denamorano

A home movie featuring central figures of the literary and artistic scene of 1920s New York, directed by Ralph Barton (illustrator of Gentleman Prefer Blondes) and featuring Anita Loos as Camille.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xpUIXXq_iE&hl=en

For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. -HL Mencken

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7ATdEkvJs&hl=en

Tabitha Hodges short film captures the history and character of Deadline Artists contributor HL Mencken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZFyQaE3Y4M&hl=en

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLzea4hLfEg&hl=en

ABC News Nightline, 7-16-2010 Edwin Kagin, American Atheists’ national legal director & Founder of Camp Quest, at the American Atheists annual national convention in Newark, NJ. www.atheists.org You don’t need to wait for the hair-dryer. You can get yourself debaptized over the internet at debaptized.com You’ll even get a printable certificate that you can hang on your wall! “I think we should not underestimate the power of embarrassment. The book Freakonomics briefly discusses the way the Ku Klux Klan lost its subscribers, and the example is instructive. A man named Stetson Kennedy, almost single-handedly it seems, eroded the prestige of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s by joining them and then leaking all of their secret passwords and goofy lingo to the people who were writing The Adventures of Superman radio show. Week after week, there were episodes of Superman fighting the Klan, and the real Klan’s mumbo jumbo was put out all over the airwaves for people to laugh at. Kids were playing Superman vs. the Klan on their front lawns. The Klan was humiliated by this, and was made to look foolish; and we went from a world in which the Klan was a legitimate organization with tens of millions of members many of whom were senators, and even one president—to a world in which there are now something like 5000 Klansmen. It’s basically a defunct organization. So public embarrassment is one principle. Once you lift the taboo around criticizing faith and demand that people start talking …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_jFQDgo8yg&hl=en

The news that the South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk has been fired from his prestigious seat with Seoul National University caused shock waves in the medical world and beyond. His claims, going back over several years, to have cloned the first human embryos and to have extracted stem cells from them, turned out to have been false. Six other professors working with Hwang have also been disciplined.

His research had raised hopes of finding cures for a range of afflictions, including Parkinson’s disease, and Alzeimer’s. The disgraced professor has apologised for producing faked results, but remains convinced that he was heading in the right direction, and that sooner or later someone else would make the breakthrough.

Not least of the outcomes of Hwang’s fakery is the damage done to the public perception of science. We tend to put scientists on a pedestal, and it comes as a shock when one of them is caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What happened at Seoul is grist to the mill of the anti-science lobby, which would claim it proves that science is unreliable and that scientists cannot be trusted.

In my opinion this argument misses the point. The integrity of scientists can be relied on precisely because falsification cannot be hidden, at least not permanently. The simple fact is that nothing in science is given credence unless it can be tested and verified independently by other scientists. That is what keeps science honest.

In 1925 science was, in effect, put on trial when a young biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee called John Scopes, was arrested for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The Monkey Trial, as it became known, was really a show trial and Scopes was a willing guinea pig, used to test a new law which banned ‘any theory that denies the story and divine creation of man as taught in the Bible’

Clarence Darrow, America’s foremost lawyer at the time, offered to defend Scopes without a fee, and the prosecution was headed by a former presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow apparently had the best of it. The contentious HL Mencken was one of the reporters on the trial, and described how Darrow goaded his opponent; “His face flushed under Mr. Darrow’s searching words, and he writhed in an effort to keep himself from making heated replies. His eyes glared at his lounging opponent, who stood opposite him, glowering under his bulging brow, speculatively tapping his arm with his spectacles”. In the end, John Scopes was found guilty by the jury and fined $100. Both sides claimed a victory.

Probably the best known case of deception in the 20th century was that of ‘Piltdown man’. Piltdown was an archaeological site near Hastings, East Sussex, where fossil remains were found in 1913, which were thought to be the ‘missing link’ between men and apes. In 1953 it was discovered that the cranium was of a modern human and the jawbone belonged to an ape. The discovery caused enormous embarrassment in scientific circles, particularly in view of the amount of time which had elapsed since the original excavation. To some, this was proof positive of the fallibility of scientific results, but in fact scientists were denied access to the remains for many years, and had to be content with plaster models.

It is stating the obvious to say that in the ninety years or so which have elapsed since the Piltdown discovery, technology has improved beyond anything dreamt of in those days. There are now many ways of testing and examining fossil remains, and taken together, they remove most of the guesswork from the dating process. In the end, the fraud perpetrated on the scientific community by some unknown person all those years ago, was uncovered by scientists, which surely demonstrates that science is able to correct its own mistakes.

Whoever set up the Piltdown fraud was clearly bent on mischief, but in the case of Paul Kammerer and the Midwife toads the scientist involved acted from the same muddled good intentions as Hwang Woo-suk. Paul Kammerer was an Austrian biologist, working in the early part of the 20th century. He had what we would call celebrity status, and besides being a renowned scientist, he was a musician and composer, mixing with the Viennese intellectuals, artists and musicians of the time, including Gustav Mahler and the conductor Bruno Walter.

Kammerer wanted to resurrect the earlier theories of Jean Baptiste Lamarck, which postulated an alternative view of evolution to that of Charles Darwin. Lamarck suggested that physical characteristics (and by inference, mental ones), acquired during the lifetime of an organism, could be passed on to its offspring. Lamarckism had long since been abandoned by scientific thought, but Kammerer believed he could induce hard pads on the forelimbs of Midwife toads which could then be passed on to the next generation, and so prove Lamarck’s theory of the inheritability of characteristics.

Unfortunately for him, at the height of his fame, an American scientist by the name of GK Noble, on examining one of Kammerer’s specimens, discovered indian ink in the pads. This was the end for Kammerer. His twenty-six years of careful studies were compromised, and shortly after, he took his life.

The word ’science’ comes from the Latin ’scienta’ and simply means ‘knowledge’. Probably the first man who thought like a modern scientist was Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from being a great painter and a passable lute player he had an insatiable curiosity about the world. He produced a vast series of notebooks with observations on anatomy, cloud formations, plans for cities, military inventions, tanks, flying machines and submarines. He was also fascinated by recurring patterns in nature.

Leonardo’s restless and brilliant intellect rarely allowed him to finish anything. It was left to three great astronomer/mathematicians; Copernicus, who was his contemporary, and a little later, Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei to lay the foundations of modern science.

Copernicus re-discovered what some of the Ancient Greeks had known; that the sun was at the centre of the solar system, and that the earth revolved around it. Heraclides and later Aristarchus proposed this idea over two thousand years ago. At that time, however, most scholars followed Ptolemy and Aristotle in believing that the earth was the centre of everything, a perfectly natural and sensible point of view, given the available evidence.

Unlike Galileo, who followed him, Copernicus was a careful and rather timid man, and did not publish his findings until very late in his life. In fact, it is said that he saw his work in print for the first time when he was dying. He never completely resolved the problem of the motions of the stars and planets. This was because In common with all astronomers of his day he still followed the ancient traditions, in assuming that planetary orbits were circular, and this skewed all his calculations somewhat.

It was the Polish astronomer Johannes Kepler who in the next century realised that in fact planetary orbits were elliptical. This was an amazing idea at the time. He had to assume that there was a force preventing the planets from flying off into space, and it was only when Isaac Newton demonstrated the existence of gravity in 1687 that his idea was confirmed.

Kepler was a superb astronomer and mathematician, and it bothered him greatly that, like Copernicus, he could not quite make his calculations fit his observations. There is an intriguing story relating how he finally achieved the breakthrough. It seems he went to bed one night with the problem on his mind and had a dream in which a spirit grasped him by the shoulders and repeatedly slammed him from the floor to the ceiling, shouting, “The orbits are elliptical, they are elliptical!” Next day he entered the elliptical orbit into his calculations and everything fell into place. The orbits were explained.

Galileo was the first to use modern scientific methods based on experiment and testable observations. In 1608 some spectacle makers from Flanders came to the Republic of Venice, where Galileo was staying, with their new invention, a spyglass for identifying ships well before they entered a harbour. Galileo heard about it and promptly set about figuring out how it worked. He not only succeeded in constructing his own spyglass, but went on to build a second one with the magnification stepped up by eight, and finally thirty times.

When he turned the telescope on the night sky, he discovered sunspots, the phases of Venus, the craters of the moon and the four large moons of Jupiter, now called the Galilean satellites. Galileo was now able, with his own observations, to back Kepler’s assertion that nothing in nature is ‘perfect’

It was inevitable that Galileo’s beliefs would come to the attention of the Pope. Maffeo Barberini, Urban 3rd, was in fact an intellectual and patron of the arts, and would have preferred to let the matter drop, with a little co-operation on the part of Galileo. But Galileo was not strong on tact and diplomacy. Possibly he thought his position and intelligence would save him, but it was not to be. In April 1633 he was arrested and brought before the Inquisition.

He was shown the instruments of torture that could be used on him, and invited to recant his heresy. Galileo was well aware that in 1600 the philosopher Giordano Bruno had been burnt at the stake, with his tongue tied to prevent him speaking. His crime had been to champion the teachings of Copernicus and to advocate free speech in general. Galileo was an old man and knew he could not fight the Catholic church. He was invited to kneel and deny that the earth orbited the sun, which he did. As he stood up he is supposed to have muttered, “Eppur si muove!” (And yet it moves!).

If I had to look back to find the starting point of our modern world, I think I would have to pick the sun-centred theory of Copernicus. As the great German poet, novelist and natural philosopher Geothe wrote in the 18th century, “Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrines of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous privilege of being the centre of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand made on mankind - for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; our testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic-religious faith? No wonder his contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance to a doctrine which in its converts authorised and demanded a freedom of view and greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not ever dreamed of”.

Today, of course, science touches every aspect of our lives. Our world could not exist without it. Perhaps it never could, for surely when we began to use fire, stone tools and agriculture we took our first steps along the path of science. If science is a tool, it works spectacularly well, but like any tool, it can be misused. The question is not whether we can trust science, but whether we can trust ourselves. Watch this space.

James Donaldson Collins

James Donaldson Collins is an artist and writer. He lives in the Highlands of Scotland with his wife, daughter and three dogs. His interests are conservation, history, science fiction, chess and snooker. He also claims to play guitar like a ringing a bell.

HL Mencken tells it like it was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SytqXH6aQtw&hl=en

Buy Tom Peters products at www.yoursuccessstore.com Tom Peters, a self-described “professional loudmouth” who has been compared to Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau and HL Mencken, declares war on the worthless rules and absurd organizational barriers that stand in the way of creativity and success. In a totally outrageous, in-your-face presentation, Tom reveals: A re-imagining of American business; 2 big markets - underserved and worth trillions!; The top qualities of leadership excllence; Why passion, talent and action must rule business today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYLhthJA6qc&hl=en

I’ve often wondered about something:

Why is it that on TV and in movies, people are so open, friendly, sociable, communicative, easily invite you into their cliques, take you out for fun and introduce you to others? They act so warm, passionate, full of life and feeling, and are easy to get involved with. And in romance/drama films of old (less so nowadays) people were so passionate and full of feeling in their eyes and expression, as though they were fully aware and conscious.

But in real life, people are generally uptight, closed, cliquish, paranoid, anti-social outside their clique, difficult to meet, don’t talk to you unless its business related, and basically ignore you and expect you to mind your own business while they mind theirs. People are in a bubble and there is an “ice barrier” between strangers. They seem like zombies/automatons who are totally unaware and oblivious to others around them, as though they were not fully conscious. They are always in a rush to get through their daily routine. They seem totally uninterested and unconcerned with human connection. And if you are not like that too, you stick out like a sore thumb, like you are in a sort of Twilight Zone - in a different reality from everyone else!

Why is there such a HUGE difference that no one ever talks about?! It’s so bizarre, like the Twilight Zone!

My friend and cultural advisor, a former US immigrant, made the same observation in my forum:

“I think generally, the biggest culture shock that people experience in the US is not between their country and the US but between what they thought the US would be and what it actually is. Books and movies about America make the place appear very free and exciting and happening and the people are so interesting and emotional. There is sex and fun and romance going on. When they arrive, the place looks very conservative and the people appear robotic and quiet. Sex is subdued and hard to come by. The people are not open at all, they look closed and mistrustful. Everybody is just working and looking tired and apathetic. Talking to strangers is taboo. There are thousands of little rules and laws and social mores that seem as dogmatic and strict as those in a Muslim society. And every time you are at risk of breaking yet another law and facing very dire consequences. That is the biggest culture shock of all.”

This is so very obvious, yet no one talks about it. To do so would make you look like a loser, so no one dares to. It’s like an “Emperor’s New Clothes” syndrome. Either that, or people don’t see it due to the cognitive dissonance of their programming.

There is also an unspoken social law that says that anywhere you go, you MUST say that people are very friendly and wonderful, or you say nothing at all. Or you can blame yourself. But you are NOT allowed to say that people are anti-social. That is a big taboo and No-No.

But the truth is that in Anglo countries (e.g. USA, Canada) and Oriental East Asian cultures (e.g. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, etc.) only middle aged people and little kids are open and casually talk with anyone who is friendly. But people in between are a different breed (especially females). They are closed, uptight, cliquish, paranoid and go about minding their own business and expect others to do the same. You have to play complicated tricky mind games to try to get into their cliques, and then MAYBE you will get in.

This difference between old people, children and young adults (especially females) is as obvious as 2+2=4 in Anglo and Oriental cultures, and is the norm and easily demonstratable. Yet NO ONE talks about it except me for some reason. Why?! It’s as if it were “hidden in plain sight” from everybody, or the truth is forbidden!

In reality, Anglo and Oriental cultures are workaholic, robotic, cliquish, non-social, slave cultures built purely for business and productivity. They are devoid of passion, soul and romance. Everything in these cultures is geared for business, not passion, human connection, or expression. (though America has fake versions of these in its Hollywood culture) People are treated and groomed as economic resources and defined by their economic functions (e.g. workers, tax payers, consumers, etc). They live highly materialistic and segregated lifestyle devoid of human connection.

As a result, they become machines, stiff and repressed, devoid of romance and passion. The regimented socializing that does take place in such cultures is usually fake, artificial, uptight, pretentious and a cliche rather than a truly flowing interactive experience.

But you wouldn’t notice all this if you’ve only spent time in Anglo/Oriental cultures for you’d have nothing to compare them to. You’d have to live in cultures that are the opposite to truly know the difference.

On the other hand, in countries that are poorer with large peasant classes or have more open and passionate cultures (e.g. Latin America, Russia, Ukraine, Spain, Holland, Philippines, etc.), meeting people happens as easily as blowing in the wind! Literally! The difference is astounding, like a BILLION PERCENT, but one has to experience it firsthand to truly see it. Why is there such a huge difference?

In social environments, there is an unspoken social law that says you are allowed to say statements such as the following:

1) Everyone or most people are so friendly and wonderful! (which most travel sites and travel programs say about people everywhere)

2) I am very busy with work and have no time to meet people.

3) I lack social skills and am not very outgoing.

Or you say nothing at all. Thus you are only allowed to praise the majority or blame yourself. These are the “norms” and boundaries of what you can and cannot say, and as you grow up, you learn them gradually. Truth is not the highest value in society, and the saying “Honesty is the best policy” is not followed. Therefore, to say something like the following would be a big taboo:

“I have trouble meeting people here. I am very open and friendly, but people here are so closed, stuck up, anti-social, cliquish, non-inclusive, and don’t want to meet me. They don’t talk to strangers unless it’s business-related. They just mind their own business and expect me to do the same. So I find it hard to meet people here.”

No matter how TRUE and justified it is, you are NOT ALLOWED to say that! It’s like truth itself has become a taboo, which is the sign of a sick society.

In fact, in any culture, it is taboo to say that the people there are anti-social, even if it’s true. Thus, you will not find such statements in any book in the largest public library or in any news publications. It is totally forbidden, no matter how true or justified.

In fact, if you say the unacceptable statement above, not only is it taboo and politically incorrect, but it is freakish and disturbing to people because it VIOLATES their paradigm of reality, which holds the false assumption and fallacy that:

1) The majority of people are right, normal, sane, friendly and sociable.

2) Misfits and people who don’t follow the herd are crazy, insane and weird. They are the problem and to blame for any incompatibility with others.

However, many great thinkers and intellectuals with deep insight, from ages ago to recent times, have seen through this fallacy, and realized that the reverse was true. (e.g. Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Eric Fromm, Frederich Nietzsche, HL Mencken, RD Lang, Marcus Aurelius, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ayn Rand, Oscar Wilde, etc.)

What all this means is that if you are even aware of the social realities described above, you will have the hardest time breaking into cliques in Anglo/Oriental countries, because cliques and groups in rich cultures are full of fakeness and conformity, and one has to be on a similar vibration with the social clique to even have a chance at breaking in (besides playing the tricky social games too). This means that if you are on a “truth vibration” and see things the way they are, you will not be compatible with most cliques, thus if you recognize the reality above, you are already a misfit. This is the sad reality. Also, people who always tell the truth tend to have few friends and won’t fit into large cliques.

So the question we must ask is: What is the value and price of truth, freedom and liberation of mind? And is the price worth it?

Most people though, prefer the practical benefits of conformity, rather than the truth or the value of owning oneself.

For more of my freethinking and truth articles: http://www.happierabroad.com/articles.php

By Winston Wu (Founder of HappierAbroad.com)

Winston Wu is a Freethinking Asian American Expat Writer and Founder of HAPPIER ABROAD, the revolutionary Global Dating and Living site.

This is so true and sad, but liberating when you realize it. When I wake up I often think:

This world is in reality a global enslavement machine that programs people to THINK that they are free in order for them to cope with their servitude, and conditions people to WANT it as well. The truth is, we are all slaves to the economic system and programmed with illusions that help us bear our enslavement.

The system treats us as economic resources and defines us by our economic functions (e.g. workers, tax payers, consumers, etc.) rather than as human or spiritual beings. In short, we are simply a commodity to the system and groomed as such. And of course, we are programmed to want to thrive as “economic resources”, not to complain about it or be critical of it. No free thought, in other words. You are supposed to “love the system”.

Freedom, for the most part, is just a word, not an actual state of existence. The reason people, especially Americans, believe that they have freedom is simply because their minds are programmed to think that they do. You see, your slavemasters need you to be satisfied with your enslavement to keep you controlled. In order to do that, they give you choices in consumerism and in selecting your occupation. You are “free” to choose your form of slavery and vote for your puppet dictators.

Right when you step into grade school, you lose all your freedoms as you are totally controlled and given rules to abide by. You are taught to regurgitate information and to be obedient, as you are honed and groomed to become a slave in servitude to the system. You are told it’s for your own good, and punished for disobedience. Public school is where your conditioning to become a robot begins.

First, you are programmed to WANT to become enslaved by being conditioned to WANT a job/career, which is essentially giving over control of your daily life to others. In doing so, you give up your freedom without knowing it cause you are told that you are “free to work”, which implies that it is YOU who wants it, not the system - a psychological sleight of hand indeed. Furthermore, you are convinced that “the purpose of your life is to work” and that’s what you were born for, thus ingraining you with the “live to work” mentality. You are also conditioned to feel empty and incomplete without it. As a result, work becomes synonymous with freedom to you.

If you think about it though, unless you are at the executive level, most jobs are technically positions of slavery, because you are giving over a large portion of your day in servitude to a corporate body, organization or business that is structured in a hierarchical fashion. Technically, that is slavery. There’s no way around it. But of course, the system tries to convince you that it’s not by getting you to think that YOU are the one that wants it. But even if you don’t, you have to anyway cause you need the money to pay your bills. Hence, whether you want it or not, the employment enslavement is “forced” upon you by the system.

Overall, the system tries its best to make you a “happy slave” by repackaging slavery as freedom. This is a form of spin illusion that reverses the meaning of “slavery” and “freedom”. For example, freedom in America means “the freedom to work and make money” which in other words means “the freedom to choose your form of enslavement”. And being free of this enslavement is to be a “miserable unemployed person who is seeking a job”, as defined by the system. This basically means that it is a bad thing not be a slave.

It’s a play on words that turns truth into its opposite. And it’s no different than preachers telling Christians who have submitted to the fundamentalist laws of the Bible that they have been “set free from sin”, or fascist dictators telling their populace that they’ve been “set free from chaos and disorder”, etc. So in this case, when you turn into a corporate slave, you are “set free from unemployment”.

Essentially, the system’s false logic is that slavery = being “set free” from freedom. This is nonsensical of course, but you aren’t meant to see it the way it really is. Instead you are meant to see the inverse of the way it really is. That’s the scam and brainwashing. It’s a classic form of propaganda where you divert attention from something by declaring it to be its opposite. And it has been used time and time again throughout history in all areas of life where mass control is needed. Thus it’s no wonder that Michael Ellner stated:

“Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality.”

Moreover, the system uses a barrage of methods to keep us in an internal state of fear and insecurity that causes us to crave structure and routine, due to our psychological insecurities, which enslavement to the system provides of course. Thus we are raised to want to be “tied down” to something (e.g. a job, house, marriage, single geographic location) on a long term basis. This is why most people do not seek adventure, new experiences or true freedom of expression, and only a minority do.

One major outlet that the system uses to keep us in this internal state is the media of course, which constantly feeds us stories of terror, tragedy and crises. Their excuse is that “bad news sells” but that is just a cover. You are never told the real reason for the rampant fear-mongering. Society also convinces you that being in a state of fear and paranoia is good for your protection. But in reality, the majority of our fears are baseless, unfounded or greatly exaggerated. (e.g. terrorists everywhere, psycho killers everywhere, swine flu scares, etc.)

Another major method the system uses is the other people around us, who are trained to keep us in line and in a state of conformity. This is effective because given a choice between the truth vs. conformity to the group, most will choose the latter even if it means parroting a lie they know to be untrue. And of course, our internal state of fear and weakness make it much more likely that we will conform as well. Thus, each of these controls are designed to reinforce each other.

Conformity is the fallacious belief that the views of the majority must always be right and the minority or dissenters always wrong. Therefore, it assumes one should adopt the beliefs of the majority in order to be “right”. It is a mindless characteristic that most adopt and are conditioned to live by. However, many of the greatest thinkers, writers and intellectuals of the world have seen through the madness of such a belief and realized that the opposite is true. (e.g. Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Eric Fromm, Frederich Nietzsche, HL Mencken, RD Lang, Marcus Aurelius, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ayn Rand, Oscar Wilde, etc.)

Additionally, society is set up with all sorts of stress, anxiety and worry to keep you in a constant state of “survival mode”, which reinforces your fear state. And of course, money itself, which enslaves the world for obvious reasons and is totally artificial, is the lifeblood of the global enslavement system. There is no question that we are all slaves to money. But as conspiracy lecturer Alex Collier asks in his lectures, “Why do I have to ‘pay’ to be in a world I was born into?”

David Icke, a popular conspiracy researcher and author, came to the same conclusion. In his book “Human Race Get Off Your Knees: The Lion Sleeps No More” he writes “the truth - that the world is a global enslavement machine and reality suppressor”.

Though there are variations, essentially most people only have two choices - either become a robot… or a bum. Not very inspiring. To find alternatives requires innovation and thinking outside the box, but most cannot cause the system doesn’t teach you to think for yourself.

Most people believe what they are told, and they are not told that the world is an enslavement system. Instead they are told that they were born to work, which is a virtue, and that if they study hard and work hard, they will make a lot of money and have a good life. But in reality, they end up slaving away their whole lives for money with some “pie in the sky” dream in their heads with little or no time to enjoy any “good life”. They never live fully or experience any true freedom or discover themselves. Instead they live in fear, worry and pressure their whole lives just to keep up an illusory facade under the programming of the system. In the end, it falls flat and they wonder what went wrong after they’ve lost most of their precious life years serving the system. By the time they realize it, it’s too late. Such is the sad scam the system puts on you.

Now I am not trying to be negative here. The system is what it is. And no amount of white washing or word plays will change the core nature of it.

Another form of binding enslavement is marriage. People are conditioned to want it, even though it really makes no sense and is merely an artificial contract that unnaturally binds two people by oath. If you think about it, marriage is like swearing an oath to only eat vanilla ice cream for the rest of your life until you die, and never trying any other flavor. It is an unrealistic promise and unnecessary voluntary binding of oneself. (Not a wise idea at all) But people are conditioned to WANT it and to feel empty and incomplete without it, so they do, even though it makes no sense. (Love isn’t enough, so we must invoke an artificial business contract in order to feel complete!) And of course, they are taught to see marriage as “being set free from the lonely single life”.

In reality, if you love someone, that is all the reason you need to be with them. Romantic love can be a wonderful, beautiful and natural thing that bonds and connects people, especially if it’s coupled with synergy. There is no need to swear an oath or create a binding artificial business contract to try to control our nature and life. Doing so actually “kills the love” and turns it into an obligation rather than a spiritual/emotional bond. It also creates an artificial bind which is a form of enslavement. But you are programmed with the belief that this oath and contract is a necessary and natural thing.

“A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.” - Zsa Zsa Gabor

So, the two big areas of life - employment and marriage - are in reality forms of binding enslavement in which you give up your life and freedom over to others. But you are made to WANT and NEED them. You are made to WANT a job that ties you to one geographic location and puts your schedule under control of a managerial entity, which no sane awakened person would want. And you are also made to WANT to unnaturally tie yourself to another person for life until you die, never loving any other, regardless of what may happen, even though such a promise is totally unrealistic. And you are programmed to define all that as “freedom and the American dream”.

An awakened person realizes the folly of all this, sees that what everyone wants (like the will of a hive mind) makes no sense, and realizes that all of this is the total antithesis of what it means to be free. But an unawakened person believes the illusion and wants what they are programmed to want. To them, if society says so and everyone else is doing it, it must be good, normal and natural. Only the awakened person realizes it’s all a con full of lies, mind control, illusion, voluntary slavery and the giving up of one’s life and freedom.

True freedom means that you can do whatever you want (for the most part at least) as long as you don’t harm others, without the control and interference of others. But the commitment of employment and marriage take that away. There is no doubt about that. But we are NOT conditioned to want true freedom. Instead, we are conditioned to WANT enslavement by giving up control of our life, time and daily schedule to others. Yet we are TOLD that we have freedom in America and that “freedom is what makes America great” when in reality we do NOT have true freedom. It’s a total lie that makes no sense and contradicts reality.

Think about it. Most Americans who are enslaved by employment and bound by marriage do NOT have true freedom because for the most part, since they CANNOT do whatever they want everyday without control and interference from others. In childhood, their life is controlled by their school system in the day and their parents at night. Then in adulthood, their life is controlled by their bosses, managers and spouses. Yet they BELIEVE that they have freedom. Why? Because they are TOLD that they do! They are told that since no one named Adolf Hitler runs their government, that they can go to the voting booth, and that they have 20 flavors of bagels to choose from, etc. that they have freedom, even though their lives are controlled by others and they cannot do whatever they want everyday! It’s an insane hypocrisy and bizarro world. Yet most don’t see it cause the system programs their minds not to see it but to see the opposite by redefining everything and turning people into “happy slaves” who do not want true freedom.

Now if you agree with all this and want to know what you can do about it, my advice is this: Try to become self-employed. Or at least find ways to cut your expenses so that you can work part-time and at least have half the day to be truly free. This may sound hard, but if you remember that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” you can find a way. Or you can join one of those self-sustaining eco-villages around the world, if you’re into that sort of thing. If you can’t do any of these things, at least be employed in something that you love, so that it does not feel like slavery.

There is a guy I know named Walt Goodridge who is very good at helping people turn their passion into profit to become self-employed. You can see his website, books, articles and interviews at PassionProfit.com To help you learn how to free your mind and life, overcome the social programming traps and false assumptions ingrained into you, I highly recommend you read the late Harry Browne’s eBook “How I Found True Freedom in an Unfree World.” You can get it from HarryBrowne.org.

As for relationships, seek love if you want it. And if you find it, let that love itself keep you together if possible. There is no need for swearing an oath or creating binding lifetime contracts to keep you together against nature’s will. Try to explain this to your partner if he/she is marriage-minded, and try to “deprogram” him/her as well. If they still don’t agree, then only you can decide what’s best for you. But for God’s sake, don’t call lie and call slavery “freedom” and freedom “slavery”.

Be glad though, that just by realizing all this, you’ve already taken the first step out of the matrix programming toward the liberation of your own mind, which is the beginning of true freedom. So, even if you have to remain a physical slave, at least your mind is free.

But if you don’t agree with any of this, then good luck to you. I hope I’ve given you something to consider.

Always remember, as Frederich Neitzche said, “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

For more of my freethinking and truth articles: http://www.happierabroad.com/articles.php

Winston Wu is an expat writer and founder of Happier Abroad, the most truthful International Dating site.
http://www.happierabroad.com