They have tried to disguise their plans with several innocuous-sounding euphemisms. The Great Reset. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. The New World Order. Agenda 21. Transhumanism. They make it all sound so good. The utopia we have always dreamt of, finally here. No more poverty. No more hunger. No more disease. No more ageing. Who could argue with that? A perfect world where all our hopes and dreams finally come true. Except, what they promise is not what they will ultimately deliver. The road to their utopia will be strewn with our bodies and will end up in our enslavement. They are not trying to solve world problems but to take control of the world and run it, whether we like it or not. If you think all this sounds extreme, then you haven’t been paying attention. Our world is gradually and incrementally being taken over by a small group of elites who want nothing less than our total and unconditional submission. All the senseless things that are happening in the world today like the brutal restrictions on our freedoms and the attempt to push the world towards World War III are all part of the global elites’ attempt to forcefully take over the world. They want to destroy our spirits so that we quietly submit to whatever they plan to do.
Anyone who has watched the Netflix show House of Cards will be familiar with how the elites weaponize fear to control people. The Underwoods who are the protagonists in the show frequently turned to threats of terror attacks to win elections and distract people from their scandals. Fear is a very effective weapon and the elites know this very well. When people are afraid, they set aside their rational thinking and become easily manipulated and controlled. We are seeing this same playbook being used against us, especially over the last few years. The whole climate change narrative is meant to scare us into allowing the elites to introduce whatever changes they want to bring. The covid-19 pandemic is being aggressively weaponised to subdue the global population. From lockdowns to social distancing to face masks, we are being forced to give up our autonomy and submit to infringements on our basic rights. Other events we see unfolding today like the war in Ukraine and the fuel shortages around the world are meant to break our spirits and bring us closer to the global elites’ utopia which is whereby they have total control of every aspect of our lives.
Fear is a very effective weapon and the elites know this very well. When people are afraid, they set aside their rational thinking and become easily manipulated and controlled.
To survive the global elites’ attempted coup, we need to have strategies that will make it impossible for them to control us as well as strategies for healing ourselves. Below are some suggestions.
Stop following the news
The mainstream media is owned by and functions for the benefit of the global elite. They long ago realized that if they wanted to control the masses, they had to own the news. Therefore, everything we hear in the mainstream media is nothing more than propaganda. They do everything they can to give us a vision of the world that serves their purpose. They program us to see the world the way they want us to see it. They manipulate us into accepting the changes they are implementing and seeing them as either inevitable or the natural course of evolution. They use the media to spread fear which makes us more pliable. Gone are the days when we could trust the media to tell us the truth and keep the government in check. Today the media is owned by the elites and serves their agendas. We saw how the established media was used to spread fear during the covid-19 pandemic. This was not accidental. The non-stop coverage of the pandemic and the fearful statistics were meant to break our spirits and make us easier to control. This strategy is still going on today with the non-stop coverage of wars, disasters and other crises. How do you survive this? Well, the only way they can get to you is if you allow them to do so by giving them your attention. Most of us have been programmed to believe that we need to always be up to date with what is happening around us. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but if someone decides to weaponize this by only feeding us garbage, then it is time to cut off the ties. They can’t break your spirit if you simply stop listening to them. They can’t feed you propaganda if you are not paying attention. At the end of the day, we have all the power. They can only take away our power if we give it to them. So, take back your power by refusing to listen to their fear-mongering. You will find that your mental health improves, your anxiety goes away and you feel at peace with the world.
Free yourself from Google
Google is no longer the source of knowledge it used to be. Today, it is nothing more than an anti-knowledge tool for the elites. Check out what Zach Vorhies, the google whistle-blower has to say about google here. When you search using google, their algorithms make sure you only get to see whatever they want you to see. Any information that does not serve their agenda is suppressed. Any information that goes against their agenda is hidden in the darkest corners of the internet where it never sees the light of day. This is censorship at its worst, no better than the book burning that used to happen in the dark ages. Who made google the gods who can discern what is and what isn’t truth? How will humanity ever evolve if new ideas that don’t serve the elites are suppressed? If we allow such people to take over, we will not only stop evolving but will surely start devolving because the only ideas that will be allowed are those that make them more money and give them more power. Google has completely taken over our lives and is steering us in the wrong direction, but the good news is we can free ourselves from google. We chose to hand over control to google and we can undo this choice today. There are many alternatives to google out there. Use Duckduckgo instead of Google as your default search engine. Use other web browsers such as Firefox, Brave or Opera instead of Chrome. Avoid phones with Google’s Android operating system which has become more and more invasive and instead use other mobile operating systems such as Symbian (Nokia phones).
Quit social media
Social media today is not just a way for people to keep in touch with each other. Big tech, because they are driven by greed for profits and power naturally found a way to monetize our attention. We, the users are now the product. The more time you spend on social media, the more money they make off you. It doesn’t matter how unhealthy this is for you. They will do whatever it takes to keep your attention. This means filling your newsfeed with things that will cause an emotional reaction in you – anger, anxiety, fear, envy – it doesn’t matter to them. They don’t care if you become a nervous wreck or get depressed. They will keep feeding you with more of the things that keep you glued to your screen. How do you survive this? It’s easy, just quit social media and stay away from their attempts to control you. Instead of relying on your social media feed for news, find one or two reliable voices of truth and subscribe to them. Then kick Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok and all the rest out of your life. You don’t need them and you will manage just fine without them. In reality, they need you; it’s just unfortunate that they can’t help but use you and abuse you.
Protect your mental health
The global elites have thrown all caution to the wind and taken off their kiddy gloves in their effort to take over the world. They believe that using fear and other mind control techniques will give them the control they lust for. They see us as nothing more than sheeple to be driven this way and that way until we fall in line with their desired end goal. As far as they are concerned, it is time for their grand plan, their Great Reset, to come to fruition. Now more than ever, we need to protect our mental health from the non-stop disaster news cycles and the other techniques they are using to scare us into submission. To protect your mental health, find a healing practice that suits you and make time for it preferably every week. Meditation, therapy, journaling, music, exercise or yoga are some practices you could engage in. You could also engage in artistic pursuits such as painting, pottery, dance, etc. Whatever you decide to do, make time for it and prioritize it. It has never been more important to protect your mental health because there is a deliberate effort to destroy it.
Spend time in nature
People are much more stressed today than they were in previous ages. Balancing work and family has never been easy, but as economies get destroyed by the elites, life is becoming even more difficult. In their determined quest to rule the world, they will stop at nothing. They lack empathy and experience no guilt for their actions, therefore they will continue pushing humanity toward the edge until they achieve what they want, no matter how many lives get destroyed in the process. In the global south, they are using the IMF to destroy economies that were already weak, to begin with. During the covid-19 pandemic, the IMF gave loans to poorer countries on condition that they implement destructive covid restrictions on their populations. In this way, they managed to make a bad situation even worse by causing people to lose their jobs and businesses to shut down. This is the same IMF that forced structural adjustment programs (SAPs) on poor countries in the 90s, forcing civil servants out of their jobs and causing a collapse in the standard of living of most of the middle class. In the end, the more they squeeze us the faster we have to run just to remain in the same place. This can have devastating effects on our health. One way to heal ourselves is to spend more time communing with nature; soaking in the sun, watching the clouds and listening to the birds. Human beings have been made to feel as if they don’t belong in nature, as if they are separate from the world they live in. We are made to feel like intruders in a world that would be better off without us. The truth is that God gave us this planet as a platform for our growth. Therefore, we are not intruders but one with nature.
One way to heal ourselves is to spend more time communing with nature; soaking in the sun, watching the clouds and listening to the birds.
Let go of toxic people
Last but not least, we need to let go of the toxic people in our lives. These are the people who take away our energy and our joy. They suck us dry with their criticism, their negative projections and their need for attention. At this time when everything is stacked up against us, the last thing we need is anyone taking away our energy. This is the time to ruthlessly cut off the energy vampires, those narcissists in our lives who are there for no other reason than to steal our light. If you have anyone in your life who pulls you down, who consistently makes you feel bad, whom you have to keep explaining yourself to or who just won’t let you be, then it is time to cut them loose. You don’t need them; they need you because they need your light. But you are under no obligation to feed them your light because you need every ounce of energy to survive the vicious attack we are undergoing. Ask God to expose to you the people in your life who are covert narcissists who take away your energy without you knowing it. You might be surprised to find that the people you consider close friends or even family members fall in this category. Read my article Unmasking the Covert Narcissist for more information on this.
Once upon a time, an ant was sitting on a giant rotating wheel thinking to itself that something felt off. The ant knew that something big was happening, something important, but for the life of it, it couldn’t tell what it was. All it knew was that whatever was happening was going to impact it in a big way. While the ant was sitting there pondering what it could be, the giant wheel finally reached the point where the ant was about to meet the ground. Suddenly, the ant knew what was happening, but it was too late. It was crushed under the giant wheel. Of late, human beings are starting to look a lot like that ant. We know that something big is happening, something important, something that will impact our lives, but we just can’t connect the dots. Everything seems to be changing but we don’t know where this is going. Some are calling it the great reset while others are calling it the new world order. It is almost as if a giant hand is manipulating events, pushing humanity in a certain direction, only we don’t know whose hand it is or which direction it is pushing us towards.
If you have been following the debate, you may have heard the term “mass formation” or “mass formation psychosis” used with regards to the covid-19 pandemic. For the sake of clarity, I will simply call it “mass hypnosis”. Hypnosis is can be defined as an altered state of mind in which the subject has reduced peripheral awareness and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestions. Mass hypnosis happens when hypnosis takes place on a large scale as in a population or on a global scale. Many have been quick to dismiss this phenomenon, but these are the people who usually dismiss whatever they do not understand. We all know that mass hypnosis is a reality – human beings can be hypnotized at mass scale – and we need look no further than Hitler’s rallies in which the crowds were rendered into a hypnotic state that made them willing to accept without question his insane ideas. We also know about mob psychology which is whereby a group of people commit crimes they would never have committed on their own. It is almost as if something takes over and causes them to act as one by taking on the psychology of the lowest among them. We also know that mass hypnosis plays a role in cults whereby people are manipulated using psychological means to do whatever the cult leader wants them to do.
For mass hypnosis to be induced, four conditions must exist in the target population:
Loneliness (lack of social bonds)
Lack of meaning in life
Generalized anxiety (anxiety with no apparent cause)
Generalized frustration and aggression
Once these conditions are met, the population is ripe for mass hypnosis. All one has to do is provide an enemy that people can direct their anxiety, frustration and aggression towards and then provide the solution that will defeat the enemy. This narrative has to be repeated over and over again until people accept it as the truth. This is something the Nazi propaganda guru Joseph Goebbels knew well:
“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” ~ Joseph Goebbels
This constant repetition eventually induces hypnosis by fixating people’s attention (narrowing down awareness to a single point of attention) and bypassing the rational, analytical mind.
Long before the covid-19 pandemic started, the world was already in a state of unrest. Everywhere you looked, people were demonstrating against their governments, demanding change and protesting against perceived injustices. Life was becoming more and more difficult following the 2008 global financial crash. Purchasing power was decreasing and people could no longer survive comfortably on their salaries. People were forced to put in more hours just to maintain the same standard of living. The climate change narrative was being aggressively pushed to explain everything from droughts to wildfires to melting ice caps to changing weather patterns. Social ties were weakening by the day as more and more people retreated online. People everywhere felt lonely and isolated. It felt like the world had reached a breaking point. Then in 2020, the covid-19 pandemic started. Suddenly, our attention was focused narrowly on the pandemic, to the exclusion of everything else. The mainstream media went into overdrive, pounding our collective consciousness 24/7 with news of the virus. Everyone had to stay home and normal social ties were abruptly broken. Nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that businesses were shutting down, economies were collapsing, people were overdosing on drugs or others were committing suicides. It didn’t matter that schools had been shut down, domestic violence was on the rise, people were lonely and scared and relatives were dying without saying goodbye to their loved ones. All that mattered was the virus and protecting ourselves from it. Then to everyone’s relief, a solution was found. Vaccines.
This constant repetition eventually induces hypnosis by fixating people’s attention (narrowing down awareness to a single point of attention) and bypassing the rational, analytical mind.
I’m sure by now you can see where I’m going with this. If you look at the description of mass hypnosis above, you will see a stunning similarity between what has been happening over the past few years and mass hypnosis. Humanity was ripe for mass hypnosis by 2020 following years of instability, unrest, anxiety, loneliness and frustration. The covid-19 narrative was the perfect problem to fixate our attention and vaccines the perfect solution to this problem. This was drummed into us by the mainstream media. Dissent was not allowed. Anything contrary to what the authorities were saying was labelled as misinformation and big tech did their part to stop its spread.
But the question is why? Why would anyone go to all this trouble to hypnotise us? What do they stand to gain? This is unfortunately a naïve question that arises from a lack of understanding of the world we live in. We live in a world where a group of elites who consider themselves better than ordinary human beings are constantly trying to take control of the planet. Remember the cartoons we watched as kids where a supervillain would try to take over the world? Yeah, that’s real. We live in a world where a group of psychopaths driven by greed and the desire for control are willing to do whatever it takes to rule over humanity. These beings have one desire and one desire only – to become our masters while we serve them and do their bidding. As far as they are concerned, heaven on earth will happen when they have total control of every aspect of our lives. This is their dream and the reason why the world is being aggressively hijacked. Their goal is global totalitarianism with them as the rulers of humanity.
Global totalitarianism – the end
Totalitarianism is a form of government and political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control and regulation over public and private life. It is regarded as the most extreme and complete form of authoritarianism. Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism gives fascinating insights into totalitarianism using the example of Hitler and Stalin. Anyone interested in knowing more about totalitarianism should read her book. The important thing to understand about totalitarianism is that it seeks the complete domination of humanity, but the logical conclusion of this extreme domination is the destruction of life. The people behind totalitarianism are against God, against human beings and against life itself. The ultimate expression of this intense hatred is the destruction of life. Totalitarianism is the anti-Christ we have all been taught to believe is coming. It is a force that wants to destroy life because the extreme hatred that is behind it will not be satisfied with anything less.
The important thing to understand about totalitarianism is that it seeks the complete domination of humanity, but the logical conclusion of this extreme domination is the destruction of life. The people behind totalitarianism are against God, against human beings and against life itself.
According to Hannah Arendt,
“Totalitarian movements are mass organisations of atomized, isolated individuals. Compared with all other parties and movements, their most conspicuous characteristic is their demand for total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member. This demand is made by the leaders of totalitarian movements even before they seize power. It usually precedes the total organization of the country under their actual rule and it follows from the claim of their ideologies that their organisation will encompass, in due course, the entire human race.”
From this description, we can observe a few things.
Totalitarian movements are made up of atomized, isolated individuals. If we connect this to the current situation on the planet, we see that human beings were already becoming more and more isolated before the covid-19 pandemic, but this was made worse and brutally enforced during the pandemic. This lays the groundwork for a totalitarian movement to be instituted.
Totalitarian movements demand the total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member. For this to happen, the individual has to be in a state in which they feel helpless and look up to an authority for protection and direction. Any voice of dissent is ruthlessly shut down as we are seeing today. Only the authorities can know the truth; anything else is misinformation and must be kept from the people.
The ideology of the totalitarian movement is that their organisation will encompass, in due course, the entire human race. What we see today is an attempt to bring the entire human race into a totalitarian movement. There is a deliberate attempt to bring the entire planet under totalitarian rule. This is why we see mass hypnosis being carried out on a global scale under the pretext of covid-19.
Totalitarianism has several features that all work together to take the masses closer and closer into the desired state of complete loyalty to the leaders and their ideologies (these ideologies are merely a pretext for gaining power. Once in power, these ideologies are promptly forgotten as the true nature of totalitarianism makes itself known). One feature of totalitarianism is the use of terror to create a “mass man”. A mass man is an individual who is completely isolated from others – friends, family, acquittances – and has no social ties. This mass man is completely loyal to the movement to the point of losing his sense of self. One feature of the mass man is that he is no longer concerned with self-preservation. He is willing to lose his very life for the sake of the party. This state is similar to that of someone in a cult who completely loses their identity to the point of being willing to die. In totalitarianism, the creation of the mass man is done by terrorizing people into submission. In Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, this was done through mass murder. Today, the mass man is being created through psychological warfare – the relentless bombardment of human beings with one fearful event after the other – climate change, covid-19 and now the threat of nuclear war. The result is that people become fearful, isolated and lose any sense of self-preservation. Once in this state, it is possible to get people to do whatever the leaders want. Their internal defences are destroyed.
Another feature of totalitarianism is the complete indifference to mass interest. In the case of Stalin, the illogical destruction of agricultural systems in the name of collectivisation led to mass starvation and deaths. Today, we see this same lack of mass interest in the response to covid-19. Lockdowns led to mass job losses, closure of businesses, destruction of economies and mental health problems. The authorities did not care – protecting humanity from the virus was more important than whatever destruction ensued. This complete lack of empathy reveals the true nature of the covid-19 response. It was not motivated by compassion but was meant to bring humanity one step closer to global totalitarianism.
Another feature of totalitarianism is the gradual loss of freedom. One big disadvantage human beings have that works against them is their ability to adapt. As long as something happens very very slowly, as far as we are concerned, nothing is happening. In reality, what is happening is that without realizing it we continually adapt to new ways of being. Eventually, we even forget that we ever existed in any other way. This weakness has been used against us by those who are aware of this tendency of human beings to continually adapt. It has been used to take away our freedoms without us realizing what is happening. Over a very long time, human beings have given up their freedom of movement by accepting the concept of borders which in reality are prison walls that are far away enough that we don’t realize that we are in prison. Our freedom of movement was further curtailed during the covid-19 pandemic through the lockdowns, the closing down of borders and vaccine passports. These very aggressive measures were used to see just how far the elites could go. We already agreed to be imprisoned in our countries, but could they go further and lock us in our houses? Our freedom of speech is similarly being eroded through censorship and algorithms. Our right to refuse medical treatments is being eroded by the forced vaccines. This is totalitarianism in action, only they are no longer using guns to take away our freedom but psychological warfare.
Today, we are seeing the global elites transition from covid-19 to a new form of psychological warfare – the threat of nuclear war. Will this threat turn into reality? We don’t know. If it does, it will just be another step forward in the madness that is totalitarianism. Our only hope is that enough of us wake up from our slumber and resist this march towards destruction. But if we continue watching from a distance hoping that they will stop themselves, we will be shocked at just how far they are willing to go. The problem with totalitarianism is that it does not know when to stop – it just keeps going until it enters a self-sustaining downward spiral that cannot be stopped. In the end, when the totalitarian leaders take over, their true intentions will be revealed – the destruction of life.
According to Wikipedia, “Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one’s purposes.”
From this definition, we see that freedom has three important elements:
ability to act or change
no constraints
power and resources
Most of us have a very limited understanding of freedom. We consider ourselves free if we can move around with a relative amount of ease, earn a decent living, interact with friends and family and take part in the electoral process in our countries. We look at people in autocratic countries and pity them because according to us, they are not free. We on the other hand hold elections every four or five years and therefore this means we live in a “free and democratic society”.
Are we free?
Given the above definition of freedom, are we right in considering ourselves free? If you live in a democratic country and generally consider yourself free, does this idea still hold once you consider the above three elements that are necessary for one to be free? I put it to you that most of us on this planet are not free by any stretch of the imagination. It is just that our definition of freedom has been carefully crafted to give us the illusion of freedom. Once we look at our lives closely, the idea that we are free completely falls flat. What we have instead is an illusion of freedom – a freedom that is in reality non-freedom. Freedom has been redefined to mean that you do what you are supposed to do. You are supposed to live your life a certain way from the day you are born to the day you die and as long as you keep within those boundaries, all is well. The prison walls are disguised as beautiful paintings or murals that we gaze at without really seeing what is behind them.
I put it to you that most of us on this planet are not free by any stretch of the imagination. It is just that our definition of freedom has been carefully crafted to give us the illusion of freedom. Once we look at our lives closely, the idea that we are free completely falls flat.
According to the script we are given at birth, life is supposed to look a certain way. You are supposed to be born, go to school to prepare yourself to be a good worker, leave school and join the workforce, get married, have children, raise the children, retire, then enjoy a few years before death finally takes you. According to the narrative, this is what freedom looks like. You stay within the confines of this prison and experience life within these boundaries and you will never get to see the prison walls. The problem comes in when you try to venture outside the script. Suddenly, you will be faced with all sorts of pressures to return to the script, to give up your futile attempt to climb over the walls. It doesn’t take much really to get you back into the safety of the prison. You will realize very quickly that the system is designed in such a way that you cannot even survive physically if you attempt to scale the walls. It’s a tight system. Let’s say you want to change an aspect of the script that you don’t like. For example, you want to spend your life travelling and painting or taking photographs instead of working in an office. What you quickly realize is that without resources, there is no freedom. You can’t afford to do whatever you want to do. If we could, most of us would probably not be doing what we are doing today. We are doing whatever we are doing to survive physically, to keep our bodies and our children’s bodies alive. That is not freedom however much you may have grown up thinking you are free. If you cannot do whatever you want because of some constraint, be it an authority that is keeping you from doing it or the lack of resources, you are not free. Look at the definition of freedom and you will realize that most of the people on this planet are not free. We live under the illusion of freedom.
One alarming fact about life on this planet is that we seem to constantly be moving towards less and less freedom in every aspect of our lives. It seems almost as if there is an unseen force that acts to herd us towards less and less freedom. While most of us just want to live peaceful lives not bothering anyone or being bothered by anyone, it seems that we do not have the luxury to do this. There is an ever-present force that seems intent on moving humanity towards less and less freedom and we constantly have to fight this force. It is almost as if we are not allowed to just relax and enjoy life. Many of us would willingly live under the illusion of freedom simply because we do not have the strength to keep fighting, but this force is not satisfied with our meekly agreeing to live lives of non-freedom. It wants to take away every last freedom and leave us as slaves. That is why people are always engaged in protests and demonstrations and pushing back against this relentless force. It seems that if we relax even for a second, our meagre non-freedoms will all be taken away. We have seen this with the Covid 19 pandemic. While we are all busy trying to fight the pandemic for our collective survival, some see this as an opportunity that should not be wasted. Governments in many parts of the world have postponed elections, imposed endless lockdowns and curfews, imposed vaccine passports and mandates, shut down borders, etc. Now, we can look at these and say that they are all justified measures in fighting the pandemic, but the problem is that once these measures are put in place, we have to fight to have them lifted afterwards. Two years since the pandemic started, governments are still determined to keep measures in place even when it doesn’t make sense to do so. Measures that were supposed to last for two weeks are still in place even when all evidence suggests that the worst is over. The force seems bent on keeping us down and we have the unfortunate task of fighting just to maintain this state of non-freedom that we live in. We remain in a state in which we cannot even aspire to a state of true freedom.
Freedom has four levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual freedom. It is important to understand freedom in its fullest sense if we are to become aware of how our freedoms are slowly eroded without our knowing it. Being conscious is the first step towards protecting our freedom. We will look at each of these levels below.
Physical freedom
Physical freedom means being able to do whatever you want whenever you want. It means having the resources you need to do what you want. Having said that, being free doesn’t mean acting irresponsibly. It means acting without restricting other people’s freedom to exercise their freedom. From this definition, it is clear that people on earth are not truly free to do what they want. There are so many constraints to our freedom that we can hardly claim to be physically free. For one thing, most of what we do day to day is geared towards physical survival. We are still trying to meet the lowest level needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs i.e., food and security. That can hardly be described as freedom. How many people truly can do whatever they want or go wherever they want on this planet? Not many. For most of us, our waking hours are spent working to feed ourselves and our families. We simply cannot leave the treadmill even if we wanted to. When we reach the stage in our evolution in which we are not spending most of our time trying to survive physically, then we can start talking about humanity being free.
There are other ways our physical freedom is limited on this planet. Although we are free to go wherever we want within our borders, we are not allowed to move freely outside our borders. To be able to go to other countries, you need a passport and a visa. Depending on which country you come from, it is either mildly annoying or completely impossible to get these papers. This is a limitation to our physical freedom. Many immoral ideas have found their way into the system, for example, the idea that people from certain parts of the world are unworthy to visit other parts of the world. It has therefore become completely justified to make it as difficult as possible for these people to get the papers they need to travel. The reasoning behind this is that those from poorer parts of the world will come flooding into the richer parts of the world, but the question is, why do we live in a world where some people wallow in poverty while others are rich? If we can go to the bottom of this issue and correct the underlying problem, then we will not need to restrict anyone’s movement. How did the poor countries get so poor in the first place anyway? Wasn’t it because the rich countries plundered and looted these countries’ wealth and continue to do so today? Instead of correcting this injustice, we have put in place strict restrictions that stop the poor from going to wealthy countries.
When we see many people in different parts of the world fighting against vaccine passports and mandates, it is because of this very tendency of authorities to take a legitimate system and turn it into something nefarious. Who knows, maybe a hundred years from now after the pandemic is long gone, people will still be required to have vaccine passports to move around freely and no one will remember how the system started in the first place. It will just be an accepted restriction of our movement and no one will question how the system started in the first place, just the same way we never question how we came to need passports and visas to visit other countries. How did this system start in the first place? Nobody knows, nobody cares, nobody questions it, all we know is that it is very hard to travel to other countries because of the visa system. Once you understand how our freedoms are constantly eroded and taken away, you will understand why people are passionately fighting these mandates and passports. If this was a world where no one was trying to take away our freedom, no one would even think of protesting against these requirements. It would be obvious that once the need for restrictions is over, they would be done away with and normal life would resume. But because we do not trust our governments to restore our freedoms once the danger is over, we are forced to go to the streets to fight against these restrictions. Case in point, during the height of the terrorist attacks, it became a requirement in many parts of the world to have strict security checks before entering many places like malls, office buildings or airports. Today, long after the terrorist threats ended, we are still being searched, watched through surveillance systems and taken through metal detectors. There is no discussion about restoring our right to move freely without being subjected to invasive searches. We have all submitted to the idea that everyone is a criminal unless proven otherwise. Our children who were born after these restrictions were put in place have not known any other way of existing. Will our children even think to question why the world is the way it is or will it take a few hundred years before people start wondering why they cannot go anywhere without being searched? This is what happens when we willingly give up our freedoms, we never get them back.
Today, long after the terrorist threats ended, we are still being searched, watched through surveillance systems and taken through metal detectors. There is no discussion about restoring our right to move freely without being subjected to invasive searches. We have all submitted to the idea that everyone is a criminal unless proven otherwise.
Another effective method that is used to restrict our freedom is teaching us to fear each other. In the past, people were kept from venturing too far from their homes through the belief that the earth was flat, meaning that someone could fall off the earth if they went too far. Once we overcame this idea, we were taught instead to fear strangers, which discourages people from mingling freely with others in other parts of the world. Instead of a natural curiosity about how other people live, we fear and demonize and try to destroy those who are different from us. So, most of us live our entire lives within our borders and regard with suspicion people from other parts of the world.
Mental Freedom
Mental freedom is the right to think whatever you want. Unlike physical freedom, you cannot hurt others by what you think so ideally everyone should be free to think whatever they want without any restrictions. Only when thoughts turn into actions is there any danger of hurting other people. You would be surprised however to learn just how much effort goes into suppressing our freedom to think. You may think that you have the freedom to think whatever you want until you start considering the many ways this freedom is curtailed. Just as an example, consider the fact that there is a career known as “critic” whose sole role is to dissect someone’s creative work. Creativity is an expression of what is going on inside someone’s mind and this is expressed through art, literature, music or fashion. What is the role of the critic? It is to limit the expression of creativity by deciding what is and isn’t an acceptable expression of one’s creativity. Because of the influence of critics, people become afraid of expressing their thoughts and ideas freely and over time, we find that creativity is diminished. This is a way of suppressing mental freedom and some people have made a career out of it. Critics are not much different from trolls who wait for someone to write something on the internet then attack them with a vengeance. The mentality is the same. You are not allowed to say something they disagree with and if you do, they will viciously attack you and do everything they can to make sure you think twice before expressing any ideas they disagree with.
Another way our mental freedom is suppressed is through digital censorship. In the dark ages, mental freedom could be curtailed through the burning of books, which was meant to stop the spread of ideas. When this was no longer acceptable, governments started banning books whenever something was said that they felt was a threat to their authority. When the internet came along, knowledge and information became much more freely available and banning information could no longer work. Today, a new way has been found to stop the spread of information i.e., digital censorship. Under the guise of protecting us from misinformation, digital platforms are becoming increasingly authoritarian in what they allow. In reality, this is the same instinct that led to the burning and banning of books and other material. Authorities always get nervous when there is too much information circulating and they always try to find ways of stopping the free flow of information. Behind this mindset is the patronizing idea that people cannot judge for themselves what is and isn’t good for them. This is the role that Facebook and Twitter have taken upon themselves. What gives them the right to determine what we can or can’t read simply because they look down on our ability to make the right decisions? They see themselves as gods who decide what is and isn’t good for us. Other digital platforms like Google and YouTube use powerful algorithms to determine what information we receive when we search for something. On the surface of it, this sounds innocuous enough until we understand the power of these algorithms to determine what we read and watch. For example, when you search for something on YouTube, you get hundreds of suggestions that are similar to what you searched for. I’ve always found this tendency to give similar suggestions quite annoying. For example, if I search for a certain kind of music, I get hundreds of suggestions for similar music. But what if they instead suggested different kinds of music? Then I would have the opportunity to discover something new instead of going deeper and deeper into a world where I only listen to one kind of music. Instead of expanding your horizons, what they do is make your world smaller and smaller. This tendency to herd people in certain directions is what causes people to become radicalized or end up with beliefs such as QAnon or Incel. By the time you realize what is happening, you are so deep inside the rabbit hole you hardly know how to find your way out. The bigger picture is that humanity is becoming more and more close-minded and we are losing our ability to consider that a different way of looking at things could be equally valid.
The media is another powerful way in which our mental freedom is limited because the media tells us not only what is happening around us but how we should think about what is happening around us. This power can be used to very devastating effect as was seen during the Nazi propaganda days. All you have to do is repeat something often enough and it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is, in the end, people start believing it. We know that most of the mainstream media is owned by elites who have everything to benefit from maintaining the status quo. They need the systems that made them elites in the first place to stay in place even though they do not work for the majority of people. It doesn’t take a genius to see how the media can be used to shape our reality. Closely related to this is the control of what we read. In this age of Amazon, the rating system is used to subtly control what we read. Books that receive the highest rating end up being read the most. This sounds innocuous enough, but what is the end result? The end result is that only popular ideas or authors receive the attention of readers while new or unpopular ideas get buried in the bowels of Amazon to rot and die quiet deaths. How will we ever learn anything new if we only read what everyone else is reading? At the end of the day, we are swimming in a small pond where there is no room for anything new.
Emotional freedom
Emotional freedom is the right to feel whatever you want. Unfortunately, from the time we are young we are taught that we are not free to feel or express emotions the way we want. Depending on your gender, we are taught that there are emotions we can or can’t express. Men are taught to be strong meaning they should not show fear, doubt, sorrow or any other such “feminine” emotions. Women are taught to be soft meaning they are not allowed to express “manly” emotions such as anger. Expressing the “wrong” emotion leads to rejection by society and this is how our emotional freedom is denied us. The result of this very strong pressure is that people end up hiding their true selves and putting up a front that society deems acceptable. Women learn to be soft-spoken, timid and unsure of themselves, which just feeds into the stereotype that women have nothing important to contribute. Men on the other hand embody a very unbalanced form of masculinity which is aggressive, hard, unyielding and stubborn. These qualities are celebrated in men, but the truth is that they represent an unbalanced masculinity or what is known as toxic masculinity.
Women historically suffered immensely under these very unbalanced ideas of how men and women are supposed to feel or express their emotions. During the dark ages, women would be labelled as witches if they didn’t conform while in the recent past, women would be sent to mental institutions simply because they expressed unacceptable desires. Today, other more subtle ways are used to control women. Labelling women as depressed, crazy or hormonal when they choose to express emotions that make others uncomfortable is an effective means of controlling women. The fact that women go through emotional ups and downs such as menstruation, pregnancy or menopause has been used to dismiss them as second-class humans who should not be listened to or taken seriously. The fact that women express themselves differently from men is also used to take away from the fact that whatever they express is just as valid as men. For example, men are taught to speak out boldly, cut in and share their opinions freely while women are taught to wait their turn and doubt that what they want to express is valid. This is why the world is completely unbalanced towards men. Women’s voices are not heard, so we end up with a very aggressive world in which we choose war instead of diplomacy, where politics is competitive and aggressive, and where business is concerned only with profits and not employees or the environment. All these are the result of the suppression of women.
Another sphere in which our emotional freedom is curtailed is in the expression of love. We are not allowed to love whoever we want. Society gives us a very limited idea of what love looks like and then expects everyone to fall into these very confined ideas. For example, we still live in a world where people from different races cannot freely express love for each other. We live in a world where people who differ too much in age cannot express love for each other without judgement. We live in a world where monogamy is the only acceptable form of union. There are so many rules surrounding the expression of love that one cannot help but wonder where all these rules came from. Why can’t people experience love in whatever form they want and make their own decisions about what is and isn’t right for them? Why is it that the free expression of love is so threatening to society?
Spiritual freedom
Spiritual freedom is the right to believe what you want and as we know, this is one form of freedom that has been viciously curtailed and aggressively fought on this planet. The idea that people can believe whatever they want seems to be very threatening to some people. Historically, spiritual freedom was curtailed through the very violent attempt by the catholic church to control what people believed, to the extent of killing people whose beliefs were not in line with the teachings of the church. This was what led to the very bloody inquisitions and crusades. The idea that people should be forced to believe what certain people say is the only acceptable truth resulted in the abuse of human beings for centuries. This same attempt to impose beliefs upon people was used during colonial times when colonialism went hand in hand with the Christianisation of populations. The purpose was to get the people to willingly accept subjugation by giving them teachings that reinforced this such as being submissive, accepting authority that was supposedly imposed by God and accepting suffering with the idea that there was a better life waiting in heaven.
Today, spiritual freedom is not curtailed quite so brutally but there are still hidden ways in which our spiritual freedom is suppressed. A very effective way is through shaming or mocking someone for the beliefs they hold. Many people today are reluctant to share their spiritual beliefs because if they do not conform to the mainstream, they become victims of mockery. Another way this is done is through shunning someone who attempts to explore other beliefs that are outside what is considered the norm in the society in which they live. Converting to a different religion is considered a betrayal which results in being made an outcast by family and friends. We also have the idea that one should convert to a certain religion in order to marry someone from that religion. This gives the impression that what you believe makes you different in some way, but the reality is that people are just people no matter what they believe. At the end of the day, we all want the same things. To live peaceful, happy and fulfilled lives.
Protecting your freedom
Because most people do not understand freedom in its truest sense, it becomes very easy for those who want to control us to redefine freedom and then get us to believe that we are free while in reality, we are not. By defining freedom as the ability to do what you are supposed to do, people live entire lives without freedom while being under the illusion that they are free. We assume that so long as we can go to work and earn a living and take care of ourselves and our families, we are free. But we don’t understand that this life has been defined for us by someone else and we cannot easily go outside this very narrow definition of what life is supposed to be. When we try to spread our wings and experience ourselves the way God intended us to experience ourselves, that’s when we discover that we are not free at all. Once we understand the true definition of freedom, we can start looking at the world we live in and seeing all the expressions of non-freedom around us. Then we can start speaking out about the many things that are happening around us that move the world towards less and less freedom.
On a personal level, we need to take charge of our lives and reject all subtle forms of control. We may not be immediately able to do away with all forms of control, but there are some small things that we allow to chip away at our freedom without being conscious of what is happening. For example, we always complain about big tech taking away our freedom, but are they in any way forcing us to use their platforms? No, we do this willingly and in the process, allow them to control us. Why use google as a search engine for example when there are alternatives like DuckDuckGo that do not collect or store your data? Why do you need to be on Facebook or Twitter when they disrespect their users so much that they feel they have a right to control what they can or can’t read?
We also need to stand up for our right to be different from everyone else and to be our authentic selves. Just because everyone is going in a certain direction doesn’t mean they are all right. They could very well be all wrong. So, we must reserve the right to do what feels right to us and ignore those who try to get us back into the herd. We need to share our views, opinions and ideas freely through blogs, books or whatever other means we have at our disposal. The interesting thing about this planet is that the lowest people, the ones with the worst ideas, the ones who pull everyone down are the ones who are the most aggressive in sharing their opinions with the entire world. You find them everywhere claiming to be experts and sharing their opinions and negative ideas with everyone. They have no problem spreading their negativity. On the other hand, the most positive, enlightened people feel unworthy, they feel that their ideas are stupid, they feel that no one is interested in hearing from them and they keep their ideas to themselves. This ensures that the planet is filled with negativity while the light stays hidden under the bed.
When my eldest daughter was around four years old, I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She replied that she wanted to be a mother…of a hundred children. At such a tender age, she was able to observe the mother flame or energy in action and knew it was something she wanted to become one day. Most women know from a very young age that they want to become mothers one day. It is almost an inborn thing. No one needs to tell you that motherhood is something you should want. It’s a desire we are born with. All that love, energy and attention we have within us need somewhere to be channelled to. All the wisdom we acquire and life lessons we learn need someone to whom we can pass them on. Motherhood is a beautiful, wondrous thing and despite how difficult it can get, it is the fulfilment of a deep longing within us. The planet itself would not exist without that loving, nurturing, birthing mother energy that ensures the survival of the species. It is something that should be honoured, celebrated and embraced by all.
Sadly, the mother energy is one of the most hated energies on this planet, second only perhaps to the feminine energy. It beats all logic why this energy should be so despised given the fact that we would not survive as a species without it. As soon as one gives birth, they suddenly come face to face with this intense hatred directed at motherhood that one would never have imagined existed before they had children. The problem is that we have co-existed with it for so long that we almost don’t see it at all. But it is all around us and it hits one like a ton of bricks as soon as the initial joy of giving birth starts subsiding. Those who don’t have children may wonder what I am talking about while those who do have children may not be aware of just how intense this hatred is because we have lived with it for so long that it became the only way we know how to exist. But I can assure you that whether you sense it or not, there is intense hatred of the mother energy on this planet and it is something we need to become aware of if we are to rise above it.
… I can assure you that whether you sense it or not, there is intense hatred of the mother energy on this planet and it is something we need to become aware of if we are to rise above it.
Let’s start with what a woman is faced with once she becomes a mother. In our African context, once you become a mother you are considered damaged goods. In other words, it becomes very hard for someone to want you as a wife if you already have children. It’s almost as if the children soil you in some way. What a shameful attitude. How is it possible that going through the most beautiful, life-giving experience somehow makes you damaged goods? And yet this is an attitude that is prevalent in Africa and other parts of the world. We have grown so accustomed to this attitude that we don’t even question it. The more children you have, the less valuable you become. A lot of men here say that they could maybe accept a woman with one child but not more than that. And they consider themselves heroes for the fact that they can accept a woman with one child. This is something you hear stated all the time, but do we ever stop to ask ourselves where this attitude, this intense hatred of the mother energy comes from? Why do we accept it as if it was the most normal attitude for a person to have? How comes we don’t have the same attitude towards fathers? Men who have children do not have a corresponding hatred directed towards them. Why would we hate the very energy that nurtures us and brings forth life on the planet? It beats all logic. The message this sends to women is that motherhood makes them less desirable, less valuable and less attractive. You can imagine the cognitive dissonance this causes women. On the one hand, you look forward to becoming a mother but on the other hand, you know that once you become a mother you are quite literally “damaged”.
There are many other ways mothers are devalued and we have become so accustomed to it that we don’t even stop to question it. Bringing up a child is no joke; it is hard work especially in the early days. But mothers have to do this alone unless they happen to have a supportive husband which is rare. This is why some women end up getting postpartum depression and society just acts as if there is something wrong with them for getting depressed after giving birth. But the miracle I think is that not all women end up depressed after giving birth. It’s worse in the modern age because the extended family structure has been broken. This is especially true in the west where people are brainwashed into thinking that it is a sin to live with your extended family. We are supposed to be “independent”. Everyone is supposed to move out of their parents’ houses as quickly as possible and any delay in doing so is judged harshly by society. Older parents are quickly sent to expensive care homes, which makes no sense because the extended family structure is the very one that would offer support, especially to mothers. Why is it that we work so hard to arrange society in the most inconvenient way possible? It just beats all logic.
We need to question some of these beliefs we hold so dearly and ask ourselves where they came from. Who benefits when society is broken up and support structures dismantled? Think about it. Without support structures, people need to work non-stop looking for food, rent, clothing and other basic needs. We literally have to work to live, all so that we can work some more. We do not have the luxury to stop running the treadmill. Who benefits the most from this? Well, just follow the money as they say. The ones who make money off of everyone remaining on the treadmill are the ones who benefit the most from the break up of the extended family structure. Plain and simple, it’s the elites. The industrialists, the factory owners, the business owners. They’re the ones who brainwashed us into believing that we need to be independent, we need to be on our own. This ensures we get trapped in the nine to five routine that benefits them while hurting us. Have you ever wondered why babies have to be trained from birth to be independent by leaving them alone in their rooms to cry it out? It’s because independence is a very unnatural thing that goes counter to how we are created as human beings. We are created to be close to each other and live in oneness with each other. The only way this instinct can be broken is by brutally training a child from birth to learn that there is no one coming, they are on their own and they have to learn to survive on their own.
Another way we see this hatred of the mother energy is in the way women are treated at the workplace once they have children. I remember when I interviewed for my first job, one of the questions I was asked was whether I intended to get children. Naturally, I said yes and although this didn’t stop me from getting the job, it just exposed the negative attitude employers have towards motherhood. It is an inconvenience, an unwelcome interruption for the organisation. When I was expecting my third child, my boss called me aside for a pep-talk. Had I considered a more effective form of birth control? Could my husband maybe consider getting the snip? I wish I was making this up but I’m not. This was an actual conversation I had with my boss. As you can imagine, motherhood was anything but celebrated at my workplace even though they made a few token efforts to show their support of motherhood such as introducing a creche for new mothers. But the underlying attitude was one of irritation at having to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate a pregnant worker. I don’t blame my former employer because this attitude is merely representative of the attitude in the wider community. The negative attitude towards mothers needs to be changed at the wider community level. No amount of superficial “benefits” by employers can disguise the underlying hatred of the mother energy that is present in society.
What about the hit mothers take to their careers once they start getting children? If we lived in a society that supported motherhood this would not be the case. Employers would willingly make the adjustments necessary to support motherhood, from flexitime to working from home to part-time work to job sharing without punishing mothers by withholding promotions or making them feel like they are not fully committed to the job because they have other responsibilities to attend to. This expectation employers have that people should be one hundred per cent committed to their jobs is simply ridiculous and it’s unclear why we tolerate it. Employers do not expect employees to even hint at having other things in life apart from their jobs. You do whatever is expected of you, you come in early and leave late and work over weekends if you have to. It is almost as if we were put on this earth solely to be employees and nothing else matters. It is considered a sin to even look like you have other priorities in life apart from your employer. It is completely unreasonable what employers expect of their employees. Even taking a sick child to the hospital is considered a waste of precious employer time. HOW DID WE GET HERE?!
This expectation employers have that people should be one hundred per cent committed to their jobs is simply ridiculous and it’s unclear why we tolerate it.
Another form of hatred of the mother energy is the hatred that is directed towards our mother earth. If you consider that the planet is our mother because it nurtures us and provides for our needs, then you’ll realize that many among us have an intense hatred towards the earth. There are people whose attitude towards the earth is one of wanting to loot and plunder and mine and extract until everything is finished and the land is laid bare. They have no love for the earth, no desire to preserve or protect and no remorse for their destructive activities. Left to their own devices, these people would continue mindlessly robbing the planet of all that is good until we have no planet left to live in. These people cut down forests and release toxic gases into the air which mess up the environment and cause the climate change we are all panicking about. They release waste products into the oceans with no concern for the damage they cause. They mindlessly pursue profit over everything and will continue doing so unless they are stopped by those who care for the planet. They produce more and more nuclear weapons with no regard for how this endangers us all. They have no conscience and will not stop until everything on the planet is destroyed. What is this attitude if not hatred of the mother energy? How do you destroy that which nurtures you and is the only home we have?
We need to wake up and become conscious of the intense mother hatred that is present on this planet and refuse to continue existing in such a toxic, self-defeating environment. We need to protect mothers, honour them, support them and surround them with love as they undertake this very important role of bringing forth life. We need to reject all forms of mother hatred including hatred of the planet because without it we will not have a home.
The topic of childhood emotional trauma is a difficult one to talk about. Anyone who has experienced childhood trauma knows how devastating it is. As a child, you don’t have the tools to deal with the trauma so you just push it to the back of your mind and pretend it never happened. You may even completely forget about it for a time, only to be forced to think about it later in life when something happens to trigger the memory. You may try to tell yourself that it doesn’t matter, that it happened in the past and it’s not important anymore but the truth is the trauma did happen and it did impact you and it does play a role in the person you are today.
There is nothing as painful as the thought of a child being abused especially by the people who should be loving and protecting the child. Just ponder for a moment that right now as you read this article, there is a child somewhere being sexually molested, physically battered or emotionally abused. It’s heart-breaking. The fact that we allow this to continue as society says a lot about our level of consciousness. It is something that should never happen and should not be tolerated and the perpetrators severely punished until this evil is eliminated from society.
The thing about childhood abuse is that most people never talk about it and many live their entire lives without ever revealing what happened to them. There’s a lot of shame that is experienced by the victims, which is crazy because why should the victim be ashamed? The perpetrator is the one that should be ashamed of their actions, not the victim. This says a lot about the world we live in, that the victim is the one who feels shame and the need to hide what happened. This shame and the hiding of abuse is what allows it to continue and thrive in society. Many people never even think to seek counseling to try and make sense of what happened to them. We just live with the weight of the trauma constantly pulling us down and affecting our ability to live whole, fulfilled lives.
Fortunately, there is a movement today towards greater emphasis on mental health which is allowing people to start thinking about what may have happened to them during their childhood. The starting point to healing is to acknowledge that something happened to you. This might be very painful to acknowledge and accept and it feels almost better to just push it to the back of your mind and forget about it. But the thing is, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to maintain the wall between your subconscious mind and your conscious mind which keeps the memory hidden. In the end, it is much easier to just deal with it once and for all and be free. There are techniques such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) that can prove helpful in facing the memory and this should ideally be done with the help of a therapist, but I don’t see anything wrong with trying the technique at home especially if the memory is too painful to contemplate.
We may be tempted to think that childhood trauma does not impact us in any way as adults and that it is better to let bygones be bygones. But the truth is the trauma does manage to seep into various aspects of our adult life and this just goes to show how essential it is to face the trauma head-on and overcome it. We cannot live whole lives with the trauma hanging over us because we become the net result of the trauma we are carrying. It is better to do the hard work of facing and healing from trauma than to lie to ourselves that it has no impact on our lives and that we can live as if nothing happened to us.
We may be tempted to think that childhood trauma does not impact us in any way as adults and that it is better to let bygones be bygones. But the truth is the trauma does manage to seep into various aspects of our adult life and this just goes to show how essential it is to face the trauma head-on and overcome it.
Below are some ways in which childhood emotional trauma impacts us as adults:
Nightmares
Everyone experiences nightmares every once in a while, mainly caused by external factors such as being too tired or going through a stressful situation. For some people though, nightmares are a chronic problem they have to deal with on a nightly basis or several times a week. This is especially true of people who experienced childhood trauma. Nightmares are caused by a glitch in the system which causes the mind to become accustomed to an unhealthy way of processing memories. Memories are normally processed while we sleep through dreams which are the language of the subconscious mind. With difficult memories relating to traumatic events, this process doesn’t happen normally and the mind gets stuck trying to process the memory without success. With time, the mind gradually learns to process all emotions in this unhealthy way resulting in chronic nightmares. Many victims of childhood trauma endure daily nightmares without knowing that it is a habit that can be broken.
The best technique for overcoming nightmares is to write out a description of the nightmare exactly as you remember it, then rewrite it but with a different ending, i.e., the kind of ending you would have wanted if you were the one writing the script. As you continue reading and rereading the dream journal, the nightmares will eventually just fade away. It’s almost as if processing the nightmare during waking hours is exactly what was needed to allow you to move on. We may not realize it but we are in charge of our minds and we have the right to decide that we are tired of having nightmares and we do not want to continue experiencing them. Many of us go through life feeling that our minds are outside our sphere of control but this is not the case. It’s unfortunate that people suffer for decades with chronic nightmares without knowing that there is a simple solution to their problem.
2. Lack of Self Love
Many people who have experienced some form of childhood trauma over time learn that they are not worthy of love and so they stop loving themselves. They view themselves as unlovable and try as they may, they are not able to see anything in them that someone could love. Lack of self-love manifests as a pattern of toxic relationships with toxic partners and toxic friends who treat you the way you subconsciously feel you deserve to be treated. Someone who does not love themselves will feel lucky just to have someone in their life as they do not see anything in them that may cause someone to want to be with them. They may cling to unhealthy relationships in the belief that they will not be able to get anyone else if they let go of the person they have. They will endure bad treatment from their partner and the thought of leaving never even crosses their mind. They do not love themselves enough to believe that they deserve good people in their life who will treat them with love and respect. They surround themselves with toxic friends who feel better than them and treat them accordingly. To these “friends”, they are nothing more than sidekicks, there to listen and admire and play the role of the lesser person who only exists to make them feel superior.
When we wake up to the fact that we do not love ourselves, the first thing we need to do is let go of all such toxic people from our lives and realize that it is better to be alone than to be with people who do not value us. This may not be as easy as it sounds because the lack of self-love also blinds you to the fact that you are not being treated well. It may take a long time before we start seeing the truth about our relationships and even though the thought of cutting out people from your life may be painful, I cannot emphasize enough how essential it is to ruthlessly cut out anyone who pulls you down rather than build you up. People who mock you or make fun of what you want to do, people who make you feel as if you need to keep explaining yourself and people who drain your energy and cause you pain simply need to go.
3. Burying your Authentic Self
When we are abused as children, it causes us to hide our authentic selves because we learn that there is something wrong with us. We blame ourselves for the treatment we receive because we do not have the maturity to realize that we are not to blame for the actions of someone else. We learn to hide our anger, our hurt and our real feelings because showing them is not safe. When we live with cruel or unpredictable people, we learn early on that anything we do could result in an explosion of anger directed towards us. So, we try to contract ourselves, to become as small as possible and to be as bland as possible, all to appease the abusive adult. A child has no defenses against an abusive adult and will believe whatever they are told about themselves. In the end, their authentic self gets buried and forgotten and they lose touch with who they are.
When we bury our authentic selves, we no longer know who we are or what we want and so we end up living lives that don’t make us happy. We go along with whatever society tells us we are supposed to do or want and we never explore what makes us truly happy. We never dare to choose ourselves, even if it means going against what society wants. We learn to be “good” people, just going along with everyone and never daring to take a path that does not conform to what is expected of us. When we bury our authentic selves, we feel that we don’t have a right to have what we want or to express what we feel. Even though we have a rich inner life, we learn that it is never safe to express ourselves and so we keep this to ourselves.
To retrieve our authentic selves, we need to start reflecting on which parts of our lives don’t make us happy. We need to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that we deserve to be happy even if it means making drastic changes. We need to start acknowledging our feelings, for example, feelings of anger or shame and ask ourselves where these feelings came from. We should look at our feelings as clues or breadcrumbs that will lead us to the core of our issues. We need to honour those feelings if we are to work through them; we have to feel them and allow them to lead us to the depths of our soul where the unresolved issues dwell.
4. Low Self Esteem
Low self-esteem means having a low opinion of yourself. It means that you view yourself in a negative light and are overly critical of yourself and your abilities. Your inner voice constantly criticizes you and never has anything good to say about you. You see yourself as incompetent and less than others. This causes anxiety and lack of confidence and unwillingness to extend yourself in any way. When you have low self-esteem, your baseline view of yourself is negative and anything that happens to you leads to this idea you have of yourself. It could be something like “I am unworthy,” or “I am a bad person,” or “I am inferior.” This view of yourself is unconscious but it is the tape running in the background and it is the foundation upon which your entire life is built. Can you imagine living life on a foundation that says “I am unworthy”? You will never expect anything good to happen to you and if it does you expect it to quickly disappear. You will always have low expectations for yourself regarding what you can accomplish.
When we experience childhood trauma, it may result in low self-esteem. We become unable to see ourselves in a healthy way i.e., as people who are loved, valued and worthy. Healthy self-esteem does not come from outward things e.g. I am worthy because I am successful, I am worthy because I am beautiful, I am worthy because I have a high IQ, etc. It comes from the inner knowing that I am a human being placed on this earth by my creator; I am loved by my creator and therefore I am worthy and I have a right to experience life just like anyone else. I do not need to prove my worth or to add on anything to myself to be worthy.
Healthy self-esteem does not come from outward things e.g. I am worthy because I am successful, I am worthy because I am beautiful, I am worthy because I have a high IQ, etc. It comes from the inner knowing that I am a human being placed on this earth by my creator; I am loved by my creator and therefore I am worthy and I have a right to experience life just like anyone else.
Overcoming low self-esteem is a long process that starts by looking inwards to see what is the baseline belief we have about ourselves. Do we feel loved by those around us? Do we feel worthy of having good things happen to us? Do we feel like we have to prove ourselves to others? Listen to your inner voice and notice what it defaults to. If it defaults to a negative view of yourself, challenge that view and know that it is not the gospel truth but just a belief you have taken on and which can be replaced with a positive belief. You could start a thought log where you list down some of the negative things you tell yourself, write down examples of events in which these negative thoughts come up and then think of an alternative way to view the events that is not negative or critical or judgemental of yourself. Write down a new belief to replace the old belief about yourself e.g. “I am loved,” “I don’t need to prove myself,” “I am worthy,” etc.
5. Living below your potential
When we experience childhood emotional trauma, our image of ourselves as capable individuals is affected or even destroyed. We lack the confidence to pursue goals and achieve them as we don’t see ourselves as having what it takes. We become afraid of dreaming big and instead settle for much less than we are capable of. We fail to see ourselves as being capable of growth and instead view ourselves as static beings without the potential to improve ourselves. This static view of humans is, unfortunately, something that society programs us to accept. We are taught to believe that some people have what it takes and others just don’t have it and we should accept that some of us were never meant to be successful. The reality is that no one was born with the inability to grow; we all have the potential to be more than what we are today.
Childhood abuse makes us feel as if we are meant to remain small and hidden in the shadows. It makes us feel as if we are less than others. People who experienced childhood trauma are reluctant to challenge themselves because of the fear that they are not good enough or will never accomplish what they set out to accomplish. They see success as something only others can achieve. They set modest goals which don’t require much of them and then shy away from overextending themselves. They have a pessimistic view of the future because they don’t believe that good things could happen to them. In case they achieve some success, they are tormented by imposter syndrome, feeling as if they shouldn’t be there or as if they will be exposed at any moment for the frauds they are.
How does one overcome this tendency to live below one’s potential? A good place to start is to set goals for yourself that seem unrealistic to you, preferably in written form. Some of us may not understand just how hard it is for someone with low self-esteem to write down a goal that feels too big for them. They have to battle with themselves before they can even write down the goal. If you feel reluctant to write down a goal that feels unrealistic or impossible, just force yourself to write it down no matter how stupid it makes you feel. Tell yourself that no one will see it except you and God. Just that act of overcoming that thing in you that tells you that you’re stupid for having such a goal is the first step towards healing that low view of yourself. You may be surprised when many years later you read through what you wrote down and discover that you accomplished everything to the letter.
The world we live in today is structured in such a way that the most aggressive among us always end up on top. According to Darwin, this is the natural order of things. Survival for the fittest. From politics to business to geopolitics to the workplace, the people who are willing to do anything to get ahead are the ones who ultimately end up winning. The ones who are the most relentless, persistent, aggressive, ruthless, cunning, willing to lie, cheat and bribe in pursuit of a goal are the ones who end up on top. The world rewards such behaviour. But if you think about it, is this the ultimate way for our world to be structured? Because let’s face it, who among us are the ones most likely to thrive in such an environment? Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.
Who are the most aggressive people among us? It’s the psychopaths! They are the ones who have no boundaries, no limits to what they’re willing to do, no pesky conscience to bother them in the pursuit of their goals and no empathy or guilt to prevent them from destroying anything or anyone who stands in their way.
When we hear the word psychopath, most of us immediately think of is the Ted Bundys and the Hitlers of this world i.e., murderers, rapists and the criminals of society. But today we know that psychopaths can be very high functioning individuals and can live their entire lives without being detected or called out for who they are. They are masters at creating convincing façades that hide the truth of who they are. While they spend most of their days dishing out emotional and psychological trauma to the people around them, they will nonetheless keep their psychopathy hidden behind charming personas and the image of success. Unfortunately, we have been conditioned to admire outward displays of success to the point that if someone is successful, we believe that they are worthy of admiration and emulation. And psychopaths can be among the most successful people due to their driven nature and single-minded focus on getting ahead. They are well represented among CEOs, politicians, lawyers, surgeons and business owners. You will also find them in professions we have been taught to revere such as policemen, the military and believe it or not, church leaders. Hence the kind of abuses you hear about in churches for example the paedophilia in the catholic church or the abuse of children in the Canadian residential schools.
How did we end up having a system that is rigged to favour psychopaths without us even being aware of it? First and foremost, psychopaths are the ones who have been writing the rule book. It is said that history is written by the winners and if the winners are psychopaths, then they will manipulate the narrative to suit themselves. So, for example, the imperialists who go out and conquer faraway lands and subdue people through brutal force become our heroes. The countries that take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else starving and poor become the admired countries while the poorer countries are despised and blamed for the condition they are in. The billionaires who siphon all the wealth leaving everyone else to make do with the little that is left over are held up as the models of success that we should all strive to emulate.
Secondly, psychopathy is a condition that hides in plain sight because we are not trained to see it. Psychopaths have an outward, superficial charm that easily deceives most people. They are the people who tell the funniest and best stories and are fun to be around. But when you spend enough time with them, you start noticing that they are not really who they say they are. You will notice that their behaviour is not aligned with the way they portray themselves. You may notice how they bully people and emotionally abuse people and how they seem to induce fear in those working close to them. Psychopaths have an uncanny ability to abuse without the object of the abuse being aware that they are being abused. They may make you feel that you are special to them but suddenly turn on you and attack you. This causes your mind to go into denial because you cannot believe that the person you’ve come to trust could turn on you so ruthlessly. Psychopaths are also pathological liars. They will say one thing today and later completely change the story. They lie so much and change the story so much that they are not even able to keep up with the lies themselves. And so, their reality just keeps changing to become whatever is most convenient at the time. If confronted, they will just create a new version of events and the new version becomes the new reality. You can never win with them because their version of the story is the truth and that’s the end of the story.
Below are some ways in which psychopaths have managed to infiltrate the system and rig it in their favour allowing them to dominate the planet to the detriment of us all:
Politics
The political systems in most parts of the world are designed to favour the most aggressive, rewarding them for their ability to do whatever it takes to win, their ability to eliminate the competition, their ability to mount aggressive campaigns, their willingness to bribe voters, etc. Even in countries with so-called ‘mature’ democracies, the most aggressive people still manage to find their way in and rig the system in their favour. Money talks in politics and those who have the most of it can influence the outcome of elections. You end up with situations where people are manipulated into seeing themselves as being on one side of the divide in opposition to those on the other side. What they don’t see is that it doesn’t matter which side wins, the elites ultimately end up winning and everyone else loses. Voters are manipulated into thinking there are only two options and they must choose the lesser of two evils. We are manipulated into thinking that the obscure candidate who represents the kind of qualities we want is a loser not worth wasting our vote on. And so, we continue voting in the same aggressive types because we don’t see any other option. I think it would be better to abstain from voting than to vote for someone you don’t want just because they represent the lesser evil.
Business
Does profit have to be the only motive in business? We have been taught that profit and maximizing shareholder value is the only motive for business, but is this a sound idea? What is the result of this ideology? It’s what we see today, businesses mindlessly pursuing profits at the expense of integrity, the environment and their employees. People are viewed not as human beings but as human resources. Have you ever wondered where that idea came from? If you put human beings at the same level as capital or land and you see them as resources, then you have a right to treat them as a resource and not as human beings. You have a right to ruthlessly cut down on staff whenever the need arises to save on costs. You have a right to pay them as little as possible because it is none of your concern how they survive on the little you pay them. Your greatest concern is keeping as much as possible for the owners of the business. You don’t need to be concerned about what happens when they fall sick because you don’t need to think of a resource in such terms. You don’t need to concern yourself with what happens when they give birth. You don’t need to concern yourself with how they manage to get to work at 8 am every day and how they get home when they leave at 5 pm. You don’t need to care for them, you just need them to work and deliver the results you need. You view them as workers, not partners. But if you think about it, is it possible for a company to achieve anything without every employee doing whatever it is they are supposed to do? From the top person to the lowest-ranked person, everyone has to play their part for the business to run smoothly. If the cleaner doesn’t clean the office, can we work? Employees should be seen as partners, not as resources that are there to serve the owners who see themselves as the important ones.
Workplace
Starting from the point of recruitment, the system is completely rigged to favour the most aggressive. When we recruit, especially for leadership positions, we look for the most confident, outgoing personalities and we overlook the more gentle, reserved people as if they have less to offer. The person who can express himself or herself with confidence and charm easily finds their way into leadership positions. What about career advancement, who is the most advantaged? It’s the most aggressive and assertive people. The more willing you are to show off your achievements, flaunt your credentials and take credit for other people’s work, the more likely you are to climb up the corporate ladder. So, the system ends up supporting the most aggressive people and by the time you reach the top of the ladder, you find narcissists and psychopaths being very well represented. I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door. Our processes for promoting staff should also be more discerning, not just looking for the most outspoken people and assuming they are the only ones capable of leading. Even that very soft-spoken, timid person given a chance and the right training would surprise everyone with just how capable they are to lead teams and add value to the organisation.
I think it should be possible to weed out narcissists and psychopaths from the very beginning of the recruitment process. There are psychological tests that are designed to detect these traits and these should be administered at the point of recruitment. Then you select out the most aggressive before they even come in through the door.
Geopolitics
The world is structured in such a way that some countries are extremely wealthy while others wallow in poverty. And it is accepted that this is just the way the world is and it can be no other way. The ones with the biggest weapons have a right to take all the resources on the planet and leave everyone else to scramble for the few remaining crumbs. The most developed countries have a right to forcefully change regimes and foment wars in the name of bringing democracy to the people. They have a right to do this while loudly condemning others for human rights abuses. They have a right to bomb other countries and call these ‘righteous strikes’ because everything they do can only be righteous. They have placed themselves in positions whereby they judge everyone else’s actions but no one can judge their actions. They have given themselves the monopoly of violence in the name of maintaining world order. Does it seem hypocritical that western nations consider it acceptable to have ever-increasing numbers of nuclear weapons but consider it a crisis when countries like Iran or North Korea acquire these weapons? What makes it okay for them to have nuclear weapons while everyone else is not allowed to have them? Is it because they are the most responsible and unlikely to start nuclear wars? No, the opposite is true; they are the ones continually starting wars in different parts of the world and therefore they are the last people anyone would want to have nuclear weapons. The hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling.
Mainstream Media
What is the role of the mainstream media in rigging the system? It is to normalize all this. It is to report on all these things as if they are normal and that is just the way the world is. The media teaches us to be observers of events, not participants. We are taught to be passive consumers of news, never really looking too closely at what is happening or questioning what we are told or analysing things too deeply. We are given a certain worldview in which there are people out there who are the experts, who know what is happening and who are the deciders of what happens. The media divides the world into those who make the news happen and the rest of us who are the consumers of news. So, if for example, war breaks out somewhere, we are supposed to just assume someone somewhere had a good reason for deciding that the war should start. We don’t question this. We don’t ask what are the issues, why isn’t diplomacy being used, why do some countries have the power to veto things at the UN? This is the role of the media, to help you accept that the world created by psychopaths is normal and there is absolutely nothing to see here, just go back to your daily grind and let the important people make decisions on your behalf. The media also keeps us distracted while important things are happening on the world stage. They distract us with sports, entertainment, celebrity news, etc. We become the proles who concern ourselves with mundane things while big brother manages world affairs.
Education
Our education systems teach us from a very tender age that life is a competition and we should view others as our competitors. We are taught from a young age to see ourselves as competing with other people and this is done through exams and ranking systems and reward systems, etc. Our education systems program us to accept the idea that the person who wins is somehow better than everyone else and therefore deserves to be rewarded. This is called meritocracy, whereby you need to prove yourself worthy of the good things in life. In other words, just the fact that you are a human being does not qualify you to enjoy the good things in life. You have to prove your worth. Instead of education systems being places where our creativity is allowed to flow in whichever direction it wants to flow, we make it places where we have to prove our worth as human beings. So, we learn to aggressively pursue academic excellence as this is what guarantees that we will have the best lives afterwards. Instead of each person seeking to discover what makes them tick, what they enjoy doing, what they excel at, we have this competitive spirit out of which the most aggressive emerge as the best people. Everyone else then has to make do with second class lives because the system is already separating and weeding out the weak and rewarding the strong. Is this Darwin at work or is the system deliberately rigged to work this way? Is it survival for the fittest or is it the most aggressive creating a system in which they are the most likely to thrive? We need to question some of these very deeply held ideas and ask ourselves whether they are true or whether they have been made true by the ones who make the rules.
Hollywood
Hollywood plays a very important role in creating a reality in which the most aggressive people are the most admirable people. They portray an upside-down world in which the guy who goes shooting everyone in pursuit of something is to be admired. The cop who turns the city upside down, destroying property and killing people to catch the ‘bad guy’ is an admirable person. Soldiers who go to fight wars are heroes. The idea that we should thank soldiers for their service and give up our seats for them is presented as a valid idea. So, we learn to view things in an upside-down way, where wrong becomes right and right becomes wrong. Those who refuse to fight wars are cowards and wanting peace is a cowardly thing. And what about all the dystopian movies they keep churning out? Have you ever noticed that Hollywood never imagines a future in which the world is in a utopian state? It is always a future in which the world has been destroyed by some catastrophic event. It’s always a future where some people wallow in poverty while others exist in some technologically advanced state. Hollywood never seems capable of imagining a good future for humanity, it is always the worst possible vision of a dystopia that no one would ever want to exist in.
Could our world possibly be structured differently such that the system favours the majority who are just normal people trying to live their lives? I believe this is possible when we start to understand how the system is rigged against us by the minority. We need to reject the idea that human beings are inherently aggressive beings and that competing with each other is a normal state for us to be in. We can cooperate and create a world in which everyone thrives. There should be no need for anyone to have to prove their worth. If we could just see through the programming and change our mindset regarding how we exist with other people, then, we could surely end up in a world where the most aggressive could not possibly dominate and enslave the rest of us.
As soon as I started writing this article, something interesting happened. When I wrote down the word mother in the heading, the auto-correct function immediately kicked in and underlined the word. When I checked to see what the error was, I was surprised to find that auto-correct didn’t want me to capitalize the word mother. Apparently, it’s supposed to be in small letters, even in the heading. The same rule doesn’t apply to the word father, I was surprised to note. So, it’s okay to capitalize the word father but not the word mother. That alone tells me exactly how mothers are regarded on this planet. They are less. They don’t even deserve the honour of being capitalized in an article in which they are the main topic. Need I say more, or should I just rest my case on this bleak note?
The coronavirus pandemic brought into sharp focus the agony of being a mother on this planet. Suddenly, what has always been known but denied or simply ignored was pushed into the public consciousness in a way that was impossible to ignore. We’ve always known what a raw deal it is to be a mother on this planet but it’s almost as if the universe had had enough of this state of affairs and was trying to tell us look, people! There’s a serious problem here! Sort it out!
How mothers have been surviving going to work, taking care of their children, taking care of husbands, taking care of extended family, running their homes and remaining sane is a complete mystery. When the pandemic started, mothers were expected to quietly take on additional roles while still working full-time from home or at the workplace for those who couldn’t work from home. We were expected to become teachers to our children while gladly taking on the extra duties, not to mention the expense, that comes with having the family home all day. All this while being shamed for wanting schools to reopen faster. You don’t love your kids! You’re spoilt! You don’t want to take care of your children; you’d rather ship them off to school for someone else to care of. It’s about time you experienced what it’s like to take care of your kids. That was the narrative at the time. If you wanted schools to reopen, it was because you couldn’t stand to be with your kids.
How mothers have been surviving going to work, taking care of their children, taking care of husbands, taking care of extended family, running their homes and remaining sane is a complete mystery.
Well, we all know how that turned out. After a few months out of school, girls started getting pregnant, some of them after being defiled by relatives. Some were married off as they were no longer in the protective environment provided by the school. Children who used to get a meal in school were no longer getting that much-needed meal, which was a problem in both the developed and developing world, from America to India to Africa. In some parts of the world, girls were circumcised, a practice that being in school protects them from. Education systems that had been steadily progressing over decades were set back to levels last seen ages ago. Will this decline be reversed? What about the lives that were ruined, the children who will never go back to school once the pandemic is over, who cares about them? What about what is happening in countries like Uganda where the education system came to a standstill, who cares about that? But when mothers were crying for their children to go back to school, we were mocked and made to feel that we were being spoilt. What a cruel, uncaring world we live in.
It’s ironic if you think about it, the pressure women experience to become mothers, almost as if it’s the most wonderful thing one could ever experience. Before you become a mother, motherhood is packaged as something desirable, something to look forward to, a role you have been preparing for since you were born. Any delays in starting to bear children once you reach marriageable and childbearing age is regarded with disapproval and outright hostility. Why aren’t you having children yet, the world snarls at you? Is there something wrong with you? What are you still waiting for? Your biological clock is ticking, get on with it. And we comply, most of us do. We joyfully and eagerly become mothers, little suspecting what awaits us on the other side. Once we have children, the same world that passive-aggressively urged us to do so suddenly changes tact and starts sending subtle, unspoken messages about who we are now that we are mothers. We are no longer desirable. We are no longer attractive. We are no longer marketable. We are no longer competent. We are no longer people but unpeople who should exist behind the scenes, seen but not heard. We no longer deserve to take care of ourselves, dress well or spend money on ourselves but all our energy, attention and resources should now go to our children, our families. We should fade into the background, disappear, accept that we no longer play a meaningful role in society as we have fulfilled our primary reason for existing which is to bear children. We have done our duty and we are now dismissed.
Anyone who is a mother knows what I’m talking about. You know how you lose your identity and become mama so and so. You know how you become unseen. You know very well that feeling you get when you have to ask for permission at work for the hundredth time because your child is sick, your child is having a function at school, or the nanny just walked out on you and you can’t leave the children alone. Why don’t you just get your act together? Do you know what your priorities are? Do you want to work or are you just playing around with your job? Did you really take your child to the hospital or did you just want to give yourself a day off? Did you need to spend the whole day with your sick child or could you have come to work after taking them to the hospital? Oh, you want to be leaving work early to pick your kids from school? Are you serious? Oh, you want flexi-time that will allow you to come to work late so that you spend more time with your children? Why don’t you just go ahead and say what you really want? You don’t want to work, do you? You want to be a stay-at-home mum, doing nothing all day, you lazy thing. Oh, and you want a promotion! You want more money! Is that some sick joke?
You know very well that feeling you get when you have to ask for permission at work for the hundredth time because your child is sick, your child is having a function at school, or the nanny just walked out on you and you can’t leave the children alone.
The thing we need to ask ourselves is why the role of mothers isn’t acknowledged or appreciated. What if in future no one wants to be a mother because our consciousness is raised to the point that we begin to ask ourselves, what I’m I doing this for? Why do I need to give up my body as a conduit for the survival of the species only to be despised once I do so? Why do I need this? One day, women are just going to stop and ask themselves, who said I have to be a mother? I don’t need this. There is no support for me from the state, from society or anyone else for that matter. And when no one wants to have babies anymore, maybe we will wake up to the important role mothers play and start treating them better. Look at what’s happening in many European countries. Nobody wants to give birth. And why should they? Look at China. They spent decades making it a crime to be a mother, punishable by forced abortion. Now suddenly they realize that their population won’t sustain itself and they turn around and want women to give birth. They are still under the illusion that motherhood is a switch you can turn on and off at will, but it is proving to be much more complicated than they imagined. How long before this becomes a planet-wide problem where nobody wants to give birth? How short-sighted, to despise the very people upon which the survival of the species depends.
When you become a mother, you quickly realize that you’re on your own. The state doesn’t care about you. There is no help for you. Woe unto you if you are poor and struggle to feed your children. It’s your fault. There is no acknowledgement that what you have just accomplished is an essential service to the country, to the planet. How many women are abandoned by their partners to raise children on their own? In the developed world, at least you have laws that force someone to support their child even if they are not married to the mother, but what about here in the undeveloped world? How many fathers abandon their children with impunity especially when the mothers are too poor or uneducated to know what to do about it? And beyond that, when are we ever as a species going to get to a point where raising children is the responsibility of the state and not the parents? I believe this is the next step we need to take where motherhood is recognized as the essential service it is and thus something the state needs to be responsible for. By this, I mean in terms of providing free education, free child care and a stipend for feeding, clothing and housing the children. This is not an impossible or unreasonable dream. Some of course will scream that this is an impossibility, but it is only because they are not able to see motherhood as a service to the planet that no one should have to be punished for.
Many of us are starting to crack, so heavy has the burden of motherhood become. We can’t do it anymore. We can’t pretend to be superwomen anymore. Many of us are leaving our jobs, not because we don’t need the income but because we can’t hack it anymore. The weight that has been placed on us by an uncaring planet has become too much to bear and we are finally throwing up our hands and giving ourselves up to the universe to do with us as she wants. Let the mothers now be mothered by someone else.
There’s an interesting series currently airing on Netflix called Midnight Mass which I watched recently and it got me thinking and drawing some parallels between it and the mainstream media. The series is about a sleepy Island whose residents number slightly more than 100 where a series of horrific events unfold, culminating in a macabre scene where most of the island’s residents turn into vampires and go on a murderous rampage. It’s a horror series, but the events unfold so gradually that it’s not until towards the that you start feeling afraid, which is good for people like me who don’t enjoy horrors. The story is a combination of tragedy and comedy – a tramedy if you will – and many are the times I burst out laughing at the ridiculous beliefs the islanders seemed to accept without question. If you have ever wondered how the catholic church came to commit atrocities such as the witch hunts and the inquisitions, then wonder no more. This series will show you step by step how the most bizarre and evil ideas can take root in a group and spread like wildfire, resulting in events that historians and future generations alike will look at in wonder and marvel at how people could be so gullible as to fall for such obvious lies.
In case you’re wondering why I’m talking about a Netflix series about vampires when my article is about the mainstream media, it’s because one of the characters, a lady called Beverly to me personifies how the mainstream media gets us to accept without question ideas that in our normal state of being we would instantly see through and reject. Beverly is an ardent believer, supporter and spreader of the ideas that result in the islanders turning into vampires. She takes a bizarre and evil idea and somehow turns what starts as a laugh-out-loud ridiculous idea into something that is accepted as biblical truth by the gullible islanders. While any rational mind would dismiss as sheer madness the idea that a murderous priest could somehow be acting on God’s behalf, Beverly manages to present this as a normal and rational idea and even finds a way to explain this with the help of bible verses quoted out of context. Within no time, she gains the support of a few people, eventually spreading the madness to the entire island.
If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible? They take an idea such as war and make it seem normal that a group of people in one part of the world would one day decide to go on a murderous campaign in another part of the world and this is a normal and credible idea. They take an idea like capitalism, a system whereby a few people have billions while everyone else is either poor or just getting by and they make this appear like a normal and desirable thing, while any other system like, God forbid, socialism is portrayed as dangerous and something to be feared and resisted. They make the idea of people living in hunger and poverty in other parts of the world seem like distant events that have nothing to do with us.
If you think about it, isn’t this exactly what the mainstream media does, taking the most outrageous ideas and blasting them into our living rooms twenty-four-seven until even the most abnormal ideas start to seem normal and credible?
The mainstream media tells us how to think about the world we live in and gets us to give up our ability, our responsibility to think, to analyze and to question. George Orwell referred to this as orthodoxy, which he defined as a state in which one does not think, does not need to think. Someone tells you how to think and you accept the reality that is presented without question. We may have assumed that Orwell was talking about some dystopian existence in the future, but he might as well have been referring to our current state, only now it’s the mainstream media, not the government that tells us how to think. We have become unconscious, accepting what is presented to us as reality, as the only way to think about the world we live in. We don’t question because we don’t need to question. We don’t ask ourselves why should this be so? Is this a normal way to exist? Is any other existence possible?
“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
George Orwell, 1984
How does the mainstream media achieve this?
Normalizing ideas
One of the powerful ways in which the mainstream media affects our worldview is by normalizing ideas. You’ve seen the way news is reported by the mainstream media. They could be talking about a war breaking out somewhere, about bombs being dropped in some distant parts of the world and it’s like the most normal thing is happening. Maybe we get a cereal commercial right afterwards. No big deal. There is no hint in the newscaster’s voice or manner that would suggest that this is an abnormal event. No questions asked. Just report and casually move on to the next news item. What does this do to us? It kills our compassion. It makes us unconscious beings just taking in without question what is being fed to us. The nonchalant manner in which the most insane things are reported lulls us into a false sense that these are normal events and that’s just how our world is. That’s just how it is and that’s how it has always been and that’s how it will always be. No need to question how such a thing could be normal. The thing is, would any normal person one day decide oh, I’m going to kill my next-door neighbour before they get a chance to kill me because I have a feeling, they are planning to one day attack me and take away my freedom? Only psychopaths think like that, which makes one wonder whether our planet is run by psychopaths. Think of the immigrant crisis and the utter insanity of allowing people to drown in the seas rather than give them a haven from whatever it is they are running away from. Is this a normal thing that normal people do, this utter lack of compassion?
Disseminating ideas
One only has to look at the coronavirus pandemic and how it has changed the world in slightly less than two years to understand the power a new idea holds and the power whoever disseminates that idea holds in shaping our worldview. Whoever gets the story out there first determines how we think about a new idea. I remember the almost non-stop coverage by the mainstream media that first month when the pandemic started. I was watching the news almost non-stop and I’ll never forget how anxious that made me feel. It got to a point where I had to stop listening to the news because I felt like I was going to get a panic attack if I continued watching. It was clear that the mainstream media had one agenda and one agenda only, to make us as afraid of the virus as possible in order to get us to comply with the authorities. This idea was projected so strongly and so relentlessly, at some point I started wondering to myself whether the media had ever heard of something called mental health. Is the mainstream media an expert on public health? No, I don’t think so but this didn’t stop them from shaming anyone who questioned their views, including dissenting scientists who were publicly shamed and cancelled. My point is that the mainstream media has the power to disseminate ideas, but what if their worldview is fear-based? How does this affect us as the ones absorbing these ideas twenty-four seven? With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.
Asking the wrong questions
The mainstream media is notorious for asking the wrong questions and leaving the right questions unasked and therefore unanswered. Take the issue of the so-called nuclear button that the American president has to have close by at all times in case he suddenly needs to start a nuclear war. Now, what kind of questions does the mainstream media ask? Oh, do we want Trump to be the one with the nuclear button? Really? That’s the question you’re going to ask on that issue? How about, oh I don’t know, WHY SHOULD SUCH A BUTTON EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE? Who thought up this crazy, psychopathic idea? The idea that nuclear war is something that should take a split second to start is the most insane idea ever invented. Only an insane mind could come up with such an idea. Not to mention why nuclear weapons should even exist in the first place. What kind of psychopathic, insane person would want a weapon that could destroy our entire planet in an instant and have that kind of weapon in anybody’s hands? Why doesn’t the mainstream media ask such questions? Maybe because if they did, we would realize that our world is run by psychopaths.
With such power over the general public, we need to start asking who are the people behind the mainstream media houses, what are their agendas, what are their worldviews and whether we want these people projecting their worldview upon us.
Providing “expert” opinions
The mainstream media is very much invested in you feeling that you are not an expert and therefore need to be told how to think about the world we live in. Let’s say you own a media house and you are very much invested in maintaining the capitalist system because it benefits you personally, what kind of economic experts are you going to invite? Obviously, experts who agree with your viewpoint and will not threaten the status quo by giving alternative views on this issue. The same goes for any issue, from climate change to education systems to governance systems. All you need to do is ensure the “wrong” views never see the light of day and instead the “right” views, your views, the ones that support the status quo are the only ones we get to hear. It’s not hard to get an expert to support any viewpoint. For every expert who supports one view, you will find another who supports the opposite view.
So, what conclusion do we arrive at after all is said and done? That the mainstream media is a broken lens and we need a new lens. That new lens is you and me, observing the world we live in and writing what we see and think in our blogs and when enough of us are doing this, then the world will start changing.
When you think of a narcissist, what is the first thing that comes to mind? For most of us, what comes to mind is the brash, aggressive, loud, confident person who will do anything to attract attention and whose ego walks into the room even before they do. This is the traditional view of the narcissist which many of us are aware of and it’s not incorrect, it’s just that this is nowhere near the full story. The reality is that there is a form of narcissism that is hidden from view, that is hard to detect except to the trained eye and if anything, is even more dangerous than overt narcissism which can be spotted from a mile away. This hidden form of narcissism is what is known as covert narcissism.
A narcissist, whether overt or covert is driven by the compulsion to have certain underlying needs met, which is what leads to their narcissistic, selfish behaviour. We know that narcissists crave attention, and while the overt narcissist will force you to meet this need through aggressive and unreasonable demands, the covert narcissist will use manipulation to get you to meet their needs. They may do this for example through pity plays whereby they portray themselves as the victim of life’s unfairness. The underlying need for attention is the same in both narcissists, it’s just that the strategy for meeting the need is different. We also know that narcissists have an inflated sense of their own importance. While the overt narcissist will openly show their inflated ego by putting down others or trying to outdo them, the covert narcissist will display this in more subtle ways such as through the belief that they are always right, which means they will hardly ever listen to or consider or accept others’ views. Covert narcissists also lack empathy just like overt narcissists do, it’s just that the covert narcissist hides their lack of empathy through the good-guy act. The overt narcissist simply doesn’t care what you think of his behaviour towards you while the covert narcissist is always haunted by the threat of exposure and will therefore go to great lengths to hide their real self. They will sabotage you while pretending to be innocently unaware of what they are doing, maybe even apologizing profusely when you confront them, but this is just an act. At their core, they are not good people and will behave in the same ways over and over again, all the while pretending to be the good guy.
The overt narcissist simply doesn’t care what you think of his behaviour towards you while the covert narcissist is always haunted by the threat of exposure and will therefore go to great lengths to hide their real self.
The interesting thing about covert narcissists is that they genuinely believe they are the good guys. You will find this type of narcissist hidden behind a façade of godliness, family man, best friend, advisor, counsellor, etc. The most dangerous thing about the covert narcissist is that you won’t see them coming. At least with the overt narcissist, once you know how to identify the signs, it becomes very easy to spot them and thus keep your distance. With the covert narcissist, it’s a whole new ball game. This person could be in your life for decades, draining your energy and driving you almost to the point of insanity, but you will never know that you are dealing with a narcissist. Many people in long term relationships with covert narcissists attribute their troubled relationships to normal relationship hiccups that can be resolved if only they are patient enough, put in enough effort or love their partner enough. But despite everything, the relationship never gets better, it only keeps getting worse until eventually after decades of suffering, they may decide to throw in the towel and leave. The irony is that to the outside world, it will always appear as if they were married to the perfect person, the ultimate good guy, and no one will understand why they decided to leave.
What could cause a narcissist to go into stealth mode? In many cases, it may be because the narcissist himself was brought up by a narcissistic parent and they learnt early enough that they had to hide their own narcissism in order to survive their narcissistic parent. They simple learnt other ways of meeting their narcissistic needs without antagonizing their narcissistic parent. It could also be that the narcissist simply developed the most efficient way of meeting his needs in line with his personality. While the overt narcissist will use aggression and force to have his needs met, the covert narcissist simply learnt that he is most likely to have his needs met through manipulation. Therefore, the underlying need is still being met, it’s just that each type of narcissist uses a different strategy to achieve this.
So now that we know that narcissists do not all behave the same, how do we identify the covert narcissist and keep ourselves from falling into their dangerous traps? Well, there are some signs to look out for that could help you identify this type of person but you need to pay close attention as they are subtle and will likely not ring any alarm bells at the beginning of a relationship. If you are already in a long term relationship with a covert narcissist, these signs will help you understand what you are dealing with and why no matter how hard you try your relationship never seems to settle down into an easy, harmonious ride but is always full of bumps.
They are passive-aggressive
A covert narcissist will never confront you head-on; they would rather hide their aggression and fury and passively confront you. For example, they may retreat behind a wall of silence, giving you the silent treatment which may go on for extended periods. By not confronting you directly but rather showing their displeasure in this manner, it enables them to maintain their good-guy image and at the same time manipulate you into wanting to restore the peace. For normal people, the silent treatment is an unbearable punishment that hits you at your very core making you want to do anything to end it, even if it means apologizing and taking the blame for something that was not your fault. The covert narcissist lacking in empathy can employ sustained silent treatments without themselves feeling the pain that a normal person feels. Other forms of passive-aggression they employ include coming late or not showing up for meetings or dates thereby communicating how unimportant you are. They may also embarrass you with other people present knowing that you can do nothing about it, then later behave as if nothing happened or as if it was all innocent fun. If you suspect you may be in a relationship with a covert narcissist, think about all the ways they treat you badly while still maintaining an image of themselves as the good guy. Think of the ways they make it look like they are not really doing anything while you who are on the receiving end know they are doing something and whatever it is they are doing is hurtful.
2. They think of themselves as victims
The covert narcissist always has a sob story from their past that they use to manipulate you into pitying them and giving them the attention they need. They will talk about how their last girlfriend cheated on them, how their parents divorced when they were young and they never got over it, how their boss has it in for them and is making their life miserable, how their colleagues at work are jealous and take all the credit for their achievement, how they were abused as children, how they lost their jobs and can’t find a new one, etc. The thing is, no one is denying that bad things happen to people all the time. The fact is, bad things do happen to everyone, but one way or the other, we learn to cope, we overcome these problems and maybe even learn from them and grow to become better people. We were never meant to remain in the same place years later, blaming all our problems on our parents’ divorce or our cheating spouse. We are supposed to learn our lessons from whatever happened and move on to become better people. The covert narcissist however will not want to move on from whatever happened in the past. They will use this victimhood to paint themselves in a positive light or to make themselves appear like a martyr. They will drain your energy with their constant need for validation and reassurance which goes beyond the normal need for comfort that one experiences immediately after something bad happens to them. The covert narcissist will wear their victimhood like a cloak that is constant and unchanging which therefore means they need to be handled with tender loving care all the time. Mind you meanwhile, they will not be interested in hearing about your suffering but will expect you to provide a listening ear to their woes. It is a constant need for attention that will eventually drain you and drive you up the wall.
3. They lack emotional availability
One hallmark of narcissists is their lack of emotional availability and this is true of the covert narcissist as well. If you’re in a long-term relationship with a covert narcissist, you will feel alone in the relationship. They will be there with you in the physical sense, but you might as well be alone in the relationship for all the emotional support you will get from them. Whereas they will expect you to listen to them and support them in whatever they may be going through, the same courtesy will not be accorded to you. Your issues will be minimized if not dismissed altogether, while their issues will be made to feel life-threatening and all-important. They will suck all your emotional energy until you constantly feel drained, but they will never invest their emotions in you. If you go through difficulties, be it a job loss, difficulties at work, or the loss of a loved one, you will do it alone. While the covert narcissist will be good at making all the right noises e.g., claiming to want to work at the relationship, with time you will realize that that’s all they are, noises, but underneath there is no real interest in making the changes necessary to make the relationship work. If you find yourself feeling as if you are all alone in a relationship, then your partner could be a covert narcissist.
4. They will never compliment you
When you’re in a normal, healthy relationship with a normal, healthy person, you will always find things about each other that you appreciate, that you want to compliment. With a covert narcissist, this will be strangely absent. Due to their inner insecurities or perhaps inflated ego, they will never want to admit that you can do anything good or anything worthy of complimenting. Behind this is also the fact that the narcissist probably envies you for the qualities you have that they will never have. Ironically, these qualities are the same ones that drew the narcissist to you, that made you a target, but once in a relationship with them, they will envy you for your positive qualities and thus you will never hear a compliment come out of their mouths. At the end of the day, a narcissist wants to feel like they are better than you, hence the subtle put-downs you experience from them. They will deny you the satisfaction of feeling good about something you have done or a positive quality you possess. Think of the sullen bully in the playground who feels bad when everyone is happy and having a good time. How likely is it that this kind of person will ever compliment you for the good in you when anything good in you only draws attention away from them?
5. They are empty inside
When you spend enough time with a narcissist, there is one thing that will always gnaw at you at the back of your mind. This person feels empty in a way that you can’t quite put your finger on. With time, you start realizing that you don’t know who this person is however long you have been with them. Whereas with a normal, healthy person, you will always get a sense of who they are in terms of their likes and dislikes, their beliefs, their opinions, their quirks and proclivities, with a covert narcissist you will get the sense almost like they are playing a role. You will almost feel like they don’t know who they are because they are like chameleons that adapt to whatever environment they are in. Sometimes you will feel as if they are taking on your characteristics; for example, if at some point in the past you expressed interest in something, you will hear them later proclaim interest in the same thing without ever mentioning that they got the idea from you. You will also notice that they subtly behave like whoever they happen to be hanging out with at the time. This emptiness is a particular trait of narcissists whereby they adapt to whatever environment they are in and become whoever they need to be in order to have their needs met. With a covert narcissist, this is very subtle and you may not notice it as easily as you will notice it with the overt narcissist who will display his emptiness conspicuously in his eagerness to draw you in. With the covert narcissist, this is, unfortunately, something you may only notice after a long time of being with them. You may experience this almost as a niggling feeling, a question in your mind that surfaces from time to time: who are you?
6. They have troubled relationships
Due to their difficult nature, narcissists have one characteristic in common and that is their troubled relationships. With the overt narcissist, this will not be so difficult to understand as their aggressive, ruthless or openly brutal nature is easy to observe. With the covert narcissist, it will be more subtle. Although they come across as good guys, you will find that they have many troubled relationships at work, at home, with ex-partners, with siblings, parents or even with people who were previously their friends. The reality is, even though they may be able to fool some people with their good guy act, their underlying selfishness will always cause problems in their relationships. Naturally, with their victimhood mentality, they will have various ways to justify these troubled relationships and they may somehow succeed in fooling you. But the longer you stay with them, the more you will start to question whether the problem is the other people or the problem lies with them. It’s normal of course to have one or two troubled relationships, but if you observe this pattern consistently manifest itself in all their relationships, then you need to start questioning the narrative which paints them as the victim. Is it true that they cannot hold a job because all their bosses somehow have it in for them? Is it probable that all their colleagues are jealous of their accomplishments? Is it possible that all their exes are evil, manipulative people? Or is the problem seated right there in front of you in form of the covert narcissist?
7. They feel as if they own you
If you have been with a narcissist for any length of time, you will start having the vague feeling that this person thinks they own you. They will somehow want to curtail your freedoms, they will want to know where you’re going and what you’re doing and who you’re with, they will want to control what you do with your money, how you dress, who your friends are, etc. It is almost as if they see you as an extension of themselves. Rather than seeing you as a human being in your own right with your own personhood, they see you as part of them. With the covert narcissist, this will be done in subtle ways such as going through your phone, using sarcasm to manipulate you into doing what they want, lecturing you about the kind of people you hang out with, etc. While the overt narcissist will aggressively exert their control over you through brutal force, the covert narcissist will manipulate you into doing what he wants for example by questioning your choices, by mocking what you want to do, or by pretending to be concerned about you. In the end, without quite understanding why you will feel that this person thinks they own you and they are convinced of their right to exert their will over you.
While the overt narcissist will aggressively exert their control over you through brutal force, the covert narcissist will manipulate you into doing what he wants for example by questioning your choices, by mocking what you want to do, or by pretending to be concerned about you.
8. They think they know it all / they think they are God
When you spend enough time in a relationship with a covert narcissist, you will realize that the possibility that they could ever be wrong seldom crosses their mind. As far as they are concerned, they are always right and thus it is their way or the highway. It is almost as if they think they are God, so convinced are they of how right they are or how wise their views are. Whatever opinion or view they have seems to them to have come straight from God, thereby affirming their oneness with God. And if they are one with God, aren’t they then God? If God is speaking through them, doesn’t that then mean that when they speak it is the voice of God that is speaking? And if you argue with them, aren’t you arguing with God? If you happen to be with the religious types, they will be firm believers in the ideology that God has placed his mantle of leadership on them and thus they have a God-given right to rule over you. They will firmly believe in the natural hierarchy or order of things whereby God speaks to them and they, in turn, speak God’s word to you. It will never occur to them that God could speak directly to you. So firm is their conviction that we might as well dispense with the necessity of having a God who is separate from them and instead consider them as God Himself in the flesh.
The insanity that is capitalism has become so shocking, so outrageous that everyone by now must surely see that the whole concept is a lie that needs to be overhauled like, yesterday. I mean, here is a system that enables 1% of the population to siphon 50 Trillion from the income of the bottom 90% of the population. And this, in the most powerful nation on the planet. How did we get here? Why is nothing being done about this even though we started hearing about these kinds of statistics almost twenty years ago? It’s absolutely insane that nothing has been done about it all this time. We still continue to stand by, helplessly wringing our hands, while the elites continue to plunder all the resources of the planet. Instead of urgently getting to the bottom of this, using our collective energy and resources to find out how this could urgently be reversed, we continue reading the damning reports and then quickly moving on to the next thing. It’s almost as if we have accepted that nothing can be done about it. During the Covid pandemic, we were again shocked to hear how much the elites were making while everyone else sank deeper into despair. It seems the rich will always get richer, and this is just the way life is. Secretly, we wish we were them. We study them, we want to know what their secrets are, how they became so wealthy, what we need to do to be like them (should we all drop out of college like them, for example), etc. We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality. Please note that I am not trying to blame anyone or to shame anyone for admiring the rich and wanting to be like them. We’ve all been there. All I’m saying is, why can’t we imagine a system that allows all of us to be wealthy, because surely there is enough wealth in this planet to go round, and then we wouldn’t have to spend the rest of our lives wishing for something that will never happen as long as the system remains as it is?
We obsessively keep track of who the richest people are and how much they are worth, instead of seeing the utter insanity of a system that creates this kind of inequality.
Take Elon Musk for example. To me, he embodies everything that is wrong with the system. Recently I read an article about how Elon Musk makes a fortune whenever Tesla meets some set targets. And herein lies the problem. You see, Musk did not personally do the work that led to the achievement of these goals. He’s no doubt a great manager, a great CEO who somehow manages to inspire and motivate and strategize and do whatever else he needs to do in order to meet these targets. But, at the end of the day, the fact still remains he did not do the work himself. The work was done by the many employees of Tesla. So, the question is, why is it that Elon Musk, just one guy in a company of thousands of employees gets to be the only one who is rewarded for the attainment of these objectives? Is it a lack of imagination on the part of the board or what exactly does this mean? Does it mean that the board could not see that Musk did not do the work himself, or is it that it never occurred to them that anyone apart from the CEO deserves to be rewarded for the exceptional performance of the company? Does it mean that the board could not stretch their minds just a little bit and see that all employees of Tesla should have shared equally in the rewards that came from the achievement of the goals?
The problem here, which really is the problem with capitalism itself, is a complete lack of imagination. I mean, it’s stunning that no one even sees anything wrong with this scenario, that it’s reported in the media almost as if it’s the most natural thing in the world that the CEO should enjoy virtually all the fruits of the labour of thousands of people by himself. As far as I’m concerned, all the employees of Tesla should have shared in the rewards. Instead of one billionaire, there should be thousands of millionaires. All the employees, and I mean all of them, from the lowest ranked person in the company to the top ranked person should be able to experience that they work for one of the richest companies in the world. This should reflect in all their paychecks. If a company is doing as well as Tesla is doing, then all the good things that come out of this should be enjoyed by everyone not just the top people in the company. This idea that only the top people deserve to be rewarded handsomely is what has resulted in the 1% phenomenon, pure and simple. It’s because at some point, obviously because of greed, the top people started keeping more and more for themselves, and the more they got away with it, the more ravenous they became. No one questioned why the top people were getting millions while everyone else was getting an annual increment of 3% to their already meager incomes. This was normalized, it was not questioned, we went along with the lie. Because someone is the CEO, because someone came up with an idea, they should forever more be rewarded for this. The people who help bring this idea to life are not partners who should share in the rewards but mere employees who should be thankful just for the fact that they have a job.
Now, I am not in any way saying that Elon Musk is not a smart guy, maybe even a genius for creating successful companies such as Tesla or spaceX or whatever else he has created. All I’m saying is that he may have had the initial idea, but he could never have done it without the people who work for him. Without these people, he could never have achieved what he has achieved. An idea is good, but in itself, it is useless without the people who actually work to make it a reality. So why should the person who came up with the idea continue to be rewarded over and over again ad infinitum for an idea he came up with years ago? Why shouldn’t the people who are collectively putting their energy into the company also equally share in the rewards?
There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer. As I said before, capitalism suffers from a serious lack of imagination. We seem to be unable to imagine a situation whereby everyone who puts their energy into the achievement of a goal is considered an integral part of the collective effort and is considered worthy to be rewarded just as much as the person at the top. We are unable to imagine a situation whereby the billions that are earned from these shared efforts are spread out among all the people who put in an effort. We somehow think, or have been taught to think that there is something wrong with equitably sharing the earnings of a company. We have been taught to consider some people’s contribution as lowly, therefore not worthy of being rewarded generously, while it’s okay to be generous with others who are considered more worthy, more deserving of generosity.
There is an underlying lie that is the foundation of capitalism, and this is what has led to the insane situation we now find ourselves in. The lie is that we are not all created equal, that some of us are more equal than others. Some of us are more deserving than others of the good things that life has to offer.
And this is exactly how capitalism has deceived us all, by telling us that only a few people should enjoy the rewards of success, that everyone else should just be grateful to be earning a salary. So, let me ask you this, if the company were to share out the billions equitably among the employees, what would be so wrong with that? Oh, maybe you think that if the cleaner was paid a million dollars a year, they would not know what to do with it, is that it? Or maybe you think the administrator would not be able to spend a million dollars because it is too much for them? Or perhaps the accountant wouldn’t find things to do with a million dollars? Does it make you feel uncomfortable when I talk about the lowest-ranking members of a company being paid handsomely? Do you automatically dismiss it as impossible or unrealistic? If so, then you are the victim of programming. We all are. We have been programmed to think that not everyone is worthy of being paid well, that generosity cannot extend all the way to the bottom of the company and should only remain at the top levels of the company. The idea that some people’s effort is more important than others is a construct we have all come to accept, and maybe it’s time we started questioning it. If you sense this type of programming in yourself, I invite you to pause for a moment and read my article here to learn more about this mindset. Suffice it to say that each and every person deserves to be treated generously by the company they work for, exactly the way the top people are treated generously by the company.
I know I have used Elon Musk as an example, but I hope you can see that this same principle applies to all the elites who enjoy all the fruits of the successes of their companies by themselves. Take Jeff Bezos as another example. During Covid, Amazon made billions which made Bezos the richest person on the planet. Now, I’m pretty sure that Jeff was not personally packing and shipping all those packages to every corner of the planet in the middle of a pandemic. It was the hard-working employees of Amazon who did this. So, why is it that he gets to enjoy the rewards all by himself? Granted, Jeff came up with a great idea in creating Amazon, but does that mean he has to continue enjoying the fruits of the company’s success all alone forever? No! There are thousands of people who are everyday giving their energy to the company, turning Jeff’s idea into reality and they too should get to enjoy the fruits of working for such a successful company.
We need to rethink the whole idea of employee compensation. How do companies come up with their compensation schemes? Well, it’s simple. Most companies use bench-marking, which is whereby they do a comparative analysis of what other companies are paying their staff and from there, decide what they want to pay their own staff. This is one of the factors that has allowed the highest earning companies to get away with paying their staff only a fraction of what they are actually capable of paying. If a company that’s making billions pays the same or a comparable amount as a company that makes much less, then this allows the billion-dollar company to keep much more for themselves, which is exactly what allows the CEOs to pay themselves whatever they want. This whole system needs to be overhauled. Companies should be made to pay a percentage of the company turnover to their employees in recognition of the fact that it is the employees who enabled the company to make that money in the first place. The current practice of bench-marking should not be used to shortchange employees. The more successful a company is, the more the employees should be paid, whether this is a hundred times above the market rate or whatever. This is what has been missing, and this is why inequality is getting worse and worse. No one is looking closely at what portion of a company’s turnover is used on compensation; we are being hoodwinked by being told that the company is the best payer in the market, forgetting that we are comparing billion-dollar companies with companies that are earning much less.
The biggest problem with capitalism is our collective impotence when it comes to dealing with the problem of the 1%. It’s almost as if this problem has no solution, it’s a problem that defies solutions. We talk about taxing the mega-rich more, knowing full well that higher taxes will only benefit the government not the people. In my opinion, it’s not taxing the mega-rich that will lift everyone up, it is forcing the mega-rich to compensate their employees according to how much the company makes. It’s about regulating these companies and not waiting for ‘trickle down economics’ which will never happen. It’s about not paying lip service by telling employees that ‘this could not have been achieved without you’ while actually not rewarding them for their efforts.
We need to stop being over-awed by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergs of this world. What we need to realize is that they are ordinary people who came up with extra-ordinary ideas, and who did not bring these ideas into life on their own but utilized the energy and time and attention of the people who work for them. It’s time they stopped enjoying all the benefits by themselves. It’s time for a different approach, a new approach to employee compensation that recognizes and rewards them generously for the role they play in the success of the company.
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