Cease and Desist

     The freedom to which we so loftily aspire to no longer exists. Indeed, we have purchased this lifestyle with our souls, and any attempt at this point to defy that truth results in the stamping out of those souls, the rescinding of the contract we have signed, without return of the product. It is a grave acknowledgement, one through which many other bitter truths spill forth. Our blood is not our own, our will is not our own, but molded and played to the tune of corporation and government and the false authorities we have granted them. And the safety that we bargained for? It is a myth. Do you feel safer? Do you feel protected? Can you tell the difference anymore, between the feeling of safety and the cold boot of oppression? This world is stifling the greatest among us, and promoting the terrible. Turn on your television, and really watch. What culture is being celebrated, what agendas pushed? Do your children know the world they are poised to inherit? Or are they enthralled with the consumer culture that poisons all of us?

     That's not to say I have ceased believing in the answer, I have simply ceased to believe that the masses are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to protect themselves and their future from the toxins we have grown familiar with. We are desensitized to the lack of freedom, the illusion of order in a world of chaos, so desensitized that we are barely cognizant of the force by which we are restrained. An individual can let go, an individual can stand up and say enough. But what happens when the entire world does? Should we be so naive as to think that peace will come about as an instantaneous result? That the cure will act as quick as we do? It makes the sell easier, sure, but even that is nothing compared to what they are selling us.

     How do we justify to a generation, raised on the very technology and oppression that enables this speech, the means by which we must regain enlightenment? That's always been the problem. We are all selling a product, both evil men and the benevolent. But their product is tangible, a short reward for a days work. Ours, on the other hand, is what exactly? Years, decades, generations burdened with saving a world that may be too far gone? No tangible rewards, and yet certainly, there is tangible suffering in such a system. There is the sacrifice of the strong to assist the weak, while at the same time giving them control over their own futures.

     Our world isn't survival of the fittest anymore, it doesn't need to be, we've evolved past that. We stand behind glass walls, staring at the dream, terrified to break through to it because the system has convinced us that there are not sufficient resources to support the entirety of the human race. We have created an artificial shortage, a linchpin necessary to ensure the dominance of the few over the many. They enact laws to protect their interests, we vote not for ourselves, but for them, out of some pyschologically twisted idea that they are better, or more deserving, some perverse admiration of those who have "made it". We have made it, collectively, we have survived this far. If you are poor, destitute, hungry, then what purpose could it possibly serve to elect to power anyone, let alone those who have not worn your shoes? What cause would they have to protect your interests, against their own? Why do we expect selflessness from them, label them public servants, as though any man in power has yet to act in a way that would endanger their power, threaten the choke hold our government has on their position.

     A choke hold backed by arms, a position fortified with threats, from imprisonment to death, for violating their order. There are men in prison as we speak, who have not harmed another, who have not trespassed on the rights of another, and who will not be released. And it's easy to trivialize these arguments as paranoia, or lunacy, because in this society built upon the foundation of consumerism, to defy the law is lunacy. To sacrifice one's own station for the betterment of others is a fool's agenda, when there is no tangible benefit, no obvious reward. We have trained ourselves as Pavlov's dogs, always awaiting the reward. It is time to change. You know as well as I do that the temples must fall, that the monument to selfishness we have constructed must crumble. The reward will not come to you, or me, the reward may not even come to our children or grandchildren. But the reward will come, there is a tangible success, a victory achievable beyond the horizon.