Think for yourself and question authority

When I was a young boy, I didn't have many friends, and that reality lent itself to me finding solace elsewhere, mainly in books, but not only. Cartoons, toys, comics, videogames, movies, tv shows - any sort of escapism that allowed me to construct a haven of sorts for myself, from everything in my life - both internal and external - that caused me to shy away from human interaction.

It was, in fact, science fiction and fantasy that were some of the earliest forms of this escapism I talk about, sci-fi moreso in my younger years. Bearing that in mind, I envisioned a 2020 full of hope and promise, not the post nuclear dystopia for us, but rather that of a world where hunger and disease had been erradicated, where peace and progress coexisted happily side by side, and a humanity that united had journeyed to the stars and beyond, taking our legacy far beyond this earth we call home.

I guess I started losing hope of any of this ever coming to pass still in the early 90's. I can't now remember for sure what might have triggered this, but it was this realization that things weren't changing, weren't evolving, and I wasn't sure why. I'd eventually devote time and thought to these matters, to the understanding of why we couldn't get past this rut, why we couldn't get to that future I dreamed of. With time I came to witness any number of social struggles rising to the forefront, protests, riots, marches. All these wonderful displays of nothingness. And then I understood that we don't change because we don't want to. We - as a society, both as a whole and as individuals - can't get past the paradigms that divide us. We impose divisions on ourselves based on race, religion, sexuality, gender, and god knows what else. And ultimately we never remember that, above all, we're one simple thing : we're people. We are the people.

It's now 2020, and my most optimistic predictions put us on a course for extinction in the next 50 years. There's not much we can do to avoid that, unless some drastic changes occur - though change isn't something that's wanted, not when our idea of freedom is based on which hand wields the whip. More on this a bit further ahead. We live in a broken world, made broken by those who can still make a profit off of human suffering - and while they can, they will milk us dry.

'They' - god, I sound like a fucking conspiracy theorist. But in this instance? They're not wrong.

One of the lies that we are fed on a very early age is that of 'Democracy', but really, none of us ever knew what that was. We've known kleptocracies, timocracies, oligarchies, autocracies, but they're all words for the same thing : tyranny. We believe that the rights that we had to fight for are important. Why did we have to give them up in the first place? Because all we've ever known is the whip. We submitted to it, milennia ago, because we were always told that someone else was better than us. Smarter than us. More fit to rule than us. More able to protect us than, well, us. And why? Why did we allow this? Why is it, that to this day, that a seven billion people army is cowed into inaction and fear and despair because of the whims of the oligarchs that control our fates? 

We can't evolve, we can't break the chains, because we've never ever known true freedom. Because we are too stupid to stop fighting the wrong fights. See, we're slaves to economic systems and the political class exists as an extension of those systems. Understand - they are not the people, they are not of the people, they are not from the people, they are not for the people, they are a class unto themselves, closer to Olympus than to the midden heap. None of them - NONE - in any circumstance is your friend nor are they trying to better your lives. If you think the few crumbs that are tossed your away - a poor education system, healthcare that's always one step away from the edge of crumbling, minimum wages that can't even guarantee you a dignified live - are worth everything else they do to you, man... you're part of the problem. Again, if your idea of freedom is waiting for the left hand to be more lenient than the right, have I got bad news for you.

The truth is, though - you won't get this, nor will you even care. Because you're proud of your labels, you're proud of your beliefs, you're proud of being part of the longest con known to man. You'll still enable these thieves and murderers, thinking that they've got your best interests in mind. And yet they fail you every single time. They always have. All these systems we've known? They've always failed us. Except in enslaving us, that they suceeded quite well.

So well, in fact, that we do as we're told, like the docile, domesticated sheep we are. Oh boy, 'sheep'.

A few days back everyone decided to post a black square denoting some kind of support for movements that, yes, enable our oppression. This was us being told to jump, and we replied 'how high?'.

Sad... but true. What did this change? Nothing. What will this change? Nothing. Hashtags? Oh man.

It's the very definition of lunacy, to keep on doing the same things all the time and expecting different results. 

No change will ever happen until we tear down civilization to its most basic state, and rebuild anew, tabula rasa. All the towers must be razed, all the powers must be destroyed - there is only us, we, the people. But who'd want that? Who'd want so profound a change when we'd probably have to sacrifice so much of our modern way of living in order to build and grow and evolve? Would you trade airplane flights for cleaner water? Would you trade high speed internet for food that contains no chemicals? Would you trade your dreary desk job that barely pays you enough to survive for a life spent tilling the earth? Would you trade your bank accounts, your gym memberships, your social media accounts for a finer world? No, I don't think you would.

You are in love with the status quo, because the status quo allows you to think that by posting a black square on instagram you made a difference. So you pat yourself on the back, maybe use a couple of hashtags denoting how progressive you are, you feel smug because you've changed the world, you change your facebook profile picture to show just how involved you are, and hey - they say jump, and you say?

I made a mistake of making a post where I told those who followed me to lay the blame on us - not the cops, not the politicians, not the military industrial complex, but us - we, the people. It's we who tolerate that these things happen. It's we who allow these people to be and to remain in office, though they wage wars on us. It's we who enable these systems by obeying. 

And I got told that I was wrong, everything I said was wrong, and that by calling the people 'sheep' I was a fascist. Didn't I think that black lives matter? Of course I do, but then I believe that all lives mattered. I'm a fascist because of that. Maybe my definition of 'all' is different, but I deem it to be all inclusive. What do I know? I'm a fascist, because of course I must be.

During the next couple of days I saw that a number of posts with these accusations levied against me were rising up, more and more. I saw any number of people being called fascists if they somehow had a different opinion. And I'm not talking about hate speech here, it's more like if you don't agree 100% with what you're being told, then you're a fascist. And this genuinely scares me. These are the people that will one day rule the world, and whose intolerance will breed the new gulags, the new ghettos, the new concentration camps. I actually fear them more than I do fascists - those idiots I can see a mile away. 

So me, at my most nihilist, at my most anarchist - I'm called a fascist. No 'black lives matter' hashtag? Fascist. Thinking that people are sheep? Fascist. Believing that there is only one race - the human race? Fascist. There's no reasoning. I tried. And I gave up when I asked someone who takes great pride in the fighting of hatred, and yet spouts nothing but hatred, what their opinion on the Holodomor was and their response was that it was something that a) was greatly exaggerated by the right and b) wasn't as bad as all that, and I wondered to myself at that moment if that person knew how close to those idiots that deny that the holocaust happened they sounded. I just gave up. I can't anymore. 

I deleted all my social media accounts a few days ago, and insofar as I can I'll be trying to delete as much as I can of my digital footprint. I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I don't want any more arguments against those that will always think themselves on the moral high ground, and who are, in fact, just as awful as those they fight.

We refuse to understand what's fundamentally flawed with our world, and that cost us our future. Why is there racism? Why is there inequality? Why is there so much misery in the world? We can't tackle these matters if we don't attack the root causes. It's like putting out fires with gasoline. We seem to take, unfortunately, great pride in seeing the forest for the trees. We want to treat the symptoms but not the disease. That disease is poverty. That disease is hunger. That disease is called not having even a shallow piece of dignity in so much of the world. Not until then can everything else be erradicated as well.

There's a phrase in latin - 'Cui bono?'. Listen, I'm dumb as shit, I couldn't even finish high school, but come on - who benefits? Who benefits from human misery? Is it you? Is it us? Is it the poor? No, you damn well know who does.

And do you know what's an easy thing to do? Trying to ignite a race war, because it's so much easier for the hoi polloi to fight themselves than to fight the elite. Do you know what's happening while this race war brews? In Chile there have been protests and riots. Countries in south and central America are on the verge of famine. In Hong Kong protests continue. All these things are facets of a worldwide system that's been put in place to control us, a system that allows for police brutality the world over, a system that allows for generations of children to be marched off to die in senseless wars, a system that would rather build bombs than schools, a system that would rather profit from us than give us a dignified existence.

Though you don't know it, or don't acknowledge it, we're in the middle of a war right now - a class war. This war has been waged on us - we, the people - from time immemorial. And leading it are the generals who understand that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting and supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. (This is from Sun Tzu's 'The art of War'). Leading it are the generals that not only choose their battlefields, they choose their own rules. And it's always pawn against pawn, because it's so much easier for them to have us fight ourselves. Not until we realize that, indeed, not only do we not need them, we are better off without them, will we be free. No amount of hashtags or black squares or rainbows will change anything. These idiocies are proof that we truly respond well to the conditioning imposed on us. Until the time that we line the parliaments and houses of government and the corporate offices with the heads of those who exploit us willingly, we'll never be free. Until the time that we no longer allow these failed systems to dictate our lives, we'll never be free. We could end this, not without blood, not without loss, but we could end this. Imagine a world that doesn't spend money on guns. Imagine a world that doesn't spend money on armies because we've done away with the concept of borders and we're now a global community working for the continued survival of the human race. Imagine a world where children never go to bed hungry nor know the sound of rockets and bombs. Imagine a world where health and the sciences and education truly become paramount.

We could have this. We don't want to, not really.

This is the world. It's not the one we were supposed to have, but it's the one we made.
We did this. We did it with open eyes and willing hands. We broke it, and there is no putting it back together.

I wish you all could prove me wrong, but you can't. There's no such hope of that in me. We're all of us stupid, we're all of us fighting the wrong wars. We're all of us unaware that yet another war has already begun being fought, and as always, we're losing already - the war for resources. We march happily towards extinction because we can't see past the whip. And maybe it's time I made my peace with that. In a few decades no one will remember us anymore and the earth will eventually fade into obsolescence, as a grateful universe smiles. I just wish we could all have made this a better place to live in.