I am in a quandary. How can I justify switching on a light bulb?

This isn't the question that the philosophers in the past had had to face. But before you can ponder upon it, let's just consider what all goes into lighting the bulb. The task itself doesn't consume many calories or rattle brains.

The process of reaching out and pressing a button produces a reaction wherin electrons are hurtled headlong into the filament of the bulb, where they get excited and climb up an energy shell in their atomic structure. These electrons are being pushed by another reaction taking further off in a generation unit somewhere where coal is burnt and the heat used to drive a turbine which excites a magnet which propels these electrons.

Further back, the coal is taken out of mines by digging out earth and the vegetation that lay above it. The process of turning on the bulb represents just the last stage in the process which spans from the absorption of energy by the organism that was turned into coal and the eventual liberation of it through our light bulb.

By turning on the light, we are taking part in the process wherein the forests are cleared, earth is dug up and the smoke released. If we can't see it happening in front of our eyes, we don't see the process as it is. We see only the part of it which we accept.

The chicken that you eat, ultimately comes from the bird that once lived. You can't deny that. You don't care about the feelings of the bird, it's dreams, aspirations and happiness. You don't because all you've ever seen is the animated bird that wants you to eat it. The advertisement, who's role is to remove the guilt of the wrong being done in the process and give to you the final product as a gift, which you are made to think you deserve.

The mobiles in our hands in this manner constitutes several trees that stood over the land that must have been dug to pull the minerals that are essential in its hardware, the earth that must've been violated, the animals that must've been driven out and the insects that must've been killed. If we had the perspective to see all of this simaltaneously,we wouldn't have been able to carry on with our lives for very long.

The point is we don't even consider the norms that have been set in the society. It's a slavery that we have accepted.

                                                                 Freedom

The concept of freedom is a complex one. It isn't the mere freedom from the overt controls of others. A person might be in chains for a revolutionary cause and yet be more free than any of the 'free' men slaving under an oppressive regime.

The mind, determines how free you get to be. The modern man has submitted his mind. Literally bowed without being able to realise that it has done so. The cleverness underlying the consumerist culture is making the consumer think that he is the king, while in reality the tiny threads of enslavement emanate from every and each one of the product that he uses.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

What did I just Blabber in the paragraph above? The simple truth.

Imagine the phone. We were alright without the smart phone. Infact the marginal productivity that it does add is decimated by the amount of time wasted by us on its several distractionary features. We continally have to spend time updating, recharging, searching for apps and n other things. We are on a lookout for newer models, for newest features, fawning over every new stripe of metal added to the plasticky screen.

EVEN if you were a slave bought by a 17th century english baron, you wouldn't have spent this much of time and attention for your master. True, we do it out of our own self will. But then, how much of our self will is our own?

The action of a DRUG ADDICT who conciously makes a decision to consume a drug isn't an action of free will. He cannot, EVEN if he wants to, get clear of his habit. The habit drives him to not only consume more of the drug, but also to find new ways to finance his 'habit'. The habit has extended its tentacle into every sphere of his life, moulding him, his actions and ultimately him in the apparent process of serving him. Clever.

CLEVERER still is how we fall prey to advertisements subtle messages in films and the peer pressures of social media. We emulate others, without analysing how or why we do it. IF the hero on the screen smokes, we automatically integrate the action as being cool in our inner self.

NO one has to tell us that the sleek puffing of the cig is a cool thing to do. Since we too want to do the cool thing, we too buy the cig and get hooked. The society has absorbed many such assumptions. These are passed on and adapted. Its like PASSING on the chains on our individual thought process and extending it to the entire humanity. Every one is forced to think along the same lines.

THE globalised world has set its standards of happiness, deteremined by products. You cannot be happy if you don't have a certain product. That is happiness in so many advertisements, movies, shows and what not..... and finally you start to beleive. Happiness is using old spice deodrant, happiness is using apple computer, riding lamborghini..... what not.

Each of these products represent a part of the mother earth cut out brutally out of her breasts. The cars that we ride in with the petrol extracted from polluting drills, built with the iron which had been lying in the pristine jungles, with the coal who's extraction destroyed an entire ecosystem.

LIVES

EVERY PRODUCT that you use has cost some lives. It would squirt blood if the metaphor could be translated into reality. It would also squirt the chains with which it has enslaved your mind into accepting that product as the barometer of your success and happiness.

HUMAN mind cherishes and values object with the social criterion over all else. We like gold because everyone wants it. A tulip mania occurred breifly in Netherland in 17th century. Everyone wanted a tulip, because everyone wanted it.

OUR present mania has gone on for a long long time. Industrialisation created the inevitable need for a way to sell the overproduced products without regard to needs. Terms like Nationalism, patriotism, duty were used to force people to accept the order. Workers had to leave pristine natural setting and work in dirty factories because their "NATION" required it.

ALL of the nations used the same SLOGAN, the incessant chorus of enimity with other nation. We had to work for that imaginary idea of nation, to preserve it, to help it grow. Every dissent was crushed by a machinery of law. Armies sprouted to ensure that the "NATION" functioned.

What is this "NATION"? A naiton is a society united by a delusion abou tits ancestory and a common hatred of its neighbours. It is an idea exploited by the powerful classes to maintain its control. It is a perverse exploitation of the majority of the people, in which the people themselves let themselves being raped by the industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats and what not.

WHAT CAN we do.... ?

Take the red pill (previous post).

What the f**k are we doing? Destroying everything for the things we don't need. Hypnotised by the ads... we are killing the animals, environment.. and our own souls......

I don't know what the right way is.
But this isn't it.
We are digging our own graves with the kind of society we have.

We have to pause and look at the branch beneath us that we are senselessly chopping off with an ever evolving technology.

Do you know the way? Because I am in a quandary, if you get what I am saying....................

Red Pill

THE most important thing in your life.

What does this sentence mean for you? Does it conjure the image of a car, a bike, your expensive mobile perhaps. It might be a relative, a friend, a mission, an idealogy or even a memory.

Increasingly, the sentence just refers to the quest of achieving more money, power or even a status. The funny thing about it is that all of it makes sense, but only as long as you are in the process of acheiving these. When you have a hope of making it big in your life, these words mean everything. When you have an education, support and opportunity, then it would be ludicrous for you to risk it all for something stupid. That is how a law abiding citizen is made.

IF..... we wonder about the grass on the other side of the fence, not the other side really, but further off into the unkept lawns of the people who really don't have grass, but really a few patch of brown mould that they pretend is grass. That grass is definitely not greener. What I am referring to in an inarticulate manner are the millions upon millions of people who have been left out of the dream.

THEY don't retaliate, can't fight. They work in the lowest levels. Forever filled with self hate and pity, they roam the dirtiest parts of the world, beleiving everything that the rich have to say about them. THEY are more than you can realise. THEY are invisible. THEY are not part of the dream.

The dream of the modern life encompasses the quintessential house, car, corporate job, shopping and as many products as there are almost a part of the identity of the successful person. We don't consider it wrong to live such a life. There is nothing immoral in buying unnessary things that pile up in our house, that line our garages, that drain our credits and yeah..... also destroy the environment.

If I am not the part of the dream life and cannot even pretend to be somewhere near that, then what does that make me? I am definitely not the model citizen that the corporates want. I cannot afford to spend on an overpriced cup of coffee in a decked up environment, just because I need to feel good. I need food more than I need to satisfy my artificially bloated ego.... hehe... that sounds mean. But i didn't mean that. I was actually talking about the artificially deflated ego, that can only be brought to bear the pressure of modern life if enough money is pumped in keeping it running.

Blah.. Blah.. What is the solution to the problem you point out.


GOOD question, if you asked it. GOOD enough if you read it with an avid interest.

This so called problem has been around for as long as we began to communicate in broken sounds that seemed like a language. The solution has been quite a simple affair as well. Untill we lived the life of a nomad, consumerism was limited to extraction of required resources and that too sustainably so that you can take that resource again next time.

Living like a nomad is a bit impractical I understand. So what we need to do is to first to know our own minds. It is akin to realising the source of our inner conflicts, complexes, desires. You need to know your enemy before you develop a strategy to take on your enemy, (not that your mind is your enemy). But surely the adverts, social media, songs and the digital world takes advantage of our weak control on our own selves to modify our behaviour for their own interest.

SHITT...

I know its nothing new. You probably know that it's happening. Billions of dollar on behaviour of consumers and means and methods of controlling their behaviour are not spent on merely creating banners.

HOW TO KNOW YOUR MIND

So far, meditation has served as the most effective tool for this. Staying without any stimulation allows your innermost thoughts to softly float to the surface.

Religion does allow the same thing, when you converse with God in prayers. That process is like talking to your subconcious self, but using a round about method. The danger here is that you fall under the influence of the so called leaders of your religion and forget about your own mind, thougts, rationality.

Talking, well really talking..... a heart to heart conversation with someone who understands you can perhaps help too. But then, that is what has been the biggest victim of our hectic lives, the ability to be able to really bond with others. TV being the most important member of the family (or mobile, Xbox, PC, Music player) makes the intimacy of family a pipedream.

George Orwell wrote about this in his seminal work 1984, where government spies on its citizens through TV and controls their thoughts through a thought police. Reality proved stranger and perhaps more advanced than his fiction. We are controlled by private multinationals through media, to buy buy buy buy buy buy and die and leave descendents who buy buy buy buy.

Wake up ... HERE is the red PILL

- Have principles in life, carefully thought values which constitute your inner ethical code
- Be true, if not to anyone else then atleast to your own self. Absolutely, unbiasedly true.
- Take time alone without any tentacle of digital world and then meditate upon your thoughts.
- READ READ READ... books, thoughts, blogs. Read the meaningful, the thought provoking, the insane and then you can place a framework of what constitutes reality, the constructed world or the real one
- Reduce the space for things, energies attatched to longings for things and spend time developing the most important resource that there can be...... Your own self.
- Be Critical of any advice, command or subtle message given to you. Think about it, even about the sentence you are reading now. What could have been my purpose in writing these lines? Why should you listen to me... Should you?

Take the Pill Neo. BUT think before that.


PS> NEXT blog deals with the subtle ways in which we allow our mind to be enslaved. 

Why did the muslim men attack the french magazine ?

It seems strange. Not that strange well if one were to consider all the attacks that have been going on anyways around the world by radicalised Jihadis, that another one would eventually take place.

What is strange however is that these attacks were undertaken by men who were raised in France and received its bountiful public assistance and were infact the citizens of a country that is perhaps the most disinterested in religion! ( At least officially) 

They were not mutilated as children, their homes weren't destroyed by conquering forces and neither did they witness a pogrom against their community. Then why in the world would they go on a killing spree?

The answer is befuddling. Their was no reason on the surface. But perhaps, if we were to look a bit deeper into the lake of muddles... we would our own face. 

SOCIETY

This society is based on consumerism and globalisation. Twin arms that emanated out of the business houses after the Second world war ended and some way had to be found to keep on selling goods to people. 

Edward Bernays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays) was the nephew of Freud, the very same Psycho analyst who inserted sex into everything. Bernays however did learn something very useful from him. He learnt that people were driven by unconcious desires and that this unconcious can be played with to acheive any result. 

The result that he looked for was the selling of products. It was a simple game after he made people think that the product would make the person more desirable, less hated or simply more happy. 

What was different in this from the previous advertisements that there was no need to show the usefulness of the products being advertised. Feeling Good  became the sole utility of shopping. 

Sadly, those who couldn't buy were potrayed as loosers. The values, ideas and skills of a person fell flat before money. The cultural ideal was the rich white man who kept on buying and buying and buying. Nazis  used the same idea for a very different reason and were successful in their holocaust. But consumerism was better, it was sneakier. Playing with the mass psychology was done in such a subtle and powerful form that no one could gather what was happeneing to them, while the attitudes of the people changed for the industry desired one. 

BUT.....what has this to do with the Radicalised, modern, Rational muslims shooting down people in centre of France. What it has to do with them is that they couldn't fit into this culture. They despised the extreme unhappiness that it caused them and they also despised the fact that the entire process is hollow and draining. 

Living for the sake of products and working for creating the products to earn money for buying more of products. That seems like a receipie for a spiritual and religious collapse. Another thing, religion doesn't always happen to be a delusion. It is a legitimate force of biology as much as sex drive is and would express itself in one form or the other if the people aren't allowed to practise it. 

(http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/psychology/biological-psychology/neuroscience-religious-experience)

What happens in France like society is that a vacuous hole  is left in the individuals where the benign teachings of a sane religion should have been. The frustation of living in a nazi inspired culture and not having the proper avenues to gather the love, understanding, compassion aspects of their religon, they were ensnared by the hideous form of quasi religion that was set up by vested interests. I am talking about the Jihadis ofcourse. 

                                                              The final solution

No, it's not in obiliteration of any community. The final solution is in realising the fact that we are living a strange life. We are consuming in plates made half way across the world by virtual slave labourers because we are too lazy to do our dishes. 

We have been hypnotised by the advertisements that can now set the social norm. This norm incidentally also doesn't allow us to reach our maximum potential of creativity that we could have. We can't think. As a society, our thinking prowess has been limited to the 10 seconds of the advertisement that is displayed on the TV screens.... for an animal almost, consumara defecta the latest evolution of the homo sapien. 

The solution is to shun the life of excess and start connecting on a real level with the people around us. People spend 150 billion each year on booze and cigarettes in EU and US alone. That despite the fact that both of these aren't good for health.10 Billion is what is needed to give clean water and sanitation to everyone aroudn the world. (BTW US citizens spend 17 billion on pet food).

Isn't it almost like the scene in Matrix, where you are Neo and I am Morpheus offering you the red and the blue capsule? If you are really happy living in the carefully crafted virtual world, then bbye. 

IF you want the red capsule, if you want to wake up, then read on!

How can we wake up ?

(next blog)