'What the corporate media does. It ensures people endlessly bicker about all the stuff oligarchs don’t really care about.'
By Michael Krieger: For many years now, my message has been that tweaking around the edges of a systemically corrupt and discredited economic and political system is not good enough. Rather, what we need is a full scale, species-wide paradigm shift in the way human affairs are conducted on this planet. No small task I know, which is why this series of posts will zero in on four key areas, or pillars, we need to focus on if we’re to evolve and leave this earth meaningfully better than when we arrived.
KnowledgeLet’s kick things off with the low-hanging fruit, knowledge. This is the area I’ve focused on the longest, and my desire to acquire knowledge and share it is what inspired the creation of this website and my dedication to it in the first place.
In this case, the knowledge I’ve been accumulating relates to how the world around us actually functions, as opposed to how we’re told it functions. Some people inform us we live in a Democracy where our vote matters, but overwhelming evidence and life experience demonstrates this to be total nonsense.
Others tell us we reside in a Republic where the U.S. Constitution is the supreme inviolable law of the land, but that’s also a lie. In real life, the Constitution is completely ignored by politicians, and most certainly by the unaccountable and unelected shadowy intelligence agencies.
Finally, there are those who insist we live in a free market system characterized by countless choices and vibrant competition, but this is rapidly becoming a fantasy to anyone who actually engages in the economy.
The glaring truth of the matter is the U.S. is managed by a unified corporate and political oligarchy that agrees and collaborates on all issues of importance to them irrespective of the meaningless and dishonest Republican or Democratic flags they fly in public.
There are several issues this crowd will fight to the death to preserve no matter what the public thinks. Here are a few:
1) Central Banking. An unaccountable and rigged monetary system run by central banks who answer to the oligarchs and bail them out when they run into trouble or desire war is absolutely critical to oligarch power. In the U.S., this is the Federal Reserve.
2) Empire. Oligarchs, irrespective of superficial political party affiliation, are all in favor of an imperial U.S. that works to dominate as much of the planet and its resources as possible. There’s an incredible amount of money available in empire to the oligarchy, and it’s irrelevant to them if such ambitions end up hurting 99.99% of the public back home.
3) Surveillance. Top tier predators are evil, but they aren’t stupid. They know what they’re up to, and they know how completely rigged and unethical the system they created and support is. As such, they demand the ability to spy on the public all will. It’s an insurance policy against the plebs waking up and revolting. This is exactly why Democratic leadership just voted to give the surveillance state under Trump increased spying powers despite hyperventilating about him being a Kremlin agent for a year straight. The oligarchy will do anything to preserve the spy network, and oligarchs own and control Congress.
4) Monopoly/Concentration of Power. The oligarchy strives to attain and maintain as much concentration of power as possible. Business/finance oligarchs manifest this in the achievement of monopolies in as many economic sectors/markets as possible. A perfect example from my life is healthcare. For the year 2018, I had a grand total of one choice from which to buy health insurance for my family. That’s a lot of things, but it’s definitely not a free, competitive market.
Meanwhile, the political/bureaucratic oligarchs aim for unaccountable centralized power in our very own version of Panem, Washington D.C. This is why our government consists of lawless intelligence agencies, an imperial Presidency and it’s also why half of the ten wealthiest counties in the U.S. surround the district of criminals. If that isn’t proof of an unimaginably corrupt and centralized government, I don’t know what is.
The issues listed above are the ones that really matter to oligarchs, which is why they’re never subject to serious public debate. The oligarchy will always rally aggressively to defend these key interests, while allowing the unwashed masses to endlessly debate everything else. As Chomsky noted:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.The above is basically what the corporate media does. It ensures people endlessly bicker about all the stuff oligarchs don’t really care about.
Consciousness
During the first five years of writing on this website, I relentlessly focused on knowledge. I wanted to learn as much as possible about our systemically corrupt system and share this with anyone who would listen. I’d publish multiple articles a day in an attempt to get people educated and outraged about everything rotten around us. In the process, I neglected something exceedingly important, my own consciousness.
The lightbulb moment for me came early last year when I started to read and learn about Spiral Dynamics, and came across the work of Ken Wilber. It made me recognize the importance of consciousness evolution to the manifestation of a sustainably superior paradigm for the human species. It also provided me with a useful framework which helped me stay steady and sane while much of the population descended into tribal madness defined by enormous societal pressure to either join the dishonest “resistance” movement led by sleazy, war-mongering corporate Democrats and neocons, or rally around a shifty, egomaniac with authoritarian tendencies who promised to “Make America Great Again.” These weren’t rational or conscious options for me, and Spiral Dynamics helped me understand why. (Note: I wrote a 5-part series on the topic).
Trump’s election and the societal madness that followed forced me to look inward and admit some very uncomfortable truths. First, it made me realize that knowledge isn’t enough. The public can be fully aware of how corrupt the current system is, but if this merely results in anger and an unconscious response, we’ll just end up in the same place after the revolutionary dust settles. In fact, history shows us that unconscious revolutions are often led by power-hungry despots who are often even worse than what came before.
I realized that getting people outraged was insufficient, and this misguided focus was a manifestation of my own lack of consciousness. Once I understood this at a deep level I could begin to heal myself and look inward. I came to understand that I was spending too much time demonizing others and obsessing about what’s wrong in the world, versus working on myself and my own failings. I realized that while the overwhelming majority of us cannot impact world events, we can impact the world around us each and every day via our thoughts and actions. I came to understand that if enough people understood this and started to manifest decency and love on a micro level, the world would change.
Equally important, I recognized that identifying a problem doesn’t do any good unless you come up with solutions. What benefit will be achieved if we deal with the current crop of corrupt oligarchs just to have another, potentially more sociopathic, group take over afterwards?
This is a real concern the seriousness of which is highlighted by pretty much all human history. This is precisely why consciousness is such a key pillar to sustainable change. It’s only through a conscious mindset that we’ll arrive at creative, sustainable, ethical and liberating solutions to our problems.
Tomorrow’s post will pick up from there and focus on the two solution-focused pillars, innovation and local action.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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