The why-s and who-s

We have been traveling a bit this summer and although I had hoped for some kind of inner change for the better or from some meaningful human encounters, I had to put that aside and be grateful for the nice trip and weather, for the surroundings and the smooth trip. The rest is just a bowlful of questions.

Is is me or the others feeling blocked and unsettled? Is it a real state of the mind and soul or just an induced state that separates us from the happiness at hand?

Seems like many people have the same concerns, the same yearning for a more accomplished life, for something hard to define, rather defined by its not being there. Yet instead of uniting them, this interior agitation is separating them. It is hard to trust another human being, it is hard to count on something to be there constantly - this permanent quest makes everybody opportunistic in many ways. Some will change for the money, some for a social position, some are still trying painfully to find themselves and will be different from period to period, as they go through different stages, like Picasso with his paintings.

The clearest image I found was in the case of some people who complained of poverty and lack of horizon, seemed to be very economical in their household and yet spoke of having a monthly income that amazed me: it was big. Simple people, not many social expenses, living in the countryside. I cannot understand why the revenue cannot provide a happier life in such cases - what is missing? Maybe I am prejudiced. I assume that for the down to earth - ier people having a functional material security would be enough or I am assuming that if my life would have the material problem solved then I would get rid of many sleepless nights. Yet I have an organic issue that is the most difficult to solve in our times, and that got me an obstinacy against the superficial ways that would not tackle this: I want to do something I love, something that makes me happy and forget about the hours passing by and integrate this in my family life, whilst not being materially challenged.

Why this isn't yet an option remains another question. Years spent in the wrong schools, which taught me nothing about life, wrong thinking patterns, wrong moments... some of the available explanations send me in an endless loop. I also have a fixation with authenticity and it still seems weird to me to hear about some weird jobs where one does not produce, does not shine towards the world, but rather intermediates, speculates on people's wishes or even creates needs of wishes to be solved by him or her. It's like money are meant to go from where they are to other pockets only based on motives of fashion, whim, ego or treating oneself, rather that based on serious, sustainable reasons. It's like, no, I will not buy a wooden box made by hand which hold in it a precious effort of being unique and putting some soul into the work, but I will buy that colored plastic box that is so in this summer... Why on earth do we have to keep thinking like this? And the sister of the plastic box is the propagandistic ecological wooden box with an exorbitant cost, which is also bought not for the utility or for the personality of its maker, but for the ideas which it represents. Ideas which, I am sorry to say, are speculated by many in the ecological field, like any other ideas ever. Like people who do not make themselves the products, but add some color on some mass made Chinese boxes, or exploit some poor underpaid peasants whose village offers them no other workplace besides the little wood shop of Mr. Natural. Then the owner of the business goes on and uses the money in his fashionable life which comprises in many cases also plastic boxes...

It's like people have gotten used to being cheated, lobbied, targeted by publicity and propaganda that they expect this whenever doing something. The small and quiet shop in the corner that does not fight to attract customers, but just has good merchandise is not visited by almost anyone in our days. We are mass thinking even in the alternative or so called alternative actions.

So unhappy people with no horizon and money in the bank are not initiating any measure for the better, they just stay and wait for someone to take their money. For a bad cause of a good cause. But I still say this is a step back for the human nature. Instead of the basic needs, we now have basic needs plus being in with the trend. And those who make the trends are always unclear, and ultimately most of the trends are made having means of profit behind. And footballers and dancers and singers are admired like gods, while those who find it hard to lie and label themselves in an attractive way and play the complicated games of our society are pushed into oblivion. A good soul, a natural rough talent value nothing, instead a shiny exterior, a clever trick and lots of work make everything. Sometimes even without the work, but that element is not to brag about, because it is not good for the public image... The public are the masses who have to believe, to buy and to go on with their tedious duties, so they are presented idols who somehow worked their way to glory or idols who embody all the secret sins in every person: lazy, talking dirty, overeating, hating their enemies and worse.

So again why? Why can we realize things as they are, many of us, yet we are incapable of doing anything else but act some behaviors that are mass imprinted? Isn't it freaky, for example, that in an industrial small city for example, everyone who is the same age, say 60, had a similar life trajectory - got hired by the factory at say 19, then got laid off at 30 something, worked to some other nearby factory etc? We are beings, not cattle.It is impossible that in a lifespan such a city had not produced a musician, a painter, a farmer, a writer, a traveler, a philanthropist... only that what they were meant to be was lost in the mass idea: these people are going to work in this factory, some plain workers, some engineers...

Now the mass behavior is dividing people in a dangerous way. Those who are apparently happy or without a worry in the world consume huge amounts of everything and practically throw their money away, as if one moment of savings would lose them the statue of stress free and rich; those who do not like their lives with every pore of their skin are grumpy and desperate - some of them unfortunately wish to get into the first category, some have joined the underdogs groups available in order to be unhappy in a group. And the media throws to them subject after subject on which they should and would hate each other, to keep them occupied.

Who will change the world for the better then? Not a new generation of fanatics, on any chosen subject... Not the people afraid to disagree with their group who guarantees them some social position and revenues, for fear of incertitudes and falling down the social ladders. Not those who forcibly take for granted that we should be all thinking alike...

Are we just rerunning the 70's? The freedom generation produced in their children an antagonistic reaction and generation of suits wishing order and discipline. not the solution either - that what?

The regulating factor of society have unfortunately sold out: churches kindly approving in their notorious members stealing and behaving in a way that cannot serve as example, communities who are still friendly towards the local politician who ruined their livelihoods, writers and philosophers who had to write appealing to the public or else nobody deals their books. One way or another selling out is also a trend... followed by an elaborate personal cover up in order to be happier with what we have become. And a herd of personal trainers to help us with that (talking about made-up professions who produce what? an artificial conscience silencing?).

Can't anyone remember that a functional society has to have and respect rules meant for the well being of a average imaginary person, a person who can be naive and still survive, who can be without work for a while and still survive, who can refuse to make managerial, financial, ecological and administrative major choices because it is not his profession to do so and still wake up tomorrow and have a safe medium to live in? With a reasonable space for the particulars individuals, upwards or downwards from this middle point, but concentrated on this safe space, this middle space where one could live peacefully.

Why do we have to have emotional and aggressive societies, advantageous for the rich, or only for the poor (although I think this was only an utopia), for those who are incessantly forced to choose in order to justify their existence? Why do I have to chose in a store because toxic foods are also there, near healthy ones? Why am I expected to intervene in the jobs of the too many state and people representatives even though they are paid to take care of a society and I am not?

Why do I always find that I have to be for or against something or else... while in the everyday life one also has to be an economist, a cook, a cleaning person, an IT person, a repairman, a constructor, a parent, an educator and so many other things because we are all specialized in everything and in nothing, all are so expensive and the time is insufficient?

This overestimated hands on intervention of normal people in leading their own societal organism is a false solution, or rather just a diversion. For such a solution we need first to be educated in smaller groups while growing up. Pushing such an attitude now it's like you are pumping up someone to believe that he can be a football scorer and a goalkeeper in the same time. How can this be? It's like a mental illness, only the patient is our society.

Why can't I pick up the pieces of my own life? Who is supposed to see clear what is right and wrong in what I am doing or not doing.

I am afraid the answer lies somewhere in the region of the heart, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is an organ that had shut in itself inside our superficial chests and from which we have, beside its physical functions, only vague memories...

Feel, such a hard thing to do...

Trending: greed

Greed has many faces. The way I see it here, it pushes the modern society in all its corners towards a future that has no shape yet, a dangerous future maybe, created by the ever changing present, bursting into future as a chemical compound still reacting would reverberate in new shapes.

Source: an ordinary TV show, like many others" Mary, Queen of Shops. Youtube, I tube, we all tube and can easily get an idea about what this type of shows is about. It's about forming the opinions of the masses, shaping a way of thinking, ultimately shaping a form of human being. a mean one.

The "trend" arguments are revolving in a vicious circle: someone claims that he/she knows what is "up", "trendy", "in fashion", "popular" and states whatever stupidity with such a fanatic conviction that in fact it actually creates what he/she claims already exists. It is just another borrowed term from the real people to the manipulative system. Whether for rating, money or other more obscure reasons, the main stakes nowadays, the core of the power in social terms is the skill of manipulating.

So this basically older and not so beautiful lady, expert in shaping and branding fashion stores, comes "to the rescue" of small business, and deploys a real flood of management terms, interpersonal psychology and loss of old style common sense. Her motto "what I don't know isn't worth knowing" - she uses this arrogant expression for some of her experts, too... How does she transform the small boutiques? By bowing to the masses of young shoppers, to the celebrities and their looks (which in fact are carefully chosen - they are paid to wear various items, or they get free stuff if they subtly or not so subtly promote them), to the wacky fashion shows collections... and by raising the prices of the sold items in almost every case. Changing names, shops decorum, prices... throwing away loads of clothes that are not in fashion and do not sell well at the moment.

OK, how about the production of the new "praised" items? Are they made in Bangladesh of China by some third world slaves? Eh, why bother...
What about the materials - cotton or other natural fibers, or just the old pain in the ass unhealthy plastic? How do the clothes feel? What are the clothes we associate with memories, that we care for? Meh, who cares...

Not a word about how clothes should be infused with our unique personality, about buying wisely, about the existence of more that one category of shoppers. For this woman and this show, only the carefree youngsters with lots of money on their hands or their older corespondents matter... The fashion is given by anonymous sources, yet pinned upon this crowd of potential buyers ...

How about giving us a break with the ultra skinny figures and the unisex aspect of the people promoted nowadays in this forced culture? We are not aliens. Yet.
Normal people should come in various shapes - not pathologically obese (probably the effect of altered metabolisms, altered by pollution in water, air and food), and have differentiated faces and looks. Nobody should look like a clone of other users of the same cosmetic shop, for example...

And, to come back to the title - the greed! To pray on the peoples' weaknesses, preferences and dreams in order to get the money out of their pockets. To consider them stupid animals which deserve to be cheated and pushed around into actually wanting to pay more than less on an item, because cheap is dubious after being brainwashed that only expensive means quality. To get them to pay for the brand, for the magic keyword that some publicity shithead produces to mesmerize the crowd... To eliminate the more human competitors and keep the big money only with those who apply the same policy...

In society terms, it is almost impossible to go back to less once one has induced more. Progress is addictive. only ad hoc situations or those who shake the people from its hypnosis can stop the movement forward.

So, what the heck are we moving forward too with all this greed? Weirdly enough, playing it low and saving this and that seems to be a weird attitude. Money attracts money, abundance is the same. Living in a minimalist style - when it is not fake - when the loads of people are going the other way makes a person feel weird and lonely. Like it or not, the movement is too big and rapid in a direction that comprises greed, unhealthy materials, using more and more natural resources...

The only compass - probably covered with dust, figuratively speaking- for most of us is an intrinsic common sense. Why change this while still good? Why have 2 or 3 cars when one is enough? Why adopt the ideas of others, be them on TV, in the newspapers or on the city walls?

If these are not motivated from the inside, we are just caught in the dance of greed, mainstream, consumerism, boredom...

Yes, we are bored. The main products ruling this world are now "geek products", reality-compensating products As cruel as it was for them, geeks (although the term is somehow limited) didn't have much of a social life in recent history - hence staying inside, dreaming alternate realities, creating them later through movies, computing, books... OK so far, but from here to dragging the entire world into staring at some screens relentlessly, because the outside world is becoming more and more polluted, ugly, deserted and "not cool"... that is not OK.

The race for the modern industrialization and for progress almost always reaches a point where it goes wrong, where a useful invention is simply topped with some useless features in order to "sell" and "keep it going"... and in the process the earth is drained of its beauty and resources. The once normal people feel alienated in this weird universe where most of us don't even understand what we are doing, using machines through an users' interface as much as we are allowed to, without really understanding how these machines work. the bigger this gap, the more not normal and insane it is... Practically many have become stupid moving among notions and machines completely strange to them.

For the humans is horrible - we need to understand, to interact with the others and with the nature and planet. We need to feel in control and happy because our thinking structure - typical, classical, call it however you want - is being engaged in useful actions and thoughts. Why not be needed and appreciated for a clever everyday idea, for a kind heart, for a sense of humor? Why be useful only in terms of skills, money, trends and progress?

Why no greed equals no good life? Even the self help tones of books, the spiritual healing teachings (at least the ones who fill all the libraries' shelves) teach people to be greedy and selfish: find YOUR way, spoil YOURself, change YOUR life, be the kindest, say the most prayers, save YOURself when the world would end... Why, may I ask? Again with the competition and the race, with the improvement and the progress...

I will not enter into maybe another topic, but something is fishy here, considering how much the mainstream ideas share in their core with the supposedly their opponent philosophies. The same "hook" techniques, the same "sell-buy-convince" vibe...

Stop with the greed, or at least assume it for what it is, and stop pretending that other things are motivating various actions, when its slithering shape can be easily guessed underneath the so called reasons