Scraps from the Ruling Elite

I guess my turning point was when I fell out of society for six months. I started to see the complex system we are conditioned to obey from the outside in. Most people are so busy scrambling to keep up with their jobs and homes that they never see the bigger picture of why we must do all this and live this way. Most people are so busy that they don’t have time to think for themselves. I think this was intelligently designed into the system by the ruling class. If people spend all their time working until exhaustion and maintaining a consumer lifestyle then they will not question or revolt. They will not have the energy to do so. They will just accept what has been their given lot in life and blindly follow those in higher authority that are really not interested in their well being. The only time the ruling class is truly interested in the general population’s well being is when it suits their interests and/or is profitable (A good example of this was the zeal for a profitable war to “free” a foreign land from tyranny and terrorism juxtaposed against the lackluster governmental response after Hurricane Katrina). Altruism truly seems to be dead in our corporate dominated world.

We are conditioned from a very early age to accept the “system”, obey all the laws (many are silly), and to think alike. Unconventional ideas and non-conformity are frowned upon deeply by authority. It threatens them and their way of life. The status quo must be maintained even if it means some people are mistreated or have their rights taken away.

An interesting example of this non-conformity was “The Homeless Guy” experiment. I disagreed with his ideology and cyber-begging, but gained some good ideas from what Kevin was doing. The guy always got a pretty big backlash from some of his readers and it was telling. He would get comments like, “Get a job!” or “Does anyone else see the humor in an overweight homeless guy complaining about the quality of free meals?”

For some reason, Kevin couldn’t or wouldn’t work in a traditional sense. He learned how to survive without living a conventional life and I think this made many people feel threatened and possibly jealous if you can be jealous of an indigent man. His freedom from the “system” also allowed him to speak his mind as he had nothing to lose by being candid. Most of us really don’t have true freedom of speech like Kevin did in that we can lose our jobs and homes if we said what we truly thought or believed on matters. We must think alike and behave a certain way if we are to live off of the scraps the ruling elite throws our way.

I would argue that slavery has been reinvented for our modern age. Not the blatant slavery as of that of the negroes during the birth and early part of our nation, but a more insidious and almost invisible slavery that we all willingly accept and conform to. We are blinded by conditioning from an early age to not see any alternatives. Some of us manage to escape, but we live destitute and solitary lives. We are fugitives in a modern day underground railroad always living under the radar of society.