A Message Of Care For Almost Everybody

Hello again, Dear Reader,

Although it’s been a while since I took some time to compose a message in this forum, my thinking on various subjects has continuously run at a medium level. Recent events compel me to do something and writing this is my way of exploring just what ought to be done by someone like me. And by “like me” I don’t mean someone with a similar origin, ethnicity, family situation, upbringing, education, income, voting history, degree of travelled-ness, investment in the future, or Super Mario World skills. What I mean when I say what ought to be done by someone like me, the only qualifiers to “like me” I’m focused on are these:

1.      whether you care – and this time I’m not even talking about empathy.

2.      whether you feel like something ought to be done.

If you care about the world, and are interested in the world becoming, or remaining, or transitioning towards being a certain way – any certain way – and you feel like something ought to be done to further that vision, then these thoughts are for you and me both.

For the majority of my audience, you likely qualify as caring because of your capacity for empathy. From the perspective of empathy, you can identify an injustice even when done to a complete stranger who is nothing like you. From there, you can find your way to the cause of the injustice, where you often find people, or systems supported by people, intentionally causing the injustice. Then, looking for the reason for such support is sustained, you can find other parts of the machine – this part misdirects, that one misinforms, and the other one discourages independent thought. Focusing on the people behind this machine’s curtain, you can see their motivators (fear, insecurity, power, greed, and prejudices reinforced by the very machine they run) and understand that their lack of empathy is a major contributing factor. Indeed, why else would they disparage the notion so vehemently?

So most of you see things this way, or can easily enough follow the logic, which is not-so-interestingly directly tied to the path woven by following the money. You care, and you want to see things change. You feel like something ought to be done, and maybe you’ve already taken action. Maybe it’s your full-time thing, and has been for a long time, to take action. Maybe you dabble. Maybe the “right” thing to do hasn’t presented itself to you yet. We’ll get back to that in a minute. Let me gather the rest of my Dear Readers.

For some of you, even those among the “down with empathy” crowd, even if you truly do have little to no empathy within you at the moment, I still think most of you care. You are familiar with the notion of an injustice, as that machine I wrote about above highlights those injustices or perceived injustices that have you or your people in the position of victim. The story is woven in the comfortable silk of fear, and you are told that it is the folks on the other side of the aisle and especially those further away on the radical spectrum who deliver the injustices to you. The reason for your opposition’s support for things that do wrong by you is given simply: they want to force their ideals on everyone, taking away your independence, your liberty, your freedom. And that’s as far as they have to go. Nobody needs to explain what motivates a liberal to want to force a conservative to live by their own ideals, they’re just anti-freedom, I guess.

So you are presented with ideas that certain groups of people, those with extra melanin, or those who aren’t cis, or those who hold liberal ideals, are a threat to your way of life. You care, and you want to see things either remain the same or revert back to the fabled before-times without any woke. You feel like something ought to be done, and maybe you’ve already taken action. Maybe it’s your full-time thing, and has been for a long time, to take action. Maybe you dabble. Maybe the “right” thing to do hasn’t presented itself to you yet. Let’s get into that now, as I re-gather the rest of my Dear Readers.

#FreePalestine #FuckICE #NoKings

WAIT, I’m losing some of you, come back! #ClintonIsAlsoInTheEpsteinFiles #DrainTheSwamp #SleepyJoeBiden

There, I think we’re all gathered now. Ahem. Thank you for coming together in this moment, Dear Readers. You all care, and you all want to do something. You’re like me! Before we move forward together, we do need to address both the elephant, as well as the ass, in the room.

First, the elephant – I know that when conservatives and their talking heads point out the danger of “others” they get right to your fear-center, and they claim they are warning you so that you can all band together to protect one another and your way of life. What they don’t tell you is that in the bargain, conservative parties worldwide are able to enact policies that extract value and wealth from the bottom of the income spectrum, and funnel it up to the top. They cherry-pick “successful” businesspeople and convince folks that this could be them someday, so it’s best to support pro-rich policies. They also disparage those from whom their (for they are among the benefactors) wealth is derived, making you feel no regrets for the losses of these others – it’s not like they’re taking from you, right?

Unfortunately, both your inevitable ultra-wealthiness through nothing but hard work, prayer, and strong moral values, and the idea that they’re on your side and not taking anything from you, are outright lies. You don’t benefit from Trump’s tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, trickle-down isn’t real, and your elected officials do not have your best interests at heart. They want to keep as much power as they can so they can siphon as much value as they can from vulnerable communities, and they’ve got a pretty good system going to perpetuate this status-quo.

Now the ass – I know that when democrats and their talking heads point out the danger of “others” they get right to your fear-center, and they claim they are warning you so that you can all band together to protect one another and your way of life. What they don’t tell you is that in the bargain, liberal parties worldwide are able to enact policies that extract value and wealth from the bottom of the income spectrum, and funnel it up to the top. They distract from the fact of their pro-rich agenda, focusing on stoking fear in their base that they could be the next victim of conservative policies, so it’s best to support democratic politicians. They also generally ignore those from whom their (for they are among the benefactors) wealth is derived, making you feel no regrets for their losses – it’s not like they would ever take more than what they need, right?

Unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions, both their alliance with the working class against the corporate class, and their interest in the wellbeing of vulnerable populations, are outright lies. Democrats are corrupt, they’ll pick a corporate donor’s interest over their constituents’ any day, and they’re completely out of touch with the challenges facing everyday people. They do not have your best interests at heart. They want to keep as much power as they can so they can siphon as much value as they can from vulnerable communities, and they’ve got a pretty good system going to perpetuate this status-quo.

If that seemed repetitive, congratulations, you must have a pulse! What I’m saying to you is that liberal/conservative, democrat/republican, they are two sides of the same coin. And coin is very apropos, because it’s really all about the money and the power to get more money and buy more power and so on. They have pitched us against one another, moving us to unsee the humanity in anyone with a differing opinion. They tell us “those others don’t care” but you’re here now reading this, wanting a certain outcome for the world. You care. We all care. So let’s DO something with this feeling, together. Here is our collective motivation to follow: remember, it’s not left and right, it’s up and down. (If you don't follow through on any other link in this post, please follow through on this one.)

Imagine this: what if the conservative dog whistles like “they’re going to mooch off the government” were received by conservatives who are secure enough in their own financial situations that they don’t mind if someone gets a job or a handout. What if the reaction was like “so what? If they need it, give it to them, I don’t mind my taxpayer dollars going towards a cause like that, because I’ve got enough of my own dollars and I feel pretty unaffected by this.”

Now imagine this: what if the liberal warnings like “they’re going to use ICE as a secret police force to terrorize and deport immigrants” were received by liberals who are secure enough in their understanding of conservatives’ motivations that they know nobody would actually comply with such orders. What if the reaction was like “no they won’t – I know so many conservatives, and none of them are dumb enough to believe that immigrants pose any sort of a threat to anyone just from the fact that they weren’t born here. They won’t be able to staff ICE with anyone who would actually go through with stuff like that and I feel pretty unaffected by this impossible claim. Plus, if they did try to pull something like that, it’s not Christ-like, and so they’d lose my support entirely.”

If I fooled you with that fake link above where it says "dumb enough" like that, I'm so sorry. Please watch my apology video here.

We all want the world to be a better place than it is right now for ourselves and our families. Some of us also want the world to be a better place for broader communities of people, even entire nations, or the whole human race, or animals too, also plants, as well as the natural non-living world, to falling degrees. Let’s start with improvements for individuals and families at every place on the political spectrum and continue outwards from there.

The world is not better for everyone when wealth and value flows from the bottom majority of the income spectrum up to the top minority. That general movement of value is caused by an economic system we’re living in called “extractive capitalism.” When we are able to switch to a different mode of economics, we will see the lives of the majority of the population, those who have been extracted from for so long, greatly improve. The lives of the ultra-wealthy will get marginally worse, but we will have voted on the matter, and the consensus will be pretty clear. People want affordable housing and healthcare more than they want for a billionaire to get a new yacht.

Let’s be clear with one another about the fact that we care. Be sure to confirm to one another that you care about one another’s wellbeing. Tell them that you want for them to have greater prosperity, greater access to freedom and liberty, and you want that for their families too. Reinforce that if we are successful together, the bounty from the oligarchs and the capitalist class will be shared fairly amongst us all.

Our shared true enemy defeated, those machines that spewed misinformation at us to keep us at one another’s throats will cease to function, and we’ll realize more and more that it was never one another, neither was it any foreign boogeymen, at the root of our issues. Without the reinforcement of propaganda that tells us to accept only propaganda as truth, we will all be liberated to pursue knowledge, develop critical-thinking, and nurture our empathy, if these are paths we choose to follow. We can all stop obsessing over how terrible the other side is, and simply let everyone be however they choose to be. It will be revealed that none of us really cares to force others to change their ideals – don’t get gay married if you don’t want to, and I won’t go to church if I don’t want to, and nobody has to get upset about it.

From where we are today, at a time when everyone cares VERY much about what is going on, and many of us have STRONG opinions, we can move to a better future where care, though appreciated, is ultimately irrelevant. A future where people can live how they want to live, and have the means to do so - where nobody lives in such scarcity that they could be radicalized against anyone else based on their values, ideals, motivations, or circumstance.

Dear Reader, let’s leverage the care we all feel in this moment to push us to a world in which caring is obsolete – a future where we could learn we disagree with someone, and instead of allowing the billionaires and their puppets to play us like fiddles, pitting us against one another, we only feel like saying “but what do I care?” because if we are able to become apathetic to the made-up threat we pose to one another, we can begin to care for ourselves, for one another, and for the entire planet.

And if you made it all the way to the end, thanks for reading! Here's something special just for you!