As the days pass, the world becomes more Orwellian and far less human in nature. We are homogenized, stigmatized, and paralyzed by the fear of acceptance. We cling to conceptual conformity stifling the ability to think — moreover feel — freely in world that would rather numb the wrath, than permit you to pave your own path.
We are anesthetized by the numbing vibrations of voices touting the same copy-and-paste tested-proven rhetoric of absolutes, while being fed drugs that dilute your sense of self, while the label reads a promise to heal; instead forbidding the freedom to physiologically feel. A system that is intended to serve, treats peace of mind, a clear sense of self — much less health — like a commodity, and humanity the target market.
In one door, told what’s “wrong with you,” out the next, told what’s “broken within you,” and in another to purchase your pills. The louder the internal conflict, the more muted the external manipulation becomes. The more full the “doctor’s” books, the less care and attention can be offered, and the more can be charged. If the doctor’s unsure, then surely there’s a high-ticket test that can determine the cure.
What’s worse, is that it’s more important to keep you “sick” than it is to offer a hand through the thick of it all. Instead, it’s you who’s stuck with the bill, coupled with an ever impending essence of being ill, and still, not an actionable step in sight.
The thicker the prescription pad, the thicker the wallet. The more stark the divide of power and perspective, the less appetizing accommodation, understanding, and actionability become. For if you’re fully equipped with education, self understanding — albeit autonomy — the fewer appointments will be booked, the more underutilized the prescription pad, the lower the hierarchal divide, the more level the playing field would be. That would be all too disruptive to a system designed to keep you from being — feeling — free.
The more apathetic, and careless, the easier it is to care less. That’s the point. The more you scroll and succumb, the more you numb yourself to the voice within that screams “there has to be more to this, than the loop I’ve found myself in.”
It doesn’t stop there.
Youth and adults alike turn to self professed rulers of your attention and time. Digital deities disguised as “do-gooders” for the future of humanity. A sentiment lost when the cost has gotten this great. Churning out a cacophony of consumerism, an amalgamation of anger and hate, circulating divisive sentiments from country to country, state to state. Like a slot machine algorithmically playing on human needs, it pays out dividends of division, financed by the currency of your consciousness, and subsidized by an inability to sit with discomfort.
When the validation ceases, anger increases, instilling a virus in the minds and hearts, of those who feel the world around them is falling apart. Rather than receiving answers, you get distractions. Intended to mute your questions, and instead act as redirections, to the systemic narrative of lack. If you log off, unplug, and reconnect, you’re — by design — followed by the F.O.M.O. of keeping up with joneses who could care less; much less have your back.
On the other side of the coin there are those who claim to live in “love and light,” and refuse to fight for fear of feeling negativity. Whose dissociative dharma divides us — not only from one another — but from our own bodies. Behind the brushstrokes signs of “positive vibes only,” there is a violence that exists in silence, further deepening the distrust between brain and body. Don’t be fooled by the “download,” or “a message intended only for you.” These individuals perpetuate a divisiveness that exists only in black or white, and negates all the value in embracing the humanity found in “the grey.” They pedal and push the consumption of a different kind: crystals, appropriated traditions, meditations, and other new-wave-ways to unwind. Swearing up and down that it is the misalignment — a muted rainbow hue — of your “chakras” that’s keeping you from being you. It’s more important to perfect posture in positivity, than it is to hold oneself accountable to actioning on awareness, while getting down to the nitty gritty. Though on the surface these individuals may carry a musk of essential oil, and “CoExist” bumper stickers on their cars, the fact of the matter is this approach won’t get you very far. When you pull back the curtain of “love and light,” you’re left only with repurposed dogmatism traditionally designated for the pulpit; in which people are pupils in stead of equals. In this realm you will find a lack of a different kind: a lack of ownership, accountability, integration and admission of their own humanity.
Unfortunately the psycho-emotional depletion isn’t limited to the digital world. Now, more than ever, the anger fed by the feed — allegedly serving human needs — leads those without the tools to bring guns to schools, clubs and concerts — manifestos in hand, live streams a-go — giving stage to their anger. To them, it’s easier to kill and be dead than fight the war being waged in their head. What’s fucked, is that it’s not the victims that gain virility, it’s the perpetrator and the manufactured purpose for mindless manslaughter.
It’s the world we’ve built. The voices we’ve given infamy. The fact that we refuse to look away. But, isn’t that the American way? Hunger, consume, compare, anger, violence, starve, satiate, separate, strive, get squished, repeat.
It ends today.
There is not a hashtag, a viral graphic, that will even come close to creating the change necessary for the violence, hatred, and divisiveness to stop. There is not a guru, meditation or self-help-hack that will stop the paining feeling of lack. The echo chamber of digital discipleship reverberates back sociopolitical divide, pseudo-science, projected diagnosis and bullshit self care strategies designed only with the privileged in mind. Starved of substance, devoid of discipline, and pointed only at the fear of embracing the freedom of your own humanity. What happens if you think for yourself? What would happen if you don’t wear the right clothes? Eat at the right places? Take the right supplements? Train the right way? Like, share, comment, retweet the right thing to avoid the sting of social rejection? God forbid you let the songbird of your heart sing.
Instead we’re left starved for a manufactured sense of meaning, a synthetic belonging, and bullshit metrics intended to summate the entirety of one’s humanity. This is yielding a generation who has forgotten what it feels like to be whole, to exist, to feel, much less grant themselves permission to be real. For it’s easier to be filtered, because then there’s no trace, of the thoughts, emotions, fears and doubts, behind a perfect face.
The fact is you are not broken, you are not flawed, you are not sick, the world around us is.
These systems are designed to starve you of what feeds you. Intended to keep you numb by making you deaf and dumb to truth through a conveyer belt of designers and designer drugs. Instead of buying paint brushes, we buy bags. Instead of asking questions, we burry our heads in the sand. Instead of becoming the change we seek, we hide behind the screen.
We are bottled, fed and sold, designers and drugs, to keep us quiet, to silence the questions, and mute the existence that is meant for me and you. You are not meant to live on loop caravanning on a carousel from doctor to therapist, trainer to coach, store to store. You are here to live. That does not make you sick nor in need of something broken to fix, it makes you human as fuck. If nothing else, let that be the permission you seek to get unstuck.
You are here to break the barriers that this bastardized world would rather you exist within. You are here to be bold in your wholeness, free in your thinking, creative in your expression, expansive in your perspective and educated in your understanding of who you are in a world that would rather capitalize on its ability to break you. If you are broken, the bottom line is fulfilled. If you’re overwhelmed by choice, consumerism, and chatter, you are easier to control.
What cannot be manipulated is the mind that recognizes it’s already whole. I invite you to resist the conformity in which you’d rather exist. I invite you to question why, and how, you obey the conveyer belt of bullshit. What would life be like if you lived out loud? Who would you be if you were no longer “broken?” How would you treat others if you understood the foundations of the human experience? What could you create if you halted the sport-man’s debate? If you shut the fuck up for half a beat, and realized the potential laying at your feet, you’d realize there is no guru worth following other than the voice that’s been whispering your calling.
Through education we unearth understanding. Through humanity we are reminded of our fundamental ability to innovate and create change. Through connection we can start the conversation. You cannot “be the change you wish to see in the world,” without identifying that there is something wrong with the world itself.
As The Human Builder I vow to show up for those who are ready to ask the big questions, while patiently holding the reflection for those who have yet to spark that bravery in themselves. I vow to live loudly, boldly, and authentically so that others may do the same. I vow to commit my life to educating, guiding and igniting others towards un-broken living that catalyzes real, lasting, impactful change that ripples well beyond the individual. I vow to ask the hard questions and not rest until I’ve found the answers. I vow to fight, lead, and defend the war FOR the freeing of minds, expansion of expression, unbridled consciousness, compassionate community, and radical change in the way we approach the mental and physical wellbeing of future generations. Moreover, I vow to listen more than I speak, act more than I theorize and I vow to put myself on the front lines of The Mental Health Revolution.
Are you with me?
