The narrative and perception on climate change mirrors that of capitalist economies in so many ways.
Trying to manufacture consent to view the issue in a way that it can be achieved at the micro level, when in fact the only success at mass scale is at the macro level.
We love to embrace scientific change if it gives our favorite influencer or podcast host something to sell and/or talk about. We love science when it finds ways to improve products and services.
But putting science to use for the masses beyond medicine has been a no go for generations.
There is more than enough money, land, and resources to change the way life is lived on planet Earth so that the way we live is more sustainable and has less negative impact on the world we live in.
But we don’t do these factual, documented, measurable things because it would negatively disrupt the capitalist system and it’s beneficiaries.
No different then kings sending the serfs to war over personal disputes with other royal families. Just on a larger scale. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s not just easy, it’s as natural and normal as breathing.
I know I have been guilty of judging others negatively, but what I was actually doing was projecting negative thoughts about my own flaws onto them. And I’m not accessing my long term memory when I think of examples of this.
I’m not sure if becoming more accepting of human nature comes with age or with experience. I just know that as I’ve gotten older, and had more experience interacting with more and more people, I am (slowly) becoming more accepting of the fact that to be human is to be irrational.
I think that if we all take a minute to look back on some of our decisions in just our recent past, we’ll find the actions of an irrational person.
Studying philosophy has helped me with this. Reading books by Robert Greene has specifically helped me with this a lot in recent years.
To accept our human nature, is to be forgiving, to have empathy.
We need more of a lot of things in this world, but empathy, that is something that a majority of us can agree upon. Something free, simple, within all of our ability to control and influence.
Having more compassion for myself and empathy for others is an evergreen new years resolution for me. Being more aware and accepting of the irrationality of human nature has helped provide fuel for my ability to empathize to grow.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
It would be nice to say that I had an awakening or an epiphany that changed the way I lived forever all at once.
The older I get, the more I feel like that isn’t how change works.
I’ve had, what I thought were life changing epiphanies, repeatedly. Life changing visions, repeatedly. Life changing moments, repeatedly. I thought after X or Y happened to me that I would live differently from that point onward.
Habits always win out however. Choices, actions done repeatedly make our lives.
The concept of Stimulus-Space-Response was a concept I first learned from a rented audio book by Stephen Covey. He was telling the story of Holocaust survivor Dr. Victor Frankl.
Learning about that concept I can still remember thinking, in the library I was listening to the audiobook in; that this was going to change my life from that point on.
I thought my depression, laziness, anxieties would all be instantly and forever changed now that I knew that there was a space between stimulus and response.
I get to choose how I respond?! I can cultivate and grow that space?!! Surely this will change my life immediately. I will only make good choices now. I will only do right actions.
The older I get, the more I feel like that isn’t how change works.
But learning about Stimulus-Space-Response is one of the closest things I’ve ever experienced to an epiphany that stuck. I suppose a more apt metaphor would be that of a seed being planted. A seed of lasting change was planted that day.
Stephen Covey also used farming as an analogy for change and for life. I may have planted the seed(s) for growth, but I failed to tend to the soil properly with patience and persistence. Then the harvest was nothing.
It is a great concept that more people should know about. The knowledge that we can choose what happens to us no matter what happens. Because we have the ability to think, perceive, and assign meaning in our brain. Unlike most animals.
I think most people are unaware of this. I know I was. I think most people think that to live, is to live reactively. Just reacting to whatever happens to us and around us whether good, bad, or indifferent.
But we can choose to stop, breath, think, and choose.
It’s no magic pill, no such thing of course. But it can help. It helps me.
Social network sounds so much more appealing than electronic social emotional psychological experiment platform.
It was recently revealed that in 2012, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of just under 700,000 users, in order to measure the effects the news feed changes, on the mood(s) of the user(s).
The exact number of users who were unknowingly experimented on is 689,003. The exact amount of time was one week. Facebook showed less (than) positive posts from both friends and publication providers. Facebook did not get the consent of the users to do this experiment.
Me personally, I find something like this to be disgusting and despicable. This is also a great learning lesson on a variety of levels. Let’s focus on how the results of the experiment show what social conditioning is.
Social conditioning is how we learn to think, perceive, and act through the media (movies, television, music, magazines, newspapers, social media websites/platforms, etc).
Facebook proved to themselves and to the world that social conditioning is a very real, very applicable, very effective social-emotional concept. Social conditioning shapes all of us, myself very much included. Facebook itself can be considered one big social conditioning machine.
It was also learned in the experiment that emotions are contagious. That people can in mass be manipulated to feel happier or sadder. What are the implications of this? What other large companies have performed experiments like this in the past? In the present?
I’m not going to bring this article down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. There are simply questions worth asking of ourselves internally as well as the external world around us. How much of what we think and feel is rooted in our own personal identity, integrity, character, and principles? How much of our identity, values, and consent has been manufactured?
Think about it. Be aware of it.
What is “it”? It in this case would be the non material aspects of what makes you up as a person. Your thoughts, feelings, and so on. Do you think, perceive, and act based on what you internally believe? Or are you being so manipulated by the world around you that you have no identity that isn’t a corporate brand or group think produced? No one is above being asked that question, especially not yours truly.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 