We are taught from an early age to value material items. But, that is a lie. What really matters is the connections we make with other people. It’s such a small insidious lie, but it poisons the well we draw upon to develop our value set as we mature. Rather than determining for ourselves what is valuable, we tend to take up the mantel of our society’s value system without even bothering to interrogate it.
Just as we are forced into an education system which prizes compliance and rote memorization rather than critical thought, our economic system manufactures our consent to a material based value set decided upon by those who are incentivized by profits produced from that value set.
But, what happens when we learn that the production of profit (material items) also destroys the environment for future generations? What will we do when we comprehend that a system with a mandate to increase profits also comes with a mandate to increase inequality, poverty, and mass suffering unnecessarily?
“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.” ~ Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
It is a quandary because we are trained to value above all else the production of goods and thereby profits, yet without a healthy environment and long term planning we risk the continuation of our species. The artificial stands in opposition to the natural, and what we are told to value collides with what we know in our bones should have value to humanity.
By confusing the value set of the society, with the intent to engineer consumerism into the populace, they have effectively set us at war with our own nature. Our human nature is to value life, health, unity, and prosperity because those things represent the foundation of this human experience. Without them humanity cannot continue, and it certainly cannot fulfill the innate drive to reach our potential.
The status quo is continued by keeping people in a state of perpetual psychological manipulation, fear, and isolation. Meanwhile those who stand to gain from the process are wantonly pumping away at the gas pedal on our collective car, as we all careen wildly down the road towards a cliff.
The masses of people are purposefully kept ignorant of their natural right to say no. No, I will not profit at the expense of my fellow man. No, a profit driven economy will not produce equality among the people. No, I will not deny another human being food & shelter. No, we should not have a system which facilitates homelessness and human suffering.
No, I will not remain silent in the face of injustice. No, I will not go along with something which harms my fellow man or future generations. No, this is not the only way we can get things done. No, I will not participate. No, I will not consent to this. No… is our right, and it is our power in the face of a tyrannical and oppressive system of governance.
“There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave.” ~ Thomas Paine, Rights of Man
The challenge then is for each of us to relearn the art of saying no. We must each go through a process of devaluing that which we have been trained to see as the source of our standing in society, and instead reassign that value to that which raises the quality of life for all. Only then will we have cultivated our own capacity to stand up and fight. Revolution I’m afraid, really does begin in the minds and hearts of individual people. Deprogramming yourself will break the bonds of group-think and undermine embedded authoritarian tendencies, thereby opening up the space for the revolutionary act of self-determination.
We must also view modern capitalism like a loaded gun, pressed firmly against the temple of our collective humanity. Knowing that capitalism is not the source of rot in our system, it is just a tool, a mechanism used to manifest the socioeconomic reality of all Americans. The math calculations it uses are designed to concentrate wealth into the hands of a few by taking from the many. Capitalism uses false scarcity, propaganda, manufactured consent, and predatory hierarchical structures to bring into being the reality we experience.
The virtues of capitalism punish us for helping our fellow man, and turn compassion into a sin. Capitalism lobbies for laws which criminalize the human condition because the more robotic they can force us to be, the more profit can be gained by the owner class. Most importantly this economic model demands infinite levels of hierarchy which splinters our unity beyond recognition. It is not natural to be a rugged individual; we are social creatures who always come together in an effort to make more as a unit than we ever could as individuals, I call this the natural law of unity. It is written into our DNA to seek each other out and create family units, friendship/personal support units, neighborhood units, city units, and so on.
I am not alone in my critique of capitalist legal constructions. In an article published by the BBC which detailed a 2016 ruling by the highest court of appeals in Italy, I was heartened to see a civil court openly reaffirm the supremacy of the human condition and the natural right to life in the face of the artificial construction of commerce and profits.
“Stealing small amounts of food to stave off hunger is not a crime, Italy’s highest court of appeal has ruled. Mr Ostriakov, a homeless man of Ukrainian background, had taken the food ‘in the face of the immediate and essential need for nourishment’, the Court of Cassation decided. Therefore it was not a crime, it said. For the judges, the ‘right to survival prevails over property” ~ La Stampa newspaper (in Italian)
“In times of economic hardship, the Court of Cassation’s judgement ‘reminds everyone that in a civilised country not even the worst of men should starve’. The ‘historic’ ruling is ‘right and pertinent’, said Italiaglobale - and derives from a concept that ‘informed the Western world for centuries - it is called humanity’.” ~ BBCNews, 2016
Imagine a society where there was no law against taking food to survive, no law against moving into an empty house to take shelter, no law which created a pay wall between you and fresh water and fresh air. Image a society where the laws where written such that poverty, hunger, and human suffering must be addressed before a single person could make a dime of profit. All of this is infinitely possible because society (our game space) is crafted through law.
Knowing this truth, one is forced to face the fact that our current system is specifically engineered to create serfdom for eighty percent of the populace (the worker’s) and feudal lord like status for the employers and property owners. It is designed to mandate that we must all be on a plantation; but consoles us with the fact we have the freedom to pick our slave master. All three systems (feudalism, slavery, and capitalism) were structured by laws to produce a set outcome; a small number of people with concentrated power to rule over everyone else and reap the fruits of their labor. I see no other way forward but for the people to recognize that the system has declared war on us long ago, and our response must be to reclaim the natural authority to rewrite the rules of our own game space.
“Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” ~The Art of War
If this is war, then we must seek wisdom from war stratagem, and who better than Sun Tzu. We the people must create a coalition movement which moves past the entire political paradigm and every divisive element it brings with it. Our enemy seeks to divide us then we must unite. Our enemy wishes to confuse and miseducation us, then we must enlighten ourselves and each other. We must know our own weaknesses, and we must know the weaknesses of our enemy if we wish to win our battles.
Additionally, Sun Tzu says:
“Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” ~The Art of War
We must refuse to play by the rules which our opponent has created. We must make our own rules, and center our focus and power on fighting for what we know will change the trajectory of this nation. A fight over Trump’s tweet’s and Hillary’s corrupt Clinton foundation is what they want, so we must instead give them a fight over transforming the economy, legal structure, governance system, and resource/land management. We will break their resistance by refusing to fight anywhere but upon the common ground of new ideas and policies, and then we will force them to represent our will by writing legislation which transforms our collective intent into action.
The power of civil creation has always been ours; the purpose of a government has always been to endeavor to make the human condition more prosperous for all, and it has always, always relied upon our consent to be governed. We gain this authority from our state of natural equality, and it has always been our right to abolish any artificial contract which does not serve to improve the human condition. We need only look to our own history for inspiration, this is not the first time we have severed the chains which bound us to an artificially tyranny. Click To Tweet
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” ~ Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776
Whether we are ready or not, we must move forward and confront all that has paralyzed us. The status quo has crafted a perfect storm of climate change, political unrest, obscene extractive capitalism, corrupted plutocratic government, and an economy on the verge of collapse. Generations of our forbearers have been kicking the reformation can down the road, and my friends, we have the great honor of being the ones forced to pay the piper.
We must be ready in the moments of chaos, to rebuild systems so that they do not serve to enslave our children and grandchildren to a value system determined by capitalism. It is our duty and it is our burden to break this historical cycle of enslaving the masses for the benefit of the few. To refuse this obligation would be to dismiss the sacrifices of all those that came before us. We stand upon the foundation of natural freedom they built brick by bloody brick, and it is because of them that we have knowledge of our natural authority to write the rules of our own destiny. I promise you, the power to build something so much grander than what we have now is right there in front of us—we need only reach out and take it. #WelcomeToTheRevolution
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” ~ John F. Kennedy
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Bree Hood
Latest posts by Bree Hood (see all)
- Arming Ourselves with the Knowledge of Law - February 6, 2019
- How to Save the American Yellow Vests Movement - January 23, 2019
- Shutting Down the Government…for Real - January 5, 2019
