Loganberry

Fighting for Scraps

2011-12-16T18:08:00.000-08:00

An observation that I've made concerning the society in which I live is that the majority of people are oppressed and are unhappy because of it. In attempting to assess the causes of this, I see primarily, in terms of material existence, our capitalistic economic system which is designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a minority of people by means of exploiting the hardships of many. When it comes to spiritual existence, we have our religious dogmas which instill in people the idea that they are born sinners who are personally to blame for the suffering they experience due to their supposed evil nature and inherently flawed character, regardless of whether the individual has harmed or done wrong to anyone else. Allied to these dysfunctional societal models and these accusatory yet entirely irrational forms of psychological coercion is a multitude of empty promises concerning the possible redemption from the aforementioned suffering through submission, prostration, and unquestioning obedience to the state or the church, which no thinking person who values logic, honesty and truth could possibly believe will ever be fulfilled.

Having drawn attention to these particular forms of oppression, I wish to address the way in which I've seen people react to the experience of being a recipient. It isn't surprising that people should feel angry and unhappy when they are being exploited every day of their lives, and it is also typical that someone who feels this way should desire to express the violence that is being inflicted on them, whether this violence is physical or psychological, direct or indirect, by inflicting an equal measure of violence on someone else. Unfortunately, though, it is most often fruitless for a single individual, who is effectively an aimless, isolated fragment in a heavily divided society, to attempt to confront the true oppressor: the elite upper class that is responsible for engineering and maintaining the laws, the systems, and the institutions which allow great imbalances of societal influence, power and privilege, including the accumulation and monopolization of monetary profit, to exist.

Under different circumstances, most people who consider themselves moral could undoubtedly justify committing acts of violence, vandalism and so-called theft directed at the entities who, in their affluence, have forced so many people into a life of poverty, or by means of manipulative religions and ideologies broken their spirits. What makes this justifiable vengeance so unrealistic, though, is that the oppressor is so well protected within a fortress-like shield of laws, legislation, armies, police forces, weapons and manpower that any person remotely concerned with self-preservation would not dare to seriously challenge them. But should one attempt to fight back, the punishment one risks is to permanently lose one's freedom, or even to be killed. Government is merciless when it comes to defending the wealthy.

Despite this, people are no less filled with rage brought on by their circumstances, and the real tragedy is that the people who are suffering most will only hurt each other more so long as the true oppressor remains unmatched. The natural inclination to deal what is dealt and to trade an eye for an eye becomes misdirected onto those who are already poor and powerless. It is like a man who beats his wife and children: he is unable to retaliate against those who inflict violence upon him, so he passes the grief on to someone else who is equally helpless. Our society is full of people who are like mad, starving dogs fighting for scraps, always ready to go for the throat. Perhaps as an answer it may be possible for the oppressed to unify in a more significant way than has previously been achieved and to stand against the oppression which has long gone unchallenged. I am not suggesting a specific tactic and I am not necessarily advocating violence or unlawful activities, however my goal here is to lend some awareness to those who are angry and prone to taking their anger out on someone who doesn't deserve it.

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Pharmaceuticals

2011-11-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

Canadian children prescribed anti-psychotics in record numbers

Children from a very young age are forced into a system that betrays virtually every natural instinct they would have towards living their lives in a joyful and creative way whereupon they would be freely allowed to focus on the things which genuinely interest them and make them happy. It comes as no surprise that the cognitive dissonance these children experience as a result manifests itself as the described symptoms of irritability, aggression, and trouble focusing on the things which a dysfunctional society has deemed important. The question is: do we want to drug our children into submission and condition them into a life of suffering, or are we able to take into consideration the environmental factors which nurture these problematic traits?

Guilt is a very effective way to ensure that people remain oppressed. In this particular case, the oppressor is the pharmaceutical industry which accumulates an almost inconceivably large amount of capital by feeding into people's capacity for guilt and self-hatred. Religion has traditionally been the most popular vehicle for convincing people that they are personally responsible for the suffering they experience; that their own character is inherently flawed, that they are born sinners who must repent and that the environment, the society, the system in which they live is entirely divorced from the misery of their existence. This obsessive focus on self-denial and the diversion of the perceived source of conflict from the social environment to the mind of the individual instills the victim with a masochistic kind of thinking, allowing such oppressors to re-direct the brunt of the violence and hatred which inevitably comes as a result of their manipulative actions so that they themselves do not have to suffer. However, it is the "scientific" counterpart to this; the manufactured myth that psychological and emotional suffering is a purely physical disease which is merely incidental to the social environment one inhabits and which thus can only be cured through medical intervention, that makes possible for the institutionalized oppression of the pharmaceutical industry - the accumulation of wealth and power for an elite few at the expense of the well-being of many - to exist.

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Lack of Freedom

2011-10-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

The main issue I see with the institutionalized educational system that we are subjected to from a young age is lack of freedom. It has become so deeply ingrained in the collective psyche to hold the dictation of authority as more valuable than our own judgment. It’s as if we’ve been taught to believe that our innate emotional responses to being forced into conformity (such as stress, depression, boredom, lack of interest, etc.) are somehow invalid and that obeying someone else’s vision of how we should learn and develop is in fact in our own best interest. But why would the human organism have such a reaction to a condition that is in the individual's "best interest"? Why do we so fervently and so willingly betray or own instincts? Consider that this system was not designed with the interests of the individual in mind but with the aim of producing industrial-quality tools that are able to serve the interests of a larger corporate machine. Consider a slave's relationship to a slave-owner.

It is also unfortunate that no matter how many faults one finds with our established educational system, there are so few accepted alternatives.

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Perception

2011-09-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Human perception is obviously limited. When one stands in the middle of a city park, one sees the trees and the people and a fountain and buildings in the distance. There are, however, a countless number of things existing outside of the picture of reality that a person perceives at any given time. A bird is nesting in the dense foliage at the top of a tall tree, insects crawl beneath the bark, roots absorb water underneath the soil, oxygen is emitted via photosynthesis, and so on. A look at all of this on the molecular or atomic level would be even more indicative of what exists, even in front of our own eyes, that we are typically not aware of and do not perceive. It is plausible to believe that the scope of what exists outside of human perception, even collectively, is limitless.

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Ideology

2011-09-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

There is always a price to pay for adherence to an ideological system; a conflict that inevitably arises. When a person is totally controlled by ideology, when their mind is so largely inhabited by the thoughts, feelings, morals, values and judgments imposed by an outside force that is not of themselves, they have essentially forfeit their ability to live by the guidance of inner truth; the truth that is known from direct personal experience and realization, and thus have allowed themselves to be conditioned to the robot-like sensibility of complete obeisance to authority. In this state, a person is rendered virtually incapable of genuine creativity as they no longer follow their own nature and cannot draw original expression from within, only able to function as the vessel for another person's dictation.

Ironically, we often look to authority to tell us whether there is value in our existence, yet it is only the free person who is capable of giving to others something of real value and to be valued in return for doing so. It is a genuinely creative force that is necessary in order to initiate any kind of movement beyond the deeply entrenched, archaic practices that perpetuate age-old suffering, into a place where it is possible to bring about a solution; a revolution, a new way of life.

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