Last night
I listened to the fireworks that were being set off somewhere rather quite
nearby, as I could hear quite distinctly the sounds of the combustion burning
up in the air like to quite some detail. The loud bangs and hissing and whistling
went on for a few hours. From where I was, lying in bed, I did not see any
flashing lights, all I heard was the sounds. Sounds like those you would hear
in warfare, and it would be bombs and missiles, and there would probably also
be the element of the sound of things breaking and being busted accompanying
the loud blasts. As I lay there, I allowed myself to really question why we do
this, why do we have a celebration where we blast fake bombs into the sky with flashy lights, and really have a look at just what it is we’re doing, how we react to this event,
what we get out of it, what’s our relationship to/with it? Does it make sense, or is it really extremely bizarre?
It’s as if
through this display, a big fanfare of energetic blasts it’s as if to say, ‘everything’s
fine, everything’s alright, look we’re doing so ok that we can celebrate, I mean,
we wouldn’t celebrate if things weren’t ok right? Our society and economy obviously
must be stable and going along just fine if we’re able to put on such a
display, right?
Yet meanwhile
all the same problems are still going on in the world, as is. Everything is obviously
not fine, and bombs are dropping in places where such sounds are scaring the
living shit out of people because such sounds are the sounds of bombs and
missiles and mean you could die at any moment, or have yourself be blasted apart
or who knows what atrocity.
I used to
see the 4th of July as a positive thing, but it was really my imagination
about it, as the idea I had of it, as how it was presented to me as a child,
and I associated it with positive things, like holiday from school, you get to
play and everybody is putting on a good mood, and there is cheesecake or pie or
some such yummy thing you get to indulge in. And it is something different from
the ‘norm’, a break from the ‘day to day’ same-old routine- not realizing that
such things are like ‘coping mechanisms’ which assist us to ‘put up with’ the
day to day drudgery by giving a little break from it for a moment so it doesn’t
seem so bad, and then I can continue on just waiting til the next break. And I
learned to associate positivity to the U.S., and the American flag, like ‘hooray
for our team!’, like the positive feeling that’s associated with sports and teams
and winning and being proud of ‘your team’ because ‘you’ve won’ and so all
these things that I’d associated as positive through memories, is what I was
really seeing the 4th of July as/through - I was just reliving the
experiences and feelings of those previous memories and experiences, and not
actually seeing it for and as what/how it really is, in the context of reality and what is really going on in the world.
Now when
you just look at it in actuality for what it is, it’s really quite a pompous
act from a country who has done such extensive harm in the world, perhaps the
most out of any country, with its people brainwashed enough to think it is the
greatest country while it has rained down so much terror on the world, with it’s
‘war on terror’ which is really a war of
terror, because we are really the terror, that tears this world apart through force
and fear, tears apart humanity by wreaking such harm to terrorize us and drive
us further and further apart, from who we are as equals here, from standing
together and living together in unison, which I mean, I though it was called
the ‘united’ states but there is nothing about actual ‘unity’ about it – it is
about the destruction of unity, it is about one country that unites together to
cause untold harm in apparently protecting its own self-interest, which it then
celebrates with fake bombs, celebrating the real
bombs and warfare and harm that did
not actually procure our freedom, but served to make a few a lot of money,
while many have fought and suffered and died in unnecessary wars that were only
ever for the greed of a few, because war is not how you gain ‘independence’, war
is in fact how we have caused dependence
of the countries we ravage that now can’t stand on their own and require
assistance.
There has been numerous cases of this which are documented
throughout history and it still goes on today, you just will not find it in the
mainstream media, as that is privately owned and the information it puts out is
controlled to shape a rather different version of reality, which is how we can
end up thinking the U.S. is great despite the reality that is actually going on
and that others are experiencing the consequences of first hand. For some education on this suggest to watch the documentary The War on Democracy.
It’s quite a
reflection of our general total disregard for life here as we don’t consider
what effect this event of blowing things up for no reason might have on all the
other beings that exist here, or using the up the finite resources of the earth
which we are already squandering excessively putting more and more pressure on
our overburdened ecosystem, but just impose our celebration because we want it
and we only care about ourselves and our own feel-good experience, and we don’t
even know what impact this might have on the environment or how this may effect
for example animals that are sensitive to sounds. I mean, for example, the cat that
I take care of and who is sensitive to loud sounds and events did not come home
to be fed until well after all the explosions had stopped, so she was quite
likely hiding somewhere terrified and very hungry, but so often we are only
thinking about ourselves at all, just existing within our imagination
throughout the day in our own separate reality bubble, where the beings you
interact with you don’t even consider them as beings equal to yourself, but
they are just mere actors or props in your play in your mind that you are the
star of, just like in hollywood. Stuck in the memories and feelings of past experiences,
ignorant to the effect we’re having in reality, the harm we’re causing through
attempting to live out our imagination onto reality, where if we would but simply
look at what we’re doing and the effect we’re having we would see it, and so
our ignorance is really just an illusion as it’s all happening right here in
front of us.
The ironic
thing is - we actually have no independence, whatsoever. Our living, our
lifestyle, it all is dependent on many many individuals who are not even U.S.
citizens, as in all the outsourced slave labor which we depend upon daily for
so much of our products that we utilize in all aspects of our lives and living.
How can we pretend/think/believe we have independence when you don’t even know
where the food in your grocery store comes from, or who made the shirt you’re
wearing, where dividends on your investments come from – somewhere individuals
are doing labor that provides these things, and you are depending on them. We
live off of the labor of others while taking them totally for granted at the
same time, ignoring the fact that there are millions and billions enslaved
while we go and celebrate how the U.S. has managed to create so many slaves for
us to provide us with all sorts of consumer products, which we then become
enslaved so that we can buy buy buy. It’s the American Dream isn’t it?
So we are
not independent, we’re interdependent, because we all live here on this same
planet. Interdependence is not a problem, it is the fact that we are all
connected within this shared reality and all living here together, and thus
what one do effects all, and thus within this we must ensure that what we do
and what we support is harming no one because that will have consequences in a
shared reality.
And when we
are also totally dependent on our ecosystem to live – yet we trash it and
disregard it as if we had some form of independence from it. Yet without the
resources that the earth provides unconditionally, your body would not be
supported and your body would die and you would be gone, and that is about as
dependent as you can get. Within this, implies that we must then take the
utmost care of our ecosystem and each other in a way that is best for all life.
I mean,
when we get to that point, that would really be something to celebrate. When we
get to the point where the best life is a basic human right for everyone.
Suggested reading:
There's argument that having a basic income though would be a disincentive to working. But we are viewing this from the eyes of what is already here. I mean, what would you call disincentive? Being severely underpaid to the point where you have to take multiple jobs and still can't pay all your bills? Being short staffed and overworked, where the service you provide is often the cheapest it can possibly be and cutting corners is a requirement of the job so there is really no satisfaction in the service you're providing, and often facing disgruntled customers who don't like the poor service for the price they're paying when it's not like you are doing it on purpose? Receiving little to no paid time off or benefits? Where the company for whom your labor is making profits for has no regard for you? Where's the incentive in that? 
