By
On The Beach
This is a comment in support of CD’s recent series of posts “The Answer is 42” and “Question Everything, Believe Nothing Part 1 and Part 2”.
One of his articles starts with the answer “42”, a tongue-in-cheek bit of sarcasm directed at the existing world of propaganda and lies that we live in and consider normal life.
The question is what is the answer to the lies presented as truths by our civilization? Answer, number 42.
For me, the answer has become, “It is all a lie”.
There is simply no part of the existing systems of this civilization of modernity that is not based on a lie of some sort to some degree or another. I think a person could spend all their time looking for the lies, but I am not sure that is at all productive any more. At a certain point the personal realization that it is all a lie becomes so overwhelming that there is no point in bothering to look for any more lies. I had a crisis of personality and confidence that lasted several years at that point in my growing understanding of where we are as a civilization.
Just accept that everything in modernity is a lie.
This statement is not meant as cynicism, but as a call to action.
It is now time to focus on truth.
The tenets and pillars and supports of all our modern institutions are lies, supported by the lying behavior of the direct recipients of the lies and all the rest of us who willingly or ignorantly accept the lies and then perpetuate the lies. Now the system of lies is so endemic and powerful all over the earth that it is almost impossible to live outside the lies, even when we know they are lies.
The concept that most of what we think of as modern civilization is a lie means that most of our own personal beliefs are also lies.
The lies that underpin our civilization, when viewed with even a slight bit of critical thinking, are so obvious and egregious that to accept them without gulping in disbelief is impossible for any partially sane person who is awake.
A monetary and financial system based on endless exponential growth?
This is logically impossible inside a finite world system. Any child of 10 who has learned multiplication could and should come to this conclusion.
Spiritual belief systems based on delayed personal salvation offered by an all-powerful omnipotent creator god who demands exclusivity?
Forget faith, this strains any sort of comprehension of the concept of “Omnipotent”. Plus there is the inconvenient matter that such a spiritual belief system forgives the slave master while conditioning the slaves to accept their conditions in exchange for some promised heaven after death. Oh how special! Why would anyone willingly believe this?
A person would have to have an IQ lower than a rock and no sense of shame or personal honor at all to believe in either of these ideas, yet they are the bedrock beliefs for the foundations of modernity. I know my personal IQ hovered around granite level for years, maybe limestone.
So it could be said that in our modern belief system we are personally not responsible for striving after continual easy exponential growth at the expense of everyone and everything, even life itself.
Human life conditioned and based on such an impossible, pathological set of outrageous beliefs is not possible. Eventually it will fail spectacularly to the detriment of almost everyone and everything. The only beneficiaries are the psychopaths who milk the willing and unwilling cows right up to the point when it all falls apart.
A person has a choice when they come face to face with the sobering fact that their beliefs are actually lies. They can fall back on the comfort of the lies as habits of ease or press forward to try to see truth. Personal responsibility would seem to demand the path of truth, but this is so much more difficult than it seems.
However, if a person is not ready, willing, and able to be personally responsible for their own thoughts, actions and beliefs, then they are truly lost and will never be able to find anything close to truth. Peace and happiness will always be outside their grasp. Each one of us creates our own mental state and is responsible for that state. The great lie underpinning all modern religions and psychology is that a person can pass off their personal responsibility to someone or something else. Who else can do the hard work and gain the benefits of personal responsibility except each individual person?
This means each person must search for the truth and do their very best to create their best effort at life based on truth at each instant of their being. There is no easy way, no shortcuts and no one else can be responsible, especially not unaccountable social institutions.
How does a person whose whole being is based on lies ever find a way to see the truth? And just seeing or knowing truth is not nearly enough. You have to do your best actions to live inside that truth.
This issue is not easy, but there are ways toward truth if a person is to regain any sense of honor. For me these ways are:
- CD’s statement, Question everything critically and believe nothing without question. Give yourself the grace to find life amidst all the death pretending to be life around us now. There is one critical means test for any belief. Does the item in question; a belief, action or practice, lead to sustainability in action with benefit for many during a normal human time frame? If not, then it is based on a lie since it cannot promote life. Sustainability is usually thought of in terms of resource use, but this is a convenient lie. Unsustainable resource use always starts with unsustainable belief systems.
- Cut off as many ties to the existing system as possible. Get as much of the lies and propaganda out of your life as you possibly can.
- Live simply. Live positively. Learn what it means for you to be happy and what that means in terms of “stuff” that you need. Always try to remember that all “stuff” starts as a thought or belief that must be questioned first before the “stuff” becomes important.
- Do something. Do not live this new life only inside your thoughts. Do something physical and active and positive with your new set of beliefs. Life is about action. Truth without action is not truth at all. Truthful action delays energy entropy and that is what life really is all about.
- Reach out to your neighbors in a positive spirit of community. Sustainable life and survival is always about group dynamics. Do all you can to create the best, most inclusive group you can inside the set of truths you decide you can stand on.
- Be a scientist. Observe life in action in its most beautiful state of complexity. It is always truthful.
- Find any possible way you can to try to connect yourself directly to life itself. A direct connection to the forces of life inside any living entity will change you forever and make it much easier to push the lies away. The lies are always about life lived poorly.
Life is actually very simple. Nature surrounds us with almost everything we need, freely given in grace by life itself. It is just so very very difficult to see now when we are also surrounded by the exact opposite of life in almost everyone everywhere.
Personally I chose to get out of modernity. I could not see another way for me.
But my way might not be the right way for someone else. One of the beauties of this place is free choice of thought and action. The fact that the existing systems of modernity are direct limitations of freedom of thought should raise all sorts of alarms in everyone.
But do not fall into the New Age crap of believing that all paths lead to truth. They obviously do not or mankind and the earth would not be in the mess it is now. All paths offer the potential of learning; our job is to learn the best path that leads to life and to stay off the other paths that lead to death.
Do not fall into the New Age crap of thinking we are all One. Yikes. We are not all one. We might be able to all be connected if we know how to do that.
Do not fall into the New Age crap of thinking we create our own reality without deep understanding and responsibility for what that means. We have the potential to consciously create our own reality if we know how. Right now the world is an obvious example of the crap we create when we do not know what we are doing. Without understanding we unconsciously create disasters.
Do not fall into the New Age crap of thinking we are little gods and can do anything. We can only do what we can do. The job of our lives is to learn what is right to do and then how to do it. Anything else is wishful thinking. There is no magic in nature, it is always brutally honest.
You can only do what you can do, but there might not be any limits on what is possible for you to be able to accomplish if you know how.
There is no end to the potential in that statement. It is the most powerful positive statement possible, or the most negative. But it is very hard work to learn how to “do” properly and anything other than perfection might lead to disaster. This means that to fully actualize your potential you must learn to be very responsible in thought and action.
Quality of action is an absolute essential essence of our interaction with life.
What we are doing now on earth is almost the exact opposite of quality. As conscious entities it would be reasonable to expect that we would be stewards of life, since our life depends on all life. Instead we are rapper and destroyers of life, even of our own kind. As a species we are obviously insane in our current condition since our present path will lead to the death of mankind, maybe the death of all life on earth.
This condition is a direct result of living under the lies of our current institutions.
Do your very best to get out from under these lies.
03-19-2014
On The Beach
More pls, :)
@Tenma13
“On the Beach” is having trouble logging in from the other side of the world, so he asked me to post his reply here.
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Hello Tenma13…. Thank you for your comment. I would enjoy going deeper into issues mentioned in my essay but please give me some idea of where you want the discussion to head. In broad terms my essay dealt with 3 main issues: authorship of self, fraud of institutional memes and content of civilization, and steps for a person to regain sovereignty of self. These 3 topics are huge and could easily get us both PhD’s, or in some places and times, burned at the stake.
I did not speak at all about the specific steps I personally have taken in my search for sovereignty and sanity. That is a totally personal quest but then regaining sovereignty is always personal and there are almost as many ways as there are people. However, I am quite happy to talk about my personal path here if you wish.
Sorry if my replies are delayed. I am on the other side of the world, exactly 12 hours ahead of East Coast time right now, and am not connected 24/7.
Hello On The Beach:
I am deeply sympathetic, and with a tip of the hat to Mrs Cog, also emphathetic, to what you are going through, world location-wise and other-wise. I am enjoying similer paths myself for the last almost 60 years now. I can especially understand your reactions to modernity as there wasn’t television when I was a child. And what I remember that really strikes me thinking back, is that growing up in Texas, there wasn’t lying going on…anywhere around me. It just was not acceptable behavior, and those that did were pretty much on the fringes of society. I remember the Bush’s riding the crest of the wave of the new face of wheeler-dealer “business” moving in with the oil greed guys. So, I too, am a long-time advocate of rejecting that “modernity”.
With that said as a preface, I think that I am really responding to say to you, is that I would hope that you let that natural beauty that surrounds you from your on-the-beach location assist you to only think about, for awhile, the good that is available to you from all of that beauty. I’ve spent alot of time in parts of that time zone that you are in, and there is a lot of beauty there. And from what I read, I feel that you honestly and truly do deserve for that beauty to take so much of your energy, if you give it, in the appreciating and enjoyment of it, that it is what fills and consumes your life with love for that beauty. That is not a small thing, it can be a life’s great achievement. You are a very lucky man in that you have positioned yourself to be in front of a door of opportunity. I would love to read your writing about that beauty.
And it never hurts to have a good dog by your side :>)
My best wishes to you.
Glynn Baker
Thank you Glynn.
My goodness, what kind words.
I live in a small rural province town on the beach of the South China Sea about 100 miles north of Subic Bay, Luzon, Philippines. There is not a single day passes that I do not thank all our gods for my place in this world. This is a very beautiful part of the world with great opportunities. I did not originally come here to escape modernity but have learned that for me, that escape is essential for my understanding of life.
And the first part of your 2 paragraph comment is also a part of my life and making my adventure here possible. My mother’s family, including my mother, were all migrant farm workers from North Central Texas. The very bottom of the social barrel in America, but they were the most independent, strong willed, self-reliant and honest people I have ever met. As you say, they never lied that I knew of since they never had to. They knew exactly where they stood and were intensely proud of making their own way in the world. My grandfather became visibly anxious when he had more than $100 in his pocket. He intuitively knew that money represented chains and he would simply not have chains on him by anything or anyone.
I hope I have inherited or absorbed enough of that spirit because I need it for the task I have set for myself here in this tropical paradise. I have spent the last 5 years thinking deeply about the lies of modernity and about how to get out from under those lies. In physical terms I can see a very simple path, among several, but perhaps the most simple is that a person or small group has to control their own food and energy production. I am in the process of creating a very large sustainable farm community. I grew up on an organic farm in Southern California and know how to do the farming. I have been a builder-project developer all my life and know how to do that.
What I don’t know is how to create a sustainable community. That topic on the internet makes people crazy and is so full of intentions and contentions that I have to think the problem is actually not the community so much as the continuing fog created by the lies of modernity.
Regardless, I think we have to be gentle with ourselves and give ourselves time to crawl out from under a life time of lies and conditioning. It will not be easy, but being free of having someone other than ourselves control our essentials will be a good first step.
No dog yet, you have to be a little careful here about that since dog is considered an appetizer dish for drinking sessions.
I look forward to our continuing conversation here on CD’s wonderful forum.
Your handle captured me. Other than while I’m on the water sailing there is no place in the world that energizes me more than a walk on a beach.
Enjoyed your thoughts. Allow me to share my experience into “new age” therapy. I’m sure you’ll relate. When the special music was playing and chants murmuring amidst a festival of unusual arm and body movements, I had a question. If all this is a path to somewhere, is it possible to arrive. This was a totally legitimate question for me because I couldn’t imagine a more happy and fulfilled existence than what I was living. I never saw so many dumb stares and wasn’t surprised that I was never invited back.
Thank you for the comment Andee.
I live on the beach in central Luzon Philippines. Our beach faces the South China Sea so we do not have big noisy waves here unless there is wind or storms. Most of the time the South China Sea is like a very warm bath tub with barely a hiss of wave on the shore. But I like it a lot, especially here where I live. There is a feeling of very powerful energy coming from the ground in this place.
I bet you did hit a nervous sore spot with your comment on arriving. Without knowing for sure the specifics of that situation, so many New Age practices are in a way like most regular religions in that they focus the person’s arrival to some other place or time. You usually have to be dead to really appreciate what ever it is they are taking about.
Unfortunately, for most people now, that is kind of the truth. They are so caught up in the lie that they can never get out of the lie of their lives, can never shake off the angst of living inside that lie and can never really be happy. It shouldn’t be that way. It should be possible to continually be on the journey but content and fulfilled with where you are at any one time, with no angst or urgency at all. Life, in all its complexity, does not really need to strive too hard to be in some other state of being.
Well put, On The Beach. Indeed “some other place or time”, like my next shot at life? I never did subscribe to the theory of sacrificing this life to gain a favourable position in the next. I am at a beautiful plateau, have been for 12 years now, doing what I love to do and being a positive influence on those around me. Of course my journey continues with the luxury of exploring my mental curiosities at leisure. I couldn’t be more happy, content and fulfilled so if that isn’t arriving insofar as it being an achievable goal, I’d be looking to move the goal posts.
One of my favourite sayings, “Life is good because I’m happy”. The essence of life, yet so few understand.
Forgot to mention, there’s a picture of one of the beaches I was on a couple weeks ago under the “Members Forums” if you’re interested.
Andee, I agree. For me the only reason to be alive is for the shear great joy of being alive. Life should always be a joy and it is terrible to know that for most people it is anything but a joy.
I had not found the Member’s Forum yet but did to look at “your” beach. Very very beautiful. CD has asked me to write up something about what it is like to live here in The Philippines and I think I will post that in the members forum, with lots of photos. I do have tons of photos on my FB page but that is not for the public………. I’ll think of something.