examples of this black box, with the inspiration for musical works being hard to trace. It can be easier for those who have a greater understanding, who know enough about composition to break down a piece of music into its individual components and critically analyse the nature of the work, they perhaps have the greatest opportunity to discern the origin of the path. Therein lies another realisation that tracing ideas backward to their origin often requires as much, if not more, knowledge and understanding than it does to take existing ideas and form new ones. It's easier to invent a word than to trace the etymology of the ones we already use.
The interesting point for me that I can take away from this thought process is the realisation that everything in existence is interdependent and that ultimately everything inspires everything in one great paradox. I find humour in those moments when you see two people argue over the originality of an idea, where one cites a work as being breathtaking and innovative, and the other retorts that the original idea came from some other work. The idea of finality in that statement makes no sense to me after the realisation above, because that work they cite is the product of many others that came before it. If you follow that path you would have endless arguments citing each preceding work.
While this path is easy to trace when it comes to concrete ideas that have rigidity to them, it becomes harder to trace back fluid ideas, abstract concepts, and notions that are derived from moments of epiphany, where the creator came to some great and sudden realisation of knowledge. Epiphany is a black box to the effort to trace a clear path from present form back through to the conception of an idea. Sometimes it can be a gap where we can see the path before and after but not what happens inside the box. Sometimes it is a dead end, with no clear indication of origins to the path other than the plenitude of ideas and previous works that fed into the black box up until that point.
Music is perhaps one of the most "mystical" examples of this black box, with the inspiration for musical works being hard to trace. It can be easier for those who have a greater understanding, who know enough about composition to break down a piece of music into its individual components and critically analyse the nature of the work, they perhaps have the greatest opportunity to discern the origin of the path. Therein lies another realisation that tracing ideas backward to their origin often requires as much, if not more, knowledge and understanding than it does to take existing ideas and form new ones. It's easier to invent a word than to trace the etymology of the ones we already use.
Past and Present
People have lives. This is a very simple and obvious statement to make, but it's something we easily forget. When we walk down the street and pass by so many faces of people we don't know, we tend not to dwell on them. The same is true for the people who we actually know who they are, whether intimately or simply being aware of them through the cultural Zeitgeist. We forget these people have lives, entire stories from birth up until that moment of which we often know very little, if anything at all.
When you see someone appear on television, it's easy to think of other shows and movies they have appeared in, but if you take any given actor or actress and Google their name and view their IMDB article, or read their Wikipedia page, there is a wealth of acting credits to begin with, and much more beyond, that we know nothing about. Even big names that we associate with headlines and big A* productions, we often forget there was a time when they weren't famous. You can pick the most famous person you can think of, and still, there is a life story behind them where they have gone the distance before they became famous.
A little closer to home, we can have friends who we are close to, people that we know intimately, and even then there is the realisation that even with them, you can't spend every waking minute with them, and unless you grew up in the same house, there's an entire life of which you were never a part. I'm 30 years old now, and there are people that I have known only a few years, and there are people I have known for so long that I don't recall ever "meeting" them, they were just always there. No matter how close, nor how long we have known each other, there is still more to know, there is still a life lived, and lessons learned, and thoughts and dreams that may have been forgotten or simply abandoned, neither of which we have ever spoken of, since it has simply never come up in conversation.
When I was younger, when I got to know people, the first few months would be rather intense, as we shared more and more about each other, in essence we shared our life stories. As I have grown, I have realised this is something that you can only really do when you are young, and even at that, some people live lives that are so tumultuous or so hectic that it becomes impractical even at a young age to share "all of it" with one another. Instead as I have grown I've come to realise that most people don't want to know your life story anyway, all they want to know is who you are, and where you are going. The past will come up in conversation when and where, but is not something you dive into.
The question is, how do you decide what is relevant and what is not? How do you decide what other people need to know, if anything at all? There are times, such as moments of trauma that it becomes important to have conversations about such topics, as understanding what happened can explain a lot about your behaviour and why you act the way you do - but even at that I feel there is a danger that if those conversations and reliving those memories become a matter of routine when meeting new people, the act of meeting new people in and of itself can turn into something traumatic. Through this I believe social anxiety can develop, not because of any expectation that new people will ruin your life, but rather that in meeting someone new you will have to go through yet again the emotionally draining process of reliving your past. That the more people you meet, the more you relive your past, over and over, until you reach a point where you don't want to do it anymore so you avoid meeting new people.
When you see someone appear on television, it's easy to think of other shows and movies they have appeared in, but if you take any given actor or actress and Google their name and view their IMDB article, or read their Wikipedia page, there is a wealth of acting credits to begin with, and much more beyond, that we know nothing about. Even big names that we associate with headlines and big A* productions, we often forget there was a time when they weren't famous. You can pick the most famous person you can think of, and still, there is a life story behind them where they have gone the distance before they became famous.
A little closer to home, we can have friends who we are close to, people that we know intimately, and even then there is the realisation that even with them, you can't spend every waking minute with them, and unless you grew up in the same house, there's an entire life of which you were never a part. I'm 30 years old now, and there are people that I have known only a few years, and there are people I have known for so long that I don't recall ever "meeting" them, they were just always there. No matter how close, nor how long we have known each other, there is still more to know, there is still a life lived, and lessons learned, and thoughts and dreams that may have been forgotten or simply abandoned, neither of which we have ever spoken of, since it has simply never come up in conversation.
When I was younger, when I got to know people, the first few months would be rather intense, as we shared more and more about each other, in essence we shared our life stories. As I have grown, I have realised this is something that you can only really do when you are young, and even at that, some people live lives that are so tumultuous or so hectic that it becomes impractical even at a young age to share "all of it" with one another. Instead as I have grown I've come to realise that most people don't want to know your life story anyway, all they want to know is who you are, and where you are going. The past will come up in conversation when and where, but is not something you dive into.
The question is, how do you decide what is relevant and what is not? How do you decide what other people need to know, if anything at all? There are times, such as moments of trauma that it becomes important to have conversations about such topics, as understanding what happened can explain a lot about your behaviour and why you act the way you do - but even at that I feel there is a danger that if those conversations and reliving those memories become a matter of routine when meeting new people, the act of meeting new people in and of itself can turn into something traumatic. Through this I believe social anxiety can develop, not because of any expectation that new people will ruin your life, but rather that in meeting someone new you will have to go through yet again the emotionally draining process of reliving your past. That the more people you meet, the more you relive your past, over and over, until you reach a point where you don't want to do it anymore so you avoid meeting new people.
Life Is A Game
You reach a point in life, hopefully sooner rather than later, if at all, that you realise life is not what you thought it was or what it would be. From a young age you're raised inside a system. From birth to death there is a pathway that your life is expected to follow. You will be born, you will grow up, experiencing childhood, teenage years, passing through education, then you are expected to prioritise three things: love, money, and happiness. The order you choose provides variety but you're expected to chase all three. You're expected to seek love, seek out money through a career or other means, and you're expected to find happiness. Happiness itself is something which for the most part we never get to decide what it actually means, unless we wake up to reality.
Instead, we live in a world where the success and failure in these three goals are decided for us by other people. They may be friends, family, or colleagues or even complete strangers we've never met. In any case, our success is defined by their perception. We're taught that even if we think we are a success, but every other person thinks we are a failure then we are deluded and that we are not accepting reality.
The rigidity of this framework in which we live out our lives is insidious. We live by it, hoping to achieve the trifecta before we die. In death our lives are then judged by those we leave behind after we are gone as to its success or failure.
That is the system we are born into, we live through, and leave as we die. Unless you wake up to reality. By this I mean achieving the level of consciousness about your life and the lives of others that recognises this world is controlled by systems with rules and regulations to maintain order. Once you recognise this for yourself you get to choose whether you want to take part, whether you want to play the game as the rule book states or whether you want to make up your own rules and play it your way. When you achieve this level of awareness as the meme goes you become "woke" and choose to live a life that is defined within yourself.
Defining your own life can be a very powerful thing, it lets you take control of the facets that for a long time you believed were in the hands of other people. Love no longer becomes defined by finding one person and settling down and living happily ever after, but by the realisation that love is quantifiable and that we can find it in many people, in our friends, our family, in partners if we choose to take them. We forego the notion that we have to find one person to fulfil this need and suddenly it becomes a lot less difficult to find.
With money our success no longer becomes defined by the reach for the 1% and the desire to be a billionaire, which for most people was always a pipe dream. The reality is for the vast majority of people to have that level of wealth you have to be born into it, and the idea that you can reach it through work or through other means is nothing but a means to control your behaviour. Once you forego the idea of adding yourself to the minority of minorities, you come to define your financial success not by the extremity of it but simply by the question of whether you can afford to do the things you want to do, and the self awareness of the desires to do things that you cannot afford and questioning why they are things you want.
To give an example we all dream of mansions and estates with sprawling grounds and develop visions of ourselves living regal lives but when you wake up from the dream and look at that desire for what it's worth, you begin to question why you want it. You are one person alone, perhaps you include your family or others in your inner circle. At best you form a small collective of people. What purpose can you really gain from a 28 bedroom palace, will you ever live in that building to the extent the desire can be justified? How many outfits sit in your wardrobe or closet that you have not worn in months if not years? Can you recall the last time you wore each? Of all the material possessions you have amassed in life, how many sit on shelves never touched, in boxes never seen, in drawers never opened. Do you need to have so much stuff? How much money have you spent in your lifetime on all of these possessions and if you had never bought any of them, how much would you have saved? How much time could you have gained by working less than you did to buy it all? What could you have done with your life instead?
Happiness is the most elusive of the three aspirations that society instils within us all. It is perhaps the most elusive because there are no clear goals that we as a society have agreed upon to indicate success. With money it is defined by how much we have, and with love it is defined by how long we can spend with one other person to make us feel like we're doing something right. Happiness on the other hand is elusive because it means so many things to so many people that it's hard to get anyone to agree on it. It's also one of the most elusive for the simple reason that it has not yet become a commodity. You can't buy a bottle of it, although advertisers try and insinuate such things as implicitly as possible. The truth is you can't buy it and we are led to believe we can, so much so that many reading this post right now will attest that they could make themselves happy if they had x amount of money to spend right now.
The thing about money, just like fame, and power, and all that they encompass, is that they never truly change people, so if you're not happy already, money won't make you happy. All these things do is accentuate our own neuroses. Your problems will be replaced with others, your focus will change, but your mentality will remain the same. If you worry now you will continue to worry with money, all that will change is the object of your attention.
While society requires the majority to accept this reality, it does not prohibit your adventure beyond it. Instead it actively encourages a minority of us to explore lives beyond it primarily as a means of entertainment for those that remain within the system. The motivation most of the time for doing this is the expectation that you will fail, and you will fail spectacularly, and that your fall will serve as warning to others who dare to do the same. The trouble is, there are a growing number of people whose ventures into this world outside of the system are not motivated by avarice or any malign intent, but simply a desire to unplug. There have been movements of varying sizes and success throughout history that had their moments, perhaps the most well known today is the hippie movement. These movements attempted with varying degrees of success to create new societies that existed outside of convention. Think of the reaction most people have to these movements and the element of portraying this as a life choice that should be avoided becomes self-evident. Most people won't think of these movements as being something they aspire to - a minority will but that minority is very small.
The only other choice for people who do not wish to wake up, who want to remain part of the system but do not want to follow its rules is the choice of apathy. To daydream. To exist within the system, never challenging it, but never contributing to it. Whether this is a choice you can make will ultimately depend on how much, or to be more precise, how little, attention you draw to yourself. So the question becomes not whether you want to leave the system or not, but whether you wish to challenge it, or whether you recognise its purpose and accept it as a reality you want no part of but have no desire to change. You might ask how someone can make such a choice if they are aware of all it entails and the answer is simple, if you're aware of it, the chances are, everyone else is too, but they are complicit. The reason no-one challenges it from within is because they have no desire to, instead they all believe they can find a way to exploit it, to make it work for them, in short, they play the game.
Instead, we live in a world where the success and failure in these three goals are decided for us by other people. They may be friends, family, or colleagues or even complete strangers we've never met. In any case, our success is defined by their perception. We're taught that even if we think we are a success, but every other person thinks we are a failure then we are deluded and that we are not accepting reality.
The rigidity of this framework in which we live out our lives is insidious. We live by it, hoping to achieve the trifecta before we die. In death our lives are then judged by those we leave behind after we are gone as to its success or failure.
That is the system we are born into, we live through, and leave as we die. Unless you wake up to reality. By this I mean achieving the level of consciousness about your life and the lives of others that recognises this world is controlled by systems with rules and regulations to maintain order. Once you recognise this for yourself you get to choose whether you want to take part, whether you want to play the game as the rule book states or whether you want to make up your own rules and play it your way. When you achieve this level of awareness as the meme goes you become "woke" and choose to live a life that is defined within yourself.
Defining your own life can be a very powerful thing, it lets you take control of the facets that for a long time you believed were in the hands of other people. Love no longer becomes defined by finding one person and settling down and living happily ever after, but by the realisation that love is quantifiable and that we can find it in many people, in our friends, our family, in partners if we choose to take them. We forego the notion that we have to find one person to fulfil this need and suddenly it becomes a lot less difficult to find.
With money our success no longer becomes defined by the reach for the 1% and the desire to be a billionaire, which for most people was always a pipe dream. The reality is for the vast majority of people to have that level of wealth you have to be born into it, and the idea that you can reach it through work or through other means is nothing but a means to control your behaviour. Once you forego the idea of adding yourself to the minority of minorities, you come to define your financial success not by the extremity of it but simply by the question of whether you can afford to do the things you want to do, and the self awareness of the desires to do things that you cannot afford and questioning why they are things you want.
To give an example we all dream of mansions and estates with sprawling grounds and develop visions of ourselves living regal lives but when you wake up from the dream and look at that desire for what it's worth, you begin to question why you want it. You are one person alone, perhaps you include your family or others in your inner circle. At best you form a small collective of people. What purpose can you really gain from a 28 bedroom palace, will you ever live in that building to the extent the desire can be justified? How many outfits sit in your wardrobe or closet that you have not worn in months if not years? Can you recall the last time you wore each? Of all the material possessions you have amassed in life, how many sit on shelves never touched, in boxes never seen, in drawers never opened. Do you need to have so much stuff? How much money have you spent in your lifetime on all of these possessions and if you had never bought any of them, how much would you have saved? How much time could you have gained by working less than you did to buy it all? What could you have done with your life instead?
Happiness is the most elusive of the three aspirations that society instils within us all. It is perhaps the most elusive because there are no clear goals that we as a society have agreed upon to indicate success. With money it is defined by how much we have, and with love it is defined by how long we can spend with one other person to make us feel like we're doing something right. Happiness on the other hand is elusive because it means so many things to so many people that it's hard to get anyone to agree on it. It's also one of the most elusive for the simple reason that it has not yet become a commodity. You can't buy a bottle of it, although advertisers try and insinuate such things as implicitly as possible. The truth is you can't buy it and we are led to believe we can, so much so that many reading this post right now will attest that they could make themselves happy if they had x amount of money to spend right now.
The thing about money, just like fame, and power, and all that they encompass, is that they never truly change people, so if you're not happy already, money won't make you happy. All these things do is accentuate our own neuroses. Your problems will be replaced with others, your focus will change, but your mentality will remain the same. If you worry now you will continue to worry with money, all that will change is the object of your attention.
While society requires the majority to accept this reality, it does not prohibit your adventure beyond it. Instead it actively encourages a minority of us to explore lives beyond it primarily as a means of entertainment for those that remain within the system. The motivation most of the time for doing this is the expectation that you will fail, and you will fail spectacularly, and that your fall will serve as warning to others who dare to do the same. The trouble is, there are a growing number of people whose ventures into this world outside of the system are not motivated by avarice or any malign intent, but simply a desire to unplug. There have been movements of varying sizes and success throughout history that had their moments, perhaps the most well known today is the hippie movement. These movements attempted with varying degrees of success to create new societies that existed outside of convention. Think of the reaction most people have to these movements and the element of portraying this as a life choice that should be avoided becomes self-evident. Most people won't think of these movements as being something they aspire to - a minority will but that minority is very small.
The only other choice for people who do not wish to wake up, who want to remain part of the system but do not want to follow its rules is the choice of apathy. To daydream. To exist within the system, never challenging it, but never contributing to it. Whether this is a choice you can make will ultimately depend on how much, or to be more precise, how little, attention you draw to yourself. So the question becomes not whether you want to leave the system or not, but whether you wish to challenge it, or whether you recognise its purpose and accept it as a reality you want no part of but have no desire to change. You might ask how someone can make such a choice if they are aware of all it entails and the answer is simple, if you're aware of it, the chances are, everyone else is too, but they are complicit. The reason no-one challenges it from within is because they have no desire to, instead they all believe they can find a way to exploit it, to make it work for them, in short, they play the game.
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