You are born without an operating manual.
Your operating system for life is formed in your early years through familial and social conditioning.
As an adult, you may realize you have to unlearn most of this because it doesn't serve you, the individual, and instead is designed to serve others.
If you follow the herd, you'll get the same results as the herd.
This is lost on most people because many consider themselves unique snowflakes with original ideas and thoughts.
Yet they fail to see the irony of then going on to buy the same things, think the same things, do the same things, take the same jobs, go to the same schools, follow the same relationship rules, ask the government to recognize their relationship (called marriage), and otherwise do EVERYTHING EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE REST.
(Keep in mind that this is a spectrum and we all fall into the various traps one way or another. I'm not passing judgment here, but bringing awareness.)
You are born into a world as a blank slate. Then others and society mold you into a replica of “normal.”
This is human nature: humans adapt to their environment. Adopting the beliefs and habits of our environment is what kept our ancestors safe and procreating for hundreds of thousands of years.
In the wild context, this works. In the modern context, this is a ball and chain that will lead likely you into a life of misery.
If you do what everyone else does, you will, as Thoreau said, live a life of quiet desperation and go to your grave with your song inside you.
The only way to build a life for yourself is to form your principles for what you want and then build a life on top of that foundation.
Obviously, this isn't easy.
This requires a lifetime of trial and error. You'll endure shame and ridicule and tough conversations. You'll have to let people down. But as you make progress, you’ll finally realize you have no choice in the matter. It's either follow the herd and get the same results or live a life for yourself.
The rote path is a life unfulfilled. At the end of this typical life, you'll end up with the same regrets that most people end up with at the end of their lives: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."
Every time I read this and think about someone lying in their bed about to die, I feel sadness and anger. Anger that this will be the default regret for MOST PEOPLE. And that they will realize it after it's too late to do anything about it.
This is tragic.
Living for others while enduring the suffering that comes from trying to fit yourself into a neat little societal-appropriate box is a wasted life.
The corporatism that has overtaken modern life is at odds with human growth and happiness. It is unnatural in every sense of the word.
Corporations make money by addicting you to their products and services (tech, social media, fake food, pharmaceuticals, the medical system). The government doesn't want you to wake up. It wants you to pay your taxes, vote the way it says you should vote, and be a “contributing member” of society, which is code for a "be a puppet that doesn't challenge the status quo."
This is not what America was founded on. It was founded as a republic because the founding fathers knew the dangers of democracy: the second citizens can vote for politicians that line their pockets, society will crumble.
Our society is already crumbling, and it has been for a while; the Internet has just sped it up.
The only way to protect your future is to educate yourself, to wake up, and to opt-out of the nonsense.
Back in the 1800s, Thoreau encouraged his fellow countrymen to engage in civil disobedience. He knew that the government was like a machine that consistently acquired more power and took more rights away from its citizens over time. This is why he believed it was the duty of citizens to keep the ever-encroaching machine at bay.
One second you wear masks. Another you protest, so whatever. The next second you wear masks because of a "second wave." All while the numbers of cases are going down even though hospitals can report a Corona case without testing and get paid each time they do!
And yet no one questions the conflicting incentives here and how ass-backward it is.
And the public gobbles this up. The masses do not think beyond what the media tells them. Thoreau knew how dangerous this was.
The elites are probably laughing at how easy it is to control the masses. I think they are seeing how far they can push.
The byproduct of an easily-to-manipulate public is further encroachment on our rights (among other bad things like printing trillions of fake dollars or dolling out checks to each person without any plan of ever paying it back).
This won’t stop until there is a revolution or reset of some kind.
As Thoreau warned against, this is inherent in government. Our governmental system rewards people that give things away while kicking the bill to the next guy in the office (or the next generation).
At this point, the US government has become Frankenstein: it was created with good intentions but cannot be contained no matter how hard we try.
I'm sure you've heard the saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intention."
Humans usually want to do the right thing. That doesn't mean they don't cause massive desaturation in their wake.
Every dictator in history promoted the idea of national pride and unity and fairness for his citizens. We know how that has gone every single time. Intentions are meaningless.
It's what you do and what happens.
So how do you resist all this?
First and foremost, you must think for yourself.
You must form your principles and standards from many sources of information.
You must save resources, so you have security.
And more than anything, you must not rely on the government or corporations for your wellness, security, and freedom.
I know I don't offer much in the way of solutions here. I will continue to cover these various topics to help remedy that. Again, the most important thing for most people is aware of it all.
Pierce the matrix, wake up, and then build the skill of thinking for yourself.
That is the ONLY way to be truly free.