To be sure global warming poses a threat to the survival of this planet, and thus by extension ourselves. But that's not what I want to talk about. It is the insidious, the small, that eats at us. The unapparent plagues. We are a diseased world for which the only cure is ourselves. Our oppressor and savior. We destroy ourselves a little every day by negligence and short term views. It is as Neitzsche said, "Man, full of emptiness and torn apart with homesickness for the desert has had to create from within himself an adventure, a torture chamber, an unsafe and hazardeous wilderness - this fool, this prisoner, consumed with longing and despair, became the inventor of bad conscience." We've got a lot of that today, bad conscience.
Our greatest oppressor is our link to the material, the external. Inherent in this is the danger that if that outside element by which we define ourselves disappears, we have nothing. No way to define ourselves. If I am beautiful, and allow that to dictate my interactions, serve as a measure of my self worth, I am left with nothing at the end of the day. Beauty fades. Either in the long run with age, or in a split second in a car crash. Vanity may build as a by product for it is nothing more than fear of losing beauty. I become so afraid that beauty will vanish that I become consumed by it, translating as an obsession with my own looks. The origin of bad thoughts is fear and we live in a culture of fear. Inescapable fear. Not even the line at the grocery store is safe.
If freedom is the freedom from harm, then we are not free at all. Post Freud I think we all agree that harm does not have to be bodily. Screaming at you as you stand, innocently in the grocery store line are at least 20 magazines, more than 2/3 of those present preaching of weight loss plans, how so and so lost x amount, the new diet. It's nauseating. I almost become compelled to leave my cart and run for the fresh air outside - there's my diet plan.
I'm focusing for the moment on looks because I find it to be one of our more insidious attachments to the exterior. Without even realizing it can creep up on you. One day you might wake up and realize how it has begun to define your relationships. How many of the interactions you have happen because you're attractive. At that moment fear overcomes you. What if it were suddenly gone? How do I detach from it? Who could I really count on to be there if I didn't look like this? Would I be a better person? Would I be a happier, healthier person? Just look at the things that we do to ourselves: surgery, eating disorders, dyes. How can the person not get lost in that jumble.
This disease is the culmination of our achievement. It is the torture chamber that we have created for ourselves because our energies are no longer focused on pure survival. Somehow it is hard to imagine people's of the third world worrying if their food is nonfat, or taking out the only tiny loan they can get, which could allow them t create a new life, and spend it on breasts. No, the heart of this disease is the property of "developed" nations. As always, I think we need a little change in diction here.
We are handcuffed to far more in the exterior than just looks - there's money (fear of it's loss or lack of leads to greed, which leads to ... and so it goes), objects, success. These all cut us off from happiness. They are hinderers. Road blocks. As the Dali Lama says, the ultimate goal is happiness. When we are happy it doesn't matter if our breasts are smaller than some super model, if we aren't as thin as someone else, or as tall and muscular (yes, this conversation includes men - they get surgical enhancements to, such as calf and peck enlargers). It is easy to get lost in the fray, in the jungle of advertisements, media, drug companies that tell us we are not as we should be, we are not the ultimate versions of ourselves. The only problem is that this "ultimate version" has everything but a soul. Women, it is no longer the men who are turning us into Stepford wives - we're doing it to ourselves. If you think that you need to do that in order to find love, then let me tell you, there is no real love at the end of that journey.
We are a nation that promotes individualism - believes in personal responsibility. I will not argue that it is partly the fault of each of us who let this culture tear us down, that let ourselves become unkind, self-involved people. It is also the fault of the individuals who hold the positions that create a culture of fear for their compatriots. But the fault goes beyond the individual. To the first group - a lifetime of 3,000 advertisements a day all telling you that you need something, aren't good enough, should be like this, wear a person down. They distract them from the real. To the second, people need jobs and may not yet be at a personal point of realization that would allow them to have the ideals to quit their job. So it is to us as a society that the responsibility falls. We must limit corporations - really examine what freedom means, and not allow them to impede ours. You may here argue that the corporation also has the right to be free. It doesn't. In no case does something, a non-living entity, have a right greater than people, than individuals. A corporation is not an individual, whatever the legal jargon may say. It does not feel, breathe, or have morals. It's interests never, and I mean never, outweigh those of real people.
We can't do anything about some unforeseen (well by all of us but a select few) alien invasion that wipes us out. We can do something about our own annihilation. Annihilation of body and spirit. We are obsessed with what we aren't, not with what we are. Let's change that.
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