A child taught by government, religion, teachers, and parents to respect authority. Listen to elders, learn from them, follow their lead. Suspend your thoughts and misgivings. You are only but a child, while we, the elders, know what’s best for you. Learn from our examples, our texts, our thoughts. Learn the basic lessons of life from us, develop trust in us, and follow our lead.
A bit of freedom is experienced, and questions arise as to the nature of authority. Why are laws designed to package my life into a box? Why do authorities focus more on limits rather than lessons as we age? What are, in fact, limits? How can they be pushed and pulled? Why do authorities, elders, and leaders dismiss my questions as merely a phase in my life?
The puzzle is solved. To acquire a pair of pants, a car, or jewelry, currency requires exchange with the toy-keeper. Maybe emotional favors, guilt, or money can dangle over their head? I need to acquire this currency somehow.
The lessons of the authorities vibrate the mind into a career. Paying dues to eat the fallen scraps off the table. My payments into the system are rewarded with currency, my future freedom.
And yet the future is a distance measured by multiplying the number of steps required to get there, by the amount of time I think it will take. Unfortunately, the calculation refreshes each day it’s made. Turns out within the system, the amount of currency acquired is roughly proportional with the amount required just to live a daily life.
Perhaps the ideal future will never materialize? Maybe I should focus on attainable goals? Strive for what’s possible, the reality of this world. Authorities throughout my life told me to stop drifting amongst the clouds. Focus on reality. Set realistic goals and try your hardest to achieve them.
As the years waste away, the lessons of life fade dreams into realistic goals. The questioner evolves into the authority, for a family of your own yearns for lessons. What do I know? What can I teach?
I lived many years, experienced many things, realized the workings of this world, and acquired many toys. Wasn’t that my goal of acquiring currency in the first place? On some level, am I successful? Authorities tell me I’m successful with my house, car, job, and currency. What lessons will I teach my children?
And the system propagates onward, a spiral of control and deception into us all. Slavery is alive and well in our world. Steps outside the bounds are ridiculed and punished by losing a car, a home, or some other toy. Each acquisition is yet another brick fortifying our prison cell. Success is measured by how enslaved you are to the system.
Even our terminology enslaves us. Vulgarity and profanity gain daily acceptance in our vernacular. Slurred speech, strung together with assumptions. We define the distinction between success and failure with examples drawn from the system of acquisition.
Where did it all go wrong? How did an innocent child grow up to become a puppet of the system, strung along with broken promises and unrealized dreams? How did freedom get compromised out of the equation? Was there a specific point? Or was it one small compromise at a time, until the quantity of concessions weighed down on the quality of life?
Through childhood, authorities instilled conformation to the system’s hierarchy structure, trust our elders and subordinate to our leaders. Later in life questions were dismissed instead of answered, and repeated questions punished with limits. The carrot waived in front of the donkey, and we galloped along into adulthood, all the while, patted on the back by our ego and our peers with each step we took. Finally the loop closed, choking us into slavery.
Looking back on ourselves, when did we agree to chain ourselves to a desk? Now I ask the question? After it’s gone, after I let freedom evaporate one compromise after another? Each memory links many more chains.
And yet inspiration comes from somewhere. Our deteriorated candle won’t ever go out. The occasional philosophical moment, a flicker of epiphany, the small ray of hope. How did it all go wrong? And why? The how and why of life.
I fixated on toys instead of the light. The toy is tangible now, while the future holds only the unknown. I strived for knowledge, to explore. Then focused on tangible goals, relinquishing the steering wheel to the ego. It wasn’t Lego pieces with some grand plan. Our ego took advantage of our reactions to each other, trained in the art of acquisition and conformation. Amplified, strung-out on toys, and swirled into a frenzy of reactions. Our society.