A Mote of Insistence

After a tumultuous cascade of events, I arrived at a last-resort location. Last (hyphen) resort, as in least desired. To soothe the shame and resentment vibrating from these circumstances, I then bridled myself with the task of clearing generational trauma, while at the same time, surrounded by it. Finding ourself currently in the midst of helping my 75-year old pater clear out a lifetime of ‘stuff’ from his living and working environments.

Most, likely all of us have a closet or garage or spare room or pantry that could use this care. But uncluttering seven decades worth of consumerist hoarding, of which few are immune to, is no joke. It usually is, at first at least, an overwhelming reminder of all we let go to waste. The unused, rarely used, barely used for which often hard earned currency exchanged. The brand name majority and the out of date or expired, all mushed together with the useful or essential.

On the first or second day of the process, I picked up a stack of books off the seat of the theater recliners which he had only sat in one time. As I moved the books from their place to the recently cleared side table I noticed the title on top of the stack. It read Daily Reminder, 1984.

I put them down and laughed quite out loud, as I turned around to look at the stacks upon stacks of things; processed foods, piles of electronics, all forms of media,100’s of t-shirts and 1000’s of socks, trinkets, dust. The difference between a stuffed life and resources, regardless of income. Immediately this poem sprang to mind.

For our parents parents parents the narrative came from the home, the lineage. Many of our parents parents however, were sold a narrative about the world, through advertising, spurned on through additive, and culminating in addiction. And so for much of our parent’s generation it was quite appropriate to be taught that to buy that narrative, and those additives was success. But whose?

We are now not only in the urgent state of capture that is the ecosystems of the world at large, we are the children and parents of children who must teach how to reject those narratives. For ourselves and those we love. To be aware and on the lookout for what Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein would call the Sucker’s Folly. That tendency of short-term benefit to far to often obscure risk and long-term cost. Our susceptibility of acceptance for behaviors that result in more loss than gain. Across the board.

For what is deemed politics or governance, capitalism or consumerism— the game theory charade that has played out in front of us, for generations now, has squarely focused on the pursuit of freedom preservation. Our own or others. Those types of freedoms we worry can be taken. Yet it is the other kind, the freedoms that can be given, we have failed to be properly concerned about.

The true battle for freedom is being fought every day in what individuals buy or who we earn for. How we obtain. And those small choices that we make every day are a big part of why we are where we are. With the curtain being pulled back on western life, revealing a contraption of its own motivation. Of which we are likely pawns. Guaranteed pawns.

Our elections and our liberties have shown themselves to have so little to do with the once every four or two year buffoonery of democracy that were shown. The battle for our freedoms happens each day; at the grocery store, at the gas pump, at the online checkout, at the time clock. While our legislators and legislations are composed behind closed doors, in boardrooms and off camera. Our media storyboards are planned before the news is news.

We give all year, every year and twice as much on election years to the forces and farces that move industrial complexes, military or economic. We do this, by our ‘own volition’. Again, we convince ourselves it is for clean water and smooth roads, education and protection for our health and families. But at a first principle level, what we actually get with our giving, whether it is our attention to media or donation to cause, is overwhelmed by choice.

Options for olive oil alone at most grocers or the stocks of online retailers or new fashions, or social platforms, or video content, or shoe maker, or restaurant or automobile. Options, of what to consume, when, how much, with who, for who, against whom. We like to think we are in charge of the quality of our choices, but these decisions are often more unconsciously driven than is believed.

Which is further compounded by the profiteering aim that most companies harbor. Meaning, that while in spaces over saturated with choices we have to make, many purveyors are out there offering products that are at many levels meant to fail or effect the chemistry of the consumer in order to produce repeat business. Planned obsolescence.

With goods, the options are very often for making a bad choice. And with services, the options are most likely about who you’ll make wealthy with your choice. None of these choices are about customer satisfactions. Few are about lifetime goods that can be counted on, fewer are about the present well being of the partaker. They are about the longevity of the market entity. And we are all fodder for those mechanisms.

And while I could, think I should, list (small whole foods retailers, homeopathic medicinal approaches, alternative transportation, homegrown, handmade, lifetime guaranteed, and on and on) ways in which we might begin to address these manipulations. The hands in our change purses. The truth is, it might be beyond our fixing, sans conflict, sans struggle, sans major upheaval to the levels of complacency we have come to consider living. The best I feel I could do, would be to urge.

Urge any (as I have my father) to examine there own stake in these rouses. Urge those with children to better educate on what can be deemed successful and worth striving for. Urge us all to say no to convenience or symbolic status where ever possible, while uttering our yeses to that which is valuable and sustaining at every chance.

Urge to take as much notice of oneself as any can, in order to better notice all outside that is missed.

Have a lovely week.