Here is a simple question for you. Don’t think too long about it. You have to choose. What would you rather be? The oppressor or the oppressed?
Easy choice?
You probably did not need long to come up with an answer. Bar a number of people with certain fetishes, the majority would, without hesitation, opt for being the oppressor. It puts the control in your own hands. It offers you the possibility to decide. Every day. This, for most people is freedom. However, being an oppressor comes with a feat quickly overlooked.
Fallacy of freedom
As an oppressor, you wield power over others. However, that power is not something tangible. You cannot see it. It only lives in the mind of… the oppressed. As long as the oppressed believe you are the oppressor, you stay in control.
Let that sink in for a while. As oppressor, you are one hundred percent dependent on what people believe. If, for whatever reason, they change their mind, your power is gone.
So you inadvertently have become slave to their thinking. You can wield your power as much as you can, if they stop believing in you, it’s game over. So who is holding the real power in the end?
Now, for millennia people have devised ways to insure and protect the oppressor. Deception, lies, bribery, extortion, etc., an endless list of tools and methods to keep the status quo. Certain schools of thought have actually been promoting these methods in order to help those in power to stay in power.
A new era has begun
Thanks to the internet, truth has now become a very fluid concept. Whereas before, leaders (sometimes oppressors) told their followers what was true, now the truth is basically what you want it to be. You choose first, then you seek support in (fabricated?) facts and opinions. The below cartoon by Kris Straub from chainsawsuit.com demonstrates it beautifully:
Source: Chainsawsuit.com
As you can imagine, the internet has the potential to undermine any deception, any fake news, any attempt to strengthen the position of the oppressor. Although this is welcomed by the oppressed, it comes at a tremendously high price though: the real truth goes down as well.
Philosophers might argue that real truth never existed in the first place. I would wholeheartedly agree.
The point however is that truth from others certainly does not exists anymore. Therefore, you can only resort to the only, everlasting, rock solid bastion of the ultimate truth… your inner Self. When you connect to your deeper feelings, you intuitively know what is truth for you. I believe this intuitive knowing is the key for a sustainable future of human kind.
Now more than ever
Many luminaries in the past have spoken about this invisible force that we all carry within us. It is well worth your time reading books about this topic. However, perhaps more interesting and definitely more important is the following question: How can we activate it?
One way to achieve this is by meditation. By practicing daily meditation, new neural pathways are created in the brain. This shifts the way you think. And by doing so, you change your mind. You start to see the world differently and subsequently, you change your belief system. You start to feel an innate connection to others, to the planet and to the universe. From that perspective, all issues that we face can easily be resolved.
The time has come. The time is now. We need to change our mind. We can no longer accept to perpetuate the way we have been living. If we don’t take action now, we settle for nothing later.