What we must face and admit, is that when we are only thinking of ourselves and holding ourselves and our actions to different standards than we hold others, that if we can look at who we are within doing that, that we have essentially made ourself an enemy of who we are acting against. That within that, we are the criminal, because we have justified doing harm to another that we would not accept to be done to ourself by another, and thus we cause our own problems through our own disregard of each other.
This solution to inequality is simply not taught, because it’s not ‘good for business’ for those that would profit from the system the way it is, and thus why it is a point of self-education to correct the misinformation we are instilled with. I suggest to investigate the Living Income Guaranteed, which shows that there is another way we can do things here, which is based on the very principle of to ‘do unto another as you’d have done unto you’, or, in other words, to ‘give as you would like to receive’, which really means to break out of the misconception of considering oneself in opposition to all others, and to consider all beings as equal to you.
As Howard Zinn discusses in this interview Howard Zinn - Hidden History of The American Working Class how the education system actually presents this very one-sided picture of the U.S. where they take what has been a very violent and exploitative history (and still ongoing) and twists it into a pretty picture, where all the actions of the U.S. are apparently justified, and the actions of all other countries are unacceptable, even when it is the same or not even as extreme, as the very actions of the U.S. unto other countries. This education, which is reinforced by our media and Hollywood, is what predominantly shapes our lopsided value-system. Watch this fascinating documentary Hollywood and the war machine to see how Hollywood has been deliberately utilized as propaganda to drive wars.
I myself was a product of the disinformation of what we learn in the education system and how the media presents things, because it was all I knew at one point. And I never questioned it until I was faced with different sides of the story, for example if you would read The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, probably one of the most important history lessons you will ever have.
And I must say that although I practically never enjoyed the history classes I had in school, I loved reading this, because it was not meaningless and detached and full of holes like the history I learned in school, where history is simply not taught in a way that would typically engage a student, because you are essentially being told the way things are but given no real honest explanation, or for that matter, any consideration of the consequences of what we’ve done throughout our history. I mean history is quite commonly thought of as an extremely boring and annoying subject, and that works out quite well from those who would benefit from the mass of the population not knowing really anything about history or having any interest in it whatsoever, because that is how you can get away with using the same control tactics again and again. I mean, if no one remembers what happened before, we won’t be watching out for it again, and that’s how we fall for the same old stories and ideas that become the justifications that lead us into war, which is a very profitable business for some.
Within all this, I eventually accepted the justifications myself, that apparently we have enemies and thus must fight them and we’re ‘protecting’ ourselves. I was so sold on the idea that apparently there were these vicious enemies out there who were big and posed some sort of real threat to us and so we just had to protect ourselves. Yet, I had no idea actually how bid any of these countries were, or how developed they are, and probably most importantly why do they apparently want to attack us? I mean, for me to want to attack someone, it took a reason. I had to believe that they were a threat to me or harmed me in some way. So, wouldn’t that hold true for the supposed ‘enemies’ as well? I mean, I knew they are people, human beings, just like me. Same bodies with superficial differences, and you’ve got moms and dads and children, etc. They all need the same things as me like food, water, shelter, education. Sure we have some cultural differences, though those are usually blown out of proportion by the media, in order to highlight our apparent differences, to feed the idea and misperception that there could be human beings out there that are ‘just different’ and just want to harm us for no good reason, and so we won’t ever realize that nobody just wants to hurt others, and we’ll never investigate or question to get to the bottom of what is really going on, as such behavior is always the symptom of something out of ordinary going on.
We’ll go up to here for this post and continue in the next.
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