Radical social change? You can't get there from here.

[wcepler]

The human race is fundamentally, socially defective.

Politics is whistling in a dark that's not listening and institutionalized religion appeals only to two digit IQ's.

But our suffering is real and more than anything else it defines the human condition.

The essence of the problem is that we absolutely don't know how to live together in ways which are sane, rational, and kind. But even that's too simplistic, because the problem is even beyond our ability to "define" it. All we DO know is that since the beginning of recorded history, practically all of us have been living in chronic misery.

We may have some vague sense of what our lives could be like if we somehow solved the "social problem" (can we put it like that?). But the torturing heart of this is that we HAVE NO CLUE how to do it.

Sure, we have a list of crapolas like politics, religion, and sometimes even revolution, but alas, they are much ado about nothing. Indeed, if we are really honest (which we are maybe 0.01% of the time), we will acknowledge that these things always have been, are now, and always will be more part of the problem than the solution.

It's hard to imagine ANYONE on planet Earth who still thinks "politics" is going to radically socially change anything. Of course, that's exactly what most of us actually DO believe, so we keep (in the words of an ancient Chinese Zen master) "washing off blood with blood."

Indeed, the worst thing about all our pitiful attempts to solve the social problem is that all these attempts ARE THEMSELVES an expression OF the problem.

American politics, for example, is based on the irrational and virtually "mentally ill" assumption that we have a two party system. But, it is blatantly obvious (or should be) that behind our political "representatives" (like the 2004 Democratic Congress of traitors) are evil forces powerful beyond our dreams.

Indeed, here's an example of how what we're dealing with is simply off the chart. The forces of evil behind our pseudo two party system are called the elites, and the international elites make up much less than 1% of the human race, but they basically control EVERYTHING in our social/political lives, and have been doing so for around the last 6,000 years.

OK, now that's a statement of hard core social, historical fact. That is what is REALLY GOING ON and all the meaningless election jive is just the dancing of boot licking political puppets of the elites -- you know, a sort of "good cop" and "bad cop", or Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber.

However, the worst part of this is that even such a direct perception of "the reality of politics" is itself relatively worthless. Yes, it's correct to say (1.) America does not have a two party system, and (2.) the American elites live like literal Greek Gods. And why not even throw in a (3.) that the evidence is now MOUNTAINOUS that 9/11 was an "inside job" engineered by the Bush fascists, with almost certainly a great deal of help from, let's just say, certain Middle Eastern friends.

OK, now what? Even if these statements are true, then what the bloodly hell do we do about it? Are we going to "vote the bums out"? But that's impossible, since the 2004 Congress proved that dems = pugs and pugs = dems. Back to good cop and bad cop. Back to the elite Greek Gods. And back to a 9/11 that's now buried deeper than Kennedy's assassination. And please note that BOTH of our presidential candidates are staying light years away from 9/11, which may well be the most evil and world changing event in human history.

So, here we are, living in an elite manufactured hell (and by the way, elites used to be called the aristocracy) and there's absolutely, absolutely nothing we can do about it.

How about a literal revolution? Isn't THAT radical social change? Well, history has shown us that things are usually worse after a revolution than they were before, so more futility.

Probably all this sounds very negative and some of you would prefer to sing a more positive song. Well sing away, but psst!, the elites aren't listening.

And yes this IS a very negative take on human existence, at least social human existence, because we are a profoundly dysfunctional species when it comes to things like society and civilization.

You know it's really not hard to imagine other advanced species in the universe who/that live in spiritual harmony and creativity. Indeed, probably their individual lives would be impoverished without the collective social matrix of their species.

Well, if there's a harmony quotient (call it the HQ, say, from 1 to 10) for advanced species, the universe may be teeming with 8's, 9's and even a few 10's. But on planet Earth -- probably at best a 2.

OK, let's see if we can end this with some vulnerable hope. Remember the second part of the title, "You can't get there from here."? Well, that sentence is a kind of trap UNLESS you jump out of the "here box".

Maybe you've heard the phrase, "begin where you are". Well, semantics aside, that may be exactly what we SHOULDN'T do, because where we are is not a place from which we can solve the social problem.

Where we are is a millennia old box of conditioning, programming, and brainwashing -- it's the "here". And this box is so arrogant it even presumes to tell us who we are. Think about that. Now if that isn't the absolute limit of brainwashed stupidity, what is? NOTHING can tell you who you are except yourself! This should be the most obvious truth of human existence, but in box land, all those authority machines sit on your head like "a crown of thorns". Hmmm.

Lots of threads here, I know, but the core intuition is that you can't get there from here, because our "here" is dysfunctional and defective. Our "living our life from place" is betraying us. We need a change of reality scenery. We need a dimensionally different here.

And how do we find it? We do basically the same thing Einstein did when he jumped out of the box of 19th century physics and saw the vaster dimensions of relativity.

But oh my goodness, isn't this a scary and crushing challenge? Maybe there ISN'T anything outside the box of our suffocatingly conditioned existence. Maybe some guy in a dress (why do religious types always like to wear "gowns"?) really does know who I am. And maybe all those years of conditioning are a hotline from God.

Yeah, and maybe it's more like some totally, impersonal machine/thing that’s gives you a pellet or game rule (i.e., law) every time you sell another piece of your soul.

One thing for this writer is now absolutely, absolutely certain. You can't get there from here.
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W. Christopher Epler (Bill)

ps Perhaps these three sublime intuitions will give us wings:

“Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live.” – Albert Einstein

“It is truth that liberates and not the effort to be free” – Jiddu Krishnamurti (20th Century philosopher/mystic)

“Before Abraham was, I am.” – Jesus Christ.

We are not alone. Countless other fellow humans have left the box . . . and so can we.

<http://theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com/>

[Two Americas]

1. nothing could be farther from the truth

Nothing could be farther from the truth, in my opinion, and history is full of examples of extremely radical social change. we have just gone through such an era, with the free market libertarian movement dramatically changing the country, our politics, and people's thinking.

The right wing, and sadly too many Democrats and liberals, out a massive amount of resources and energy into suppressing radical change that would benefit the people at every turn, otherwise that sort of radical social change would happen much more quickly than the enforced radical change the right wingers have achieved in a few short years.

When we say that it is something about human nature that prevents change, and then think we have to remake people as individuals through some spiritual alchemy and see that as a prerequisite to social change, we are blinding ourselves to the truth that is right under our noses - that a relatively small number of people are working relentlessly and ruthlessly to suppress any and all signs of a movement toward radical social change. That leaves us in an impotent state, drifting in a fog of delusion, analyzing our belly button lint and patting each other on the back for being so "evolved" compared to the unwashed masses. That is exactly the fog of confusion that the wealthy and powerful few hope we will waste our time on.