Four Pillars for a Better Future: Knowledge, Consciousness, Innovation, Local Action – Part 3

There’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got… because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now… the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. 

– George Carlin on The American Dream

Part 2 of this series dived into the importance of technology and innovation to the evolution of the human species. Indeed, innovation is one of the most important pieces to the puzzle, with the caveat that such advancements must be rooted in higher consciousness. An unconscious people will create and embrace technology that will enslave, while a conscious and thoughtful people will manifest innovation that can propel humans forward toward a vastly superior paradigm. Consciousness + innovation are the two most crucial variables when it comes to realizing our higher potential in the decades and centuries to come.

That said, not everyone has the capacity or desire to work on the next groundbreaking technology. That’s perfectly fine. What we all possess is the capacity to become more conscious,thoughtful and loving, and it’s from this foundation that every individual can contribute to the creation of a better world. Whether you’re a lawyer, a banker, a painter or a chef, the most important thing you can do is ensure your work stems from a higher state of consciousness.

An unfortunate aspect of life here on earth is we often neglect the power we have as individuals to affect the world around us. We overlook the fact we’re presented with various opportunities on a daily basis to do some good via small interactions with others and the environment. Don’t discount the importance of all the little things you do every day simply because you aren’t in a corporate suite making billion dollar decisions, or voting on legislation in Congress. You have tremendous power to influence the world around you each and every day. Don’t let the seemingly little, but consequential, daily opportunities pass you by unconsciously. Everything we do matters.

Once you recognize your true power, you start to realize the current world is designed to prevent you from figuring it out. In fact, much of our media and culture is designed to make us feel small, inferior, weak, scared and insecure. We’re endlessly encouraged to obsess about the bread and circus spectacles that are Presidential elections, with the implication that voting for some new fraud every four years is the highest manifestation of our duties as citizens. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

No billionaire or political “rising star” is going to sweep down and save you, the country, or the planet. It’s up to us to do that, and until we stop being lazy and admit this, we’ll continue to fall for conmen and women who offer fairytales visions of imminent salvation via a centralized and monumentally corrupt Washington D.C.

The point is we need to first work on ourselves and then take it from there. A conscious people will not just bring forth liberating innovation, a conscious people will also understand that political change comes from the ground up, not from the top of the pyramid. Thinking otherwise is actually insane. Paradigm level change will never come from a place as deranged and corrupt as Washington D.C. Forget getting the “right people” in office and instead get to work at the local level.

I like to highlight the issue of cannabis because it’s extremely instructive. Thanks solely to the will of the people, 9 states have now made cannabis fully legal, and it’s been decriminalized in another 13 states.

This represents a historical achievement that would’ve appeared inconceivable 20 years ago. Most importantly, it was led by the people themselves in Colorado and Washington, where citizens directly voted to legalize it via public referendum in 2012. Significantly, the federal government played no role whatsoever. If anything, that centralized, corrupt bureaucracy has been actively holding things back, as we saw in 2016, when the DEA denied two petitions to reschedule marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Bottom line, Washington D.C. won’t be the wellspring of anything decent or beneficial, so stop indulging in such fantasies. Rather, we need to change as individuals and then drive meaningful improvement at the local level. Cannabis is just one high profile example of how much power the people can exert if we get organized and demand change. In fact, legalization has been such a success 65% of the U.S. population (including a majority of Republicans) now think cannabis should be legal. It’s become such a clear cut issue at this point even a federal fossil like Jeff Session is essentially powerless to stop it. Take the lessons learned from the huge success of the cannabis legalization movement and apply them everywhere.

The point of this piece is to emphasize that we the people actually possess a lot of power. We relinquish that power by indulging in these silly games of looking for a decent politician to vote for. Even if we got one, D.C. is so entirely corrupt and entrenched with nefarious interests, a well-meaning person doesn’t stand a chance. The solutions to our problems will never come from the top, so please let that fairytale go.

In reality, the true power resides in each and every one of us. Let’s start using it.

In case you missed them:

Four Pillars for a Better Future: Knowledge, Consciousness, Innovation, Local Action – Part 1

Four Pillars for a Better Future: Knowledge, Consciousness, Innovation, Local Action – Part 2

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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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