Tag: humans

Every time I write one of these pieces, a certain number of people freak out, and often quite vocally. But it’s a huge mistake to define ourselves by what we’re against, and darkness is not all that exists in the world.

And we are magnificent creatures. I want my writing to help humans realize that this is true, and to start acting on it. Decrying what is wrong has a place, but a limited place: that of warning good people to avoid it.

The focus on evil is massively overdone. We are inundated with all that is bad in the world: News broadcasts are fully dedicated to nothing else, politicians are dedicated to nothing else, and the very existence of contemporary governance is predicated on “keeping fear alive.”

But all of that is degrading, distracting, and devolutionary. Sure, evil exists, but the truth about evil is that it’s small and weak (stay tuned next week). It’s time to stop devoting the whole of our lives to it.

Who Is “We”?

Since I’m saying, “We are great,” and since I’m expecting a lot of instinctive objections to the concept, I should define the term.

“We” refers to productive humans. And there are billions of us. We are the majority. Our big problem is we’ve been conditioned to think that darkness and destruction lurk for us on every corner and that nonproductive people are our natural superiors. But those are lies. We are superior to the willfully unproductive.

And yes, in this article, I’m completely ignoring murderers, criminals, and the various dependent classes. They don’t define me, and they shouldn’t determine the shape of your mind either.

Celebrating Our Greatness

The Romans used to celebrate themselves: their arches and domes, their aqueducts and fountains, their roads and farms, their prosperity. On the other hand, we’ve accomplished far, far more than the Romans. And yet, we are fully convinced that we suck. There’s a problem here.

The past few centuries have seen the most productive generations ever to inhabit the Earth. Never before, in our long history, have humans accomplished anything remotely close to what we have. And we’re poised to jump much farther… except that we’ve been convinced – irrationally and maliciously – that we deserve no credit for anything, that we’re vile and filthy and caustic.

Entire academic disciplines are devoted to convincing us – against any and every objective fact – that we can’t know anything, that thinking we do know sets us at the lowest depths of self-delusion, and that our only rational role in the universe is to hate ourselves and to obey our betters (aka, authority).

It’s all bullshit, my friends. All lies. All manipulation. It was all a coordinated attack on our minds.

With no historical precedent, productive people just like you and me have created these things (and many more) over the past few centuries:

• The telescope.
• The microscope.
• Calculus.
• The law of gravity.
• The laws of mechanics.
• The binary system.
• The barometer.
• Logarithms.
• The slide rule.
• Electronic calculators.
• The blast furnace.
• Practical steam engines.
• Rifles.
• Hand guns.
• Eyeglasses.
• Electrical generators.
• Electrical transmission.
• Ice cream.
• The laws of electromagnetism.
• Artificially produced ice.
• Statistics.
• The telegraph.
• The telephone.
• The electric light.
• The electric motor.
• The assembly line.
• Automobiles.
• Railroads.
• Hot air balloons.
• Airplanes.
• Space travel.
• Radar.
• Photography.
• Sound recording.
• Video recording.
• The fax machine.
• The computer.
• Radio.
• Television.
• The Internet.
• The cell phone.
• Refrigeration.
• Air conditioning.
• Mechanized farming.
• The vaccine.

So… we suck?

The fact that we are great is obvious. The problem is our conditioning.

“Bow Down to Fear and Self-Condemnation”

Please understand that the dominating systems of this world need you to feel like garbage. They couldn’t survive a situation where productive people believed in themselves, trusted themselves, and were proud of themselves. The hierarchies of this world require that you cower before every imagined fear and never dare think your own mind is trustworthy.

Look and see: Who among this world’s sacrifice-collectors delivers your groceries? Which of them fixes your hot water lines? Which of the televised suits changes your tires or hangs a door or rewires your lights?

It is productive men and women who make your life better, not the mighty; they merely extort your wages.

You, my productive friend, are better. I don’t care what you were taught in school about ‘great men’ and their necessity. That was misguided at best. Much of it was purposely destructive.

Please consider this passage from Buckminster Fuller:

If you take all the machinery in the world and dump it in the ocean, within months more than half of all humanity will die and within another six months they’d almost all be gone; if you took all the politicians in the world, put them in a rocket, and sent them to the moon, everyone would get along fine.

These are true words. And if they are true about machines, how much more do they apply to the people who create those machines?

The progress of the world waits for the productive man and woman to stop flagellating themselves. It’s waiting for them to stand up and act like what they are.

* * * * *

If you’ve enjoyed Free-Man’s Perspective or A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, you’re going to love Paul Rosenberg’s new novel, The Breaking Dawn.

It begins with an attack that crashes the investment markets, brings down economic systems, and divides the world. One part is dominated by mass surveillance and massive data systems: clean cities and empty minds… where everything is assured and everything is ordered. The other part is abandoned, without services, with limited communications, and shoved 50 years behind the times… but where human minds are left to find their own bearings.

You may never look at life the same way again.

Get it now at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

All of us have partial views of the world. We can only see and hear so much. At our best, we take in only a slice of the whole. Still, I’ve been noticing something that seems widespread and worthy of comment. Here it is:

I see an increasing number of people who are markedly better than the world around them.

My title for today’s dispatch comes from the book of Hebrews, where the author lists great men and women and concludes by saying, of whom the world was not worthy.

Yes, yes, I know that we can all complain at length about the stupid, brain-locked, and obnoxious people who surround us. And most of those complaints are true. But there’s another side to this:

Humans are inherently biased. We focus, probably at a ratio of at least two to one, on the negative.

Try asking people what they want. In most cases, they’ll start listing the things they don’t want. This negative bias masks most of the good that happens in the world.

And right now, there are millions of people who are becoming qualitatively better.

Why this should be so is a great question, and while I’m not going to dig in to it today, an increase in understanding has to be a central factor.

You Are Better

I obviously can’t know all my readers, but I do pay attention to them, and I think I have a pretty good feel for them. So while what I say here may not apply to every reader, I am sure that it applies to most. And what I want to say to you is this:

You are better than the world around you. Perhaps not better than every individual you know, but better that the enforced mentality of this world; better than its rulers; better than its great men. BETTER.

You see, we live in a time of rising contrast: millions of individuals are becoming better while the ruling systems of the world are becoming worse. Saying “of whom the world is not worthy” isn’t that big of a statement just now.

And I’m seeing people—old, young, male, female—who are, by nature, better. They display more kindness. They’re interested in understanding and improving. They are truer to themselves, and from thence are truer to others.

I think you should take this seriously. Compare your virtues with those of the world’s ruling systems. Find the truth of the matter and accept what is true.

Is “Better” Defined by Rules?

You’ll notice above that I said these people were better “by nature.” I did not say that they were better because they were good rule-keepers.

Keeping rules is precisely how not to become better. We’ve been trained to define “good” by comparing ourselves to rules, but the great thinkers of the world have been more concerned with transcending rules. First on the list of such people was Jesus, but I devoted an entire issue of my newsletter (issue #44) to that aspect of his philosophy, and it’s far too much to repeat here.

But I will give you two ancient thinkers. The first is St. Paul. He writes in one of his letters about people who:

doing by nature the things contained in the law… are a law unto themselves.

And this was not just a Christian concept. A few centuries earlier, Aristotle had said nearly the same thing:

This I have gained by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

So, if both pagans and Christians in Greece and Asia Minor could do this between 2,000 and 2,300 years ago, is it crazy to think that modern people are capable of it too?

Here are more modern thinkers who had more or less the same thing in mind:

Spinoza:

He who regulates everything by laws is more likely to arouse vices than reform them.

Jefferson:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will.

James P. Driscoll, writing on Carl Jung:

From whatever aspect we consider the command… it is the most dangerous single element in the social life of man.

Gustave Le Bon:

Armed with a small stock of formulas and commonplaces learnt while we are young, we possess all that is needed to traverse life without the tiring necessity of having to reflect on anything whatsoever.

Now, let’s go to the second part of this discussion: Who makes the rules?

In our time, that would be politicians. That is, the same people we condemn as liars nearly every day. Are we really supposed to take rules made by these people as definitions of “good?”

Furthermore, rules can be purchased from these people. Are we really supposed to surrender our moral natures to that?

Love, kindness, courage, integrity, understanding, and empathy: these are things that make people better. And they stand wholly apart from rule-keeping.

In the current world system, rules define who is punished, not who is good.

Fear of Being Better

People fear being better, and not irrationally. Let’s be honest about this: good people suffer mostly for their virtues, not for their vices. In our current situation, above-average virtue is often punished.

So there’s reason to fear being better. Not only will some people resent any type of positive difference, but the hierarchies of this world need their masses to be weak, intimidated, and confused. The problem with better people is that they grow out of those characteristics, even though they’re pressured to conform.

The system’s answer to this, as we all know, is to pile more penalties and pressure on these better people. It’s all they have; it’s all they know; it’s what they are.

So to you who are better, I have one primary piece of advice: Learn to accept the fact that you are better, and that you may be punished for it.

Is This Too Radical?

Before anyone gets the idea that these observations of mine are too radical to be taken seriously, please allow me to pass along another quotation:

That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

Did you get that? If something is high and glorious among men, if it enjoys status—if it is authoritative, powerful, and feared—God is disgusted by it.

Now that is radical.

You wanna take a guess who said it?

Yup, that’s right, it was Jesus. That Jesus. The rabbi from Nazareth. Get a concordance and look it up.

So…

Actually, there is no “so” in this case. This isn’t a prescription for conduct. I’m writing about internal acknowledgment, not outward actions.

What matters here is that you accept a fact: that the ruling systems of this world are less moral than you, and that you’re not crazy to think so. Whatever change that spawns in you will be to your credit.

But please, be better: Live with more love, more kindness, more courage, more integrity, and more empathy.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

This article was originally published by Casey Research.