Dear readers,
Being human is hard. We are complex beings with complex emotions. Happiness or contentment are often elusive in a world fraught with difficulties, including solitude, a struggle to survive financially and raise a family, and the desires to be truly free and creative, to be healthy, and to be part of a community of other beings. We all want to be loved and to love others…well, most of us do. Most humans are empathic to some degree, but some are not…at all.
The popularity of the pop psychology of happiness was born not from a desire to make us happier. It was not created or disseminated by empathic and kind people who care about our well-being. The pop psychology of the pretense of constant happiness was created to control us and to silence us. Why do I say this? Very simply because, if you look around yourself, and if you dig just slightly below the surface, you will see that we are not living in a free society. We are not living in a society which celebrates true individuality, creativity, or which places value on the well-being and harmony of people, animals, and the planet. We could easily be working together to create a truly beneficial human culture that cooperates with nature, but we are not. Why is that?
One of the reasons is that most people have been tricked and manipulated into thinking that the system we live in is all there is and that it is the best of all systems. As in an emotionally and/or physically abusive relationship, we have been isolated from others. We have been charmed into thinking we are the best. We have been tricked into thinking we are true individualists with great freedoms as those freedoms and all rights have been stripped away from us. Our culture has become extremely rigid with little to no social mobility. It is difficult to create a small business and flourish or to be a free-thinker. As a people, the American people have become very passive. And when an entire people allows itself to be manipulated by those at the top, it is usually out of fear.
As in countries under obvious military dictatorships, such as North Korea, all citizens must constantly pretend to be happy. You can never let your guard down, because you do not know who will denounce you. You may easily end up dead or in a prison camp with no exit in view. In totalitarian systems with charismatic leaders, the reality of the situation is obvious, at least to outsiders, but those who have been born into abusive situations or abusive families find this familiar and normal. They cannot be blamed. They have never experienced anything else. It is the same for us. It is hard to see clearly when you are never given to experience how much better your life could be, if conditions were different, and if you were allowed to speak up and freely express your thoughts and opinions.
It is said that about 1% of all human beings, regardless of country or culture, are full blown psychopaths. A larger percentage of people show some psychopathic traits. In other words, it is a spectrum. It is interesting to examine how the closely related personality disorders of narcissism and psychopathy relate to the current state of our country and culture, and how they affect our ability to live truly happy lives in a secure environment that allows us to cooperate creatively with one another. It is not a coincidence that about 1% of our population in the United States has seized almost all of the capital, all of the comfort, and all of the power. It is very easy to make the connection. America (and some other countries as well) are run by psychopaths and malignant narcissists.
The rise of corporate culture and the takeover of all government institutions by corporations has removed all basic freedoms from citizens in the U.S. This global system is strangling the entire planet, as long as it is allowed to survive. Peoples of color in the United States have always known that we do not live in a democracy. They have been submitted to the terror all along that our “leaders” reserve for the rest of us when the American people finally wake up out of the manipulation induced coma created by our “happiness” culture.
We have been indoctrinated in a Walt Disney happy world, a magical kingdom where all our dreams will come true if we keep drinking the Coca Cola. We are living in interesting times. But is it possible to bring about true change in a world where people have been taught that when asked “How are you?”, everyone must answer “I can’t complain.”? Can the truly cooperative and kind nature of the human being survive the intense and constant surreptitious violence of the corporate totalitarian system?
I believe that kindness and love will prevail over the corporate nightmare that our 1 percenters have imposed on us. The veil is coming off, and with a rise in consciousness will come change. Because our leaders in government and the corporations who control our government and military are largely psychopaths, they have no ability to feel empathy for anyone. This is why they have continued to strangle the people, rape our planet, mistreat animals with impunity, and submit other nations to endless war funded by American tax payers from which only they profit. They cannot feel anything. When they see that the people begin to complain and stand up for themselves, refusing to pretend to be happy, they will attempt to crush us with violence. They cannot feel anything, and they cannot understand that it is even in their own best interest of survival to create a more sustainable society. And so the monster will fall. Global corporate capitalism, a multi-headed monster of which the United States is the largest head, is on the verge of collapse.
Almost half of Americans live in poverty or near poverty. But we are told we can’t complain. We should be happy to pay inflated insurance premiums. We should be happy that we can lose our job at any moment. We should be happy that our drinking water is toxic and that our food is full of pesticides, herbicides, preservatives and devoid of all real nutrition. We should be happy that our beautiful planet is being devastated by fracking, mining, and nuclear power, that our farm animals are tortured and given an unhealthy diet. We should be happy that our tax dollars go towards illegal wars in other countries instead of serving to make life better for all of us. We should be happy to put chemicals called drugs into our bodies which make us even sicker. We should be happy that our elections are rigged and that we cannot vote for people who are kind or honest. We should celebrate that our media is owned by corporations, and that we cannot get real information on the news.
The truth is that it is healthy to complain when conditions are bad. It is healthy to want to speak up so that we can change what is wrong with our country and make it right. If we had truly caring and responsible leaders, we could work together and correct the wrongs. As Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein have pointed out, we can rebuild our infrastructures…our old-fashioned and crumbling bridges, roads, water systems, rails, and airports to bring them up to date and make them safe. We can create a much less expensive and much more effective health care system that makes health care affordable and available to all people. We can eliminate childhood poverty and make real and quality education affordable. We can create affordable and sustainable energy systems. We can transform our food systems so that animals are treated with respect and dignity, and chemical pesticides and fertilizers are no longer used. There is so much we could do if humanity were allowed to be its creative self and allowed to pursue true happiness.
But first, we have to stand up and complain. We have to admit that we are not happy. It’s OK to not be happy with the way things are right now. In fact, we should be extremely upset, and some of us already are. The psychopaths and narcissists at the top will never listen to us. They will only pretend to placate us, as was revealed in Hillary Clinton’s leaked e-mails to her campaign director – one set of ideas and words for the public, and another for her Wall Street donors and party members. When there are no true values and those who “lead” only seeking to market themselves and manipulate public opinion, it is time for change.
It takes courage to stand up for truth, to stand up for happiness. Human beings are beautiful beings, full of potential. There are always some who will stand up against oppression, and through the ages, although consistently persecuted, these are the people we most admire. The inflated personalities of narcissists and the cold heartless psychopaths are remembered only in infamy – as examples of how not to be. Dictators live in fear of their own people. They know they are not loved, and that the power and attention they crave like a drug can be taken away from them at any moment. In America, we can only see the faces of the politicians who have sold themselves to the corporations and to Wall Street. We look at our presidential election today, and we see two faces: one a malignant narcissist and a petty crook, and the other a full blown psychopath, married to another psychopath, both interwoven in a complex web of lies, money laundering, and the promise to continue to rob the American people to benefit themselves and their wealthy donors and partners in crime.
Yet we had Bernie Sanders, who represented integrity and what the American people really want. And we have Jill Stein, another voice who is not beholden to corporate donors. Happiness, truth, and reality are all close friends. When we accept to live in a world that is not real, we become alienated from our true selves. For the secret to happiness, real happiness, is simple: live in close contact with your true self, which is inside of you. No one can take that away from you, but you can allow yourself to be distracted from it. Love yourself, not as a narcissist, who craves attention and power, but as a being who knows that she is connected to everyone and everything that exists. Live compassionately. Love abundantly. Create from your heart. The heart is not a muscle or a pump, as we have been lead to believe. The human heart is a portal to other worlds. The human heart allows us to communicate with the entire universe. It is the most powerful and beautiful thing in all creation. Do not allow your own heart to be submerged by the lie we have been told.
Once the American empire falls, and it will…for all corrupt civilizations eventually collapse upon themselves, we will have the opportunity to choose to live simply and with integrity. It is my hope that as humanity evolves, there will be enough compassionate human beings to help us rise up out of chaos and into cooperation and empathy. That we will have the strength of character and the level of consciousness required to avoid falling into the irresponsible, greedy, and brutal hands of dictatorship. That we will be evolved enough to take responsibility for ourselves and not hand over power to those who mishandle it. That we will build a new society in which we keep our own power and use it to create cooperatively with one another. This is the future to which humanity can aspire. We are the builders of our own happiness. No one can give it to us, and no one can take it away.
adamevenevenadam 