The post title comes from a paragraph selected from a series of essays entitled “Welcome to the Insane Asylum” by Cognitive Dissonance over at ZeroHedge. The asylum in question being modern society and the self delusion that holds that society together and affords a small group of people the power to control the larger population.
The selection below describes the fiction that government is all powerful and unstoppable and has some interesting points worth thinking about.
I would thoroughly recommend reading the full series of articles (link is to part 4 which has links to the other parts at the start).
They Need Us
Ultimately the government’s power is a derivative of our own real and natural power, which is expressed and quantified as our belief in the government’s power. Because governmental and elite power derives from us we can easily withhold our consent and belief in “them” and collapse them in the same way our currency would collapse if we simply withheld our belief in it. There are of course consequences for our actions. But doing this doesn’t mean the entire system would collapse, though the powers that be constantly tell us this would indeed happen if we removed them from power.
This same false promise of collapse is promoted by the abusive male spouse when he tells the battered wife she can’t live without him. Of course she can, just as we can live without our abusers. The abuser (aka the government, Fed and private banking and corporate interests) has conjured up an emotional and intellectual spell (to use an old maligned term) or an imaginary meme, which can also be called an alternative reality. And the battered spouse (we) has agreed to accept, consciously and/or unconsciously, the power of the alternative reality/spell/meme. We are the active ingredients that can break the cycle of violence and abuse quickly, though we often see it as nearly impossible.
The insane spouse abuser (aka government/Fed etc) is entirely captured and controlled by his insanity and rarely stops the cycle of abuse. We often hear an abuser say that he didn’t know what came over him and that he just couldn’t stop. Of course, he often blames the abused for his actions. I suspect he really is a bit surprised and confused by his own behavior, just as many recovering alcoholics and drug addicts admit they also were very confused by their inability to stop. Regardless, the insane abuser is going to continue to abuse anyone he can control just as our government and private corporations will continue to abuse anyone they can continue to control. We are willingly giving our abusers their power by remaining under their control/spell/meme.
I understand that the reader may chaff at my use of the word “willingly”, which is the reason I’ve spent page after page explaining the concept and manifestation of our insanity. Speaking for myself, I know that I will seek refuge in the comfort of self victimization so that I don’t have to do the hard work of self examination. I’ve often found that I set myself up to fail by placing unrealistic barriers in my way or by enabling precisely those I say I wish to break free from.
From where I stand, that’s the definition of willing, though I understand there are mitigating factors. That’s the reason for this long dissertation, to explain the nuances. But if we can’t examine this dynamic honestly and recognize our part in the dance, we’ll never break free from the insanity. What I’m really saying when I use the term “willingly” is that we don’t wish to exercise our innate and natural power to stop the abuse for a variety of reasons. And that’s a bitter pill that our ego doesn’t wish to swallow.
I need to make it absolutely clear here that I’m neither victim bashing nor blame shifting. I was subjected to terrible abuse for many years and I’m intimately aware of this dynamic. It’s abundantly clear that it’s the sole responsibility of the abuser to stop the abuse and that we must demand every single abuser stop their abuse in every single case of abuse. Period! But we must also find the courage to discuss why the abused remains inside the cycle of abuse. We must do this because this same dynamic is at play within our culture and our country.
When we remove our support of the powers that be (abuser) only the powers that be (the abusers) running the machine (this reality) will collapse, just as the people at the top of government always collapse when half the population shows up in the streets. The people in the streets are removing their faith and belief in the current powers and the powers collapse. The exchanges, banks, governmental services and the economic system all remain in place and operational to a greater or lesser extent after the fact.
They need us; we don’t need them. We have bought into their lies regarding their value to us and the system they’ve constructed to enslave us. For now, all we really want is for the structure to remain in place after they’re gone. We need to detonate our own psychic neutron bomb, killing the powers that be, but leaving the system intact. Once they’re gone and our sanity begins to return, then we can begin to change the systems. It doesn’t all need to change tomorrow. That feeling of urgency is false.
When we’re apathetic, we don’t resist or directly support the powers that be, and thus we willingly and consciously relinquish our power to them. We don’t actually hand our power over to them as much as we don’t apply our power against them. They don’t need to resist that which is not brought to bear against them. This has the effect of reducing our collective strength which is equivalent to adding to theirs.
I sometimes think of this concept in military terms. Ultimately an army is only as strong as the amount of force it can muster and bring to bear against an opposing army at any one time and place. A solider not available to fight doesn’t need to be opposed by the enemy. How we prepare ourselves, how we perceive our role, our readiness and our mission directly determines our effectiveness and thus the reality we project or accept. If we’re missing from the battle, the other side doesn’t need to fight as hard or bring as many troops to bear. Ever wonder how 5% of the population controls the other 95%?
It was the last sentence there that really did nail the argument for me – how do we allow the minority that we gifted with power to abuse that power and remove our freedoms without protest as we have seen here in the UK for the last 13 years especially?
This is great that people can get the mortgage loans and that opens completely new chances.