The words spoken by Mahatma Gandhi over 75 years ago “Be the change you wish to see in the world” are among the most difficult to actually apply. And the more imbalanced the world gets, the more difficult it is to live them.
Virtually everyone I’ve spoken to in the thousands of conversations I’ve had since I entered politics in 2005 feels it … they can’t place the malaise exactly but its symptoms are disenchantment, seared trust and general discouragement … and the more they try to be the change, the more frustrated they become … but who to blame?
And this ambiguity is part of why we are where we are. Our current philosophic technology, (and Gandhi’s was advanced) is overloaded in the information age, we’re operating like on an old computer trying to run modern apps. We are collectively overwhelmed and grasping at straws for relief. Taking hours to verify one article before sharing … fact checking the fact check.
So what happens when human beings get overwhelmed? When there is something they can’t control, and it makes them so angry that simmering resentment presses harder and harder for release? Like a pent up electrical charge that releases in lightning, we look for a place to discharge … a lightning rod. A group, skin, ethnicity, religion, political party, wealth level, a president … a celebrity to dethrone … or even any anonymous person that says something controversial, we get release in pummeling, not even consciously most of the time.
In addition to running on old an industrial age operating system, we are severely out of balance. The word disease means an impairment of health or a condition of abnormal functioning. Well, when functioning properly our bodies have a state called homeostasis, the healthy balance between the unfathomable number of exact conditions that must be maintained to stay alive. Blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, hormone levels, pH of the blood, hydration, vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, triglycerides, enzymes, glucose levels, and on and on … all gravitating to an optimal level to prolong and promote the life of the individual.
What we, as the citizen body are feeling is that abnormal functioning in us, as a larger body. Because money, the energy of our humankind body, is no longer being produced in proportion to, or for the benefit of the homeostasis of us, but it’s being produced sans societal benefit, by a disproportionate system that concentrates power in the forms of money, politics, thought, sentiment or military. It’s akin to the imbalance of illness in our own body. To say it’s an unwise design for everybody would be a gross understatement. The wholeness cannot be subdivided into groups of decadence and deprivation.
So this is part of our suffering, we KNOW we are better than this. But remember, we also have a bad operating system. We have inadequate coding in our brains to control our own situations. Instead of strong spiritual, philosophic and scientific principles, we are living on pleasure, and comfort as our guides. If we get instant pleasure, convenience or gratification, we transact. It’s hard to admit, our contribution to our own problem, isn’t it?
The good news is, we can cure ourselves. Just like if you went to the doctor and they told you have high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, there are major lifestyle contributors. Of course in our current philosophic technology, we would want a pill to just fix everything right away, yes? We would prefer not to have the inconvenience and work of exercise, eating a healthy diet, meditating, getting solid sleep, and using mindfulness to control anxiety. And this instant gratification modus operandi is the operating system that has led us to this diseased state. Yes, those in government and giant corporations are contributing, of course, but that part is out of our control. Just like in illness, we can create a hospitable environment for its growth or an inhospitable one.
What is in our control? 4 things. Our purchases, our votes, our attention and our admiration.
So let’s take these one at a time and see the impact …
First realize the republic we were formed as has become a corrupt oligarchy. It is the mass of giant monopolistic corporations, a giant government, a giant media and giant sports and entertainment. Together, this group, creates a dominant and corrupt current of power in trillions of our dollars, votes, attention and admiration. All of the power we have in these forms feeds this current, and depletes the middle class, because it is disproportionately concentrated in the oligarchy.
This isn’t an evil conspiracy, masterminded by some man behind a curtain, this is the nature of human beings since recorded history. The level of brutality has gone down but deception is up to where almost everything is an illusion in one giant pyramid scheme. Of course you can get into the club yourself, but that is like hitting the lottery, even if you HAVE the talent. You then need the stomach for the imbalance in your excess to hundreds of million’s deficit. So knowing people are getting ripped off for life fundamentals like real estate, health insurance, and college has to be ok for you. Or being ok with knowing education is floundering, but you can be wealthy while the kids spend money on things that your company sells that aren’t ultimately improving their situation.
So what ends up happening is those with a conscience don’t want to be part of this, but those whose conscience isn’t bothered and rather get validation from getting over on most people, end up at the top. It’s really a human psychology problem we’ve been trying to solve for millennia. Pathologically egotistical individuals end up lording over decent, conscientious human beings.
Well, now we can do something, because we are advancing philosophic technology to catch up with electronic technology. We now have the power to connect and alter our own behavior in coordinated fashion to distribute power away from the oligarchical current and into the middle class. Yes, we can.
The money that the corporations get and pay their politicians and lobbyists comes from you and me. You might say, well I only spent $100 with “Giga Corporation.” That’s like saying, I only voted with “one vote” for so and so. Each dollar is still a vote. This unharnessed power of the masses is untapped and a major component of how we can fix our own country.
Mathematically, Giga Corporation ceases to exist without our dollars, period. If we, the complainers, agreed all together next month to stop buying from Giga, their revenue shrinks to zero. That’s the math. So it’s not that we don’t understand the solution, it’s that we aren’t willing to give up convenience and price.
Voting works the same way. There is political duopoly. Without your vote, it ceases to exist. But we keep voting for it because we buy the con. There were 22 other candidates running in 2020, but you only heard about two. This is where the media is complicit in perpetuating the current of corruption. The good news is, if we didn’t vote for the duopoly, we can grow small competing parties, just like shopping small. And here again, mathematically, we have the numbers to disrupt the current … without votes the parties change or cease to exist.
News? Same thing. Giant media goes away without eyeballs (attention). Giant media promotes the drama in the current of corruption because we accept it with our attention and thus we become consumers of it. We can break that cycle too.
Lastly, we have art and entertainment. Seems innocent enough right? But we have imbalance here and imbalance corrupts. I know it’s hard to accept, this idea. But we have to get out of this notion that no amount of money is too much. See when a child sees that to be a “success” in sports, let alone life, you have to compete with multi-millionaire athletes, then that child is going to grow up with sights set on being “successful” by that definition. And comparatively, being a Ph.D or teacher looks and feels like a powerless loser.
We can’t give larger than life entities or human beings MORE power in the form of money, political (electing actors to public office), social (following people for looks, athletic ability), and admiration or we grow the imbalance, which hurts the middle class.
We need to develop a sense of when we are feeding the imbalance and when we are feeding the balance in the citizen body, and transact accordingly to fix this as a process and therefore, long term.
So how do we actually BE the change? How do we sacrifice some convenience, pay a bit more and give our attention and admiration to people and things that promote balance?
- Awareness – you read this far … you are aware enough. Share it.
- Acknowledge – acknowledge our role in growing the imbalance in wanting the easiest, most pleasurable things, conveniently all the time. It was innocent and innocuous when we grew up with it, now we understand our taking the easy path has created a societal disease.
- Commit – decide to change our lifestyle to start directing our power to the smallest and most positively impactful entities and people. #ShopSmall #VoteSmall #NewsSmall #ArtSmall – a million millionaires is the same wealth as (1) trillionaire.
- Support each other
The citizen body is us, so, The Citizen Body, is us … it’s not another community, it’s THE community we’re all already in, and we determine our circumstances ourselves.
TCB provides education, resources and alternatives to big business, big government, big media and big arts and entertainment, making it much easier to avoid monopolies. And in the process we unite in a positive cause, and become more powerful than any of these entities that prefer us divided, bring them into proper balance, and now, finally we ARE the change we wished to see in the world.
The Citizen Body 