Put simply, modern philosophers espousing Efilism (‘life’ spelled
backwards) believe you should be able to sue your parents in court for
your having been born, and that having been born at all subjects you to a
life of suffering no matter how privileged you are growing up. In essence,
Efilism is the belief that you are being asked your whole life to push a
boulder up a hill then when you reach the top of the hill the boulder rolls
back down and then you are required to push the boulder back up the hill,
time and time again, throughout eternity because this is your destiny once
you are born until you die.
However, dying is not as final as you may think. Children surveyed today in
America ages 7 to 12 are afraid the world is going to end in their lifetime
due to climate change, so why not be nihilists rejecting constructive,
productive principles and believing life is meaningless?
The native American Indian believes when you die you are reincarnated
into another life form, including human forms, and that in your ‘karma’ you
are destined to suffer through reincarnated life after reincarnated life never
ending forever with no escape. Buddhists believe you can escape the
suffering of reincarnation, by doing good, constructive things including
thinking productive thoughts basically living a ‘positive life’ which will
allow you to reach a state of ‘nirvana’ that will act as an escape hatch from
future reincarnations. Reaching ‘nirvana’ allows your soul to finally escape
Mother Nature’s merciless clutches of ruthless suffering, sending your soul
into the heavenly celestial bodies, as Martin Luther King said, to be “Free at
last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!”
The success and continuation of Western civilization is based on making
more and more money so we can continue to consume more and more.
Today, in America there are fewer and fewer good paying jobs that pay
enough to meet the high prices we now pay for everything we need to
survive but we would never know this because throughout history
politicians have always sought ‘an advantage’ creating ‘big lies’ to dupe the
masses in one direction or another knowing full well that life, like our
memory, is short and is to be taken advantage of. This is human
nature…survival of the fittest.
Today, American culture is normalizing the abnormal. Millionaires and
billionaires, insulated by their wealth, can easily afford to go around
saying, “I don’t care what anyone thinks of me for saying what I believe.”
The rest of us can ‘think’ what we want but possibly risk everything we
have worked for if we ‘say’ out loud what we think.
Working for ‘the man’ for dollar bills, nothing more than ink and paper that
translates into debt, is not freedom but regret…of ever being born? Life is a
spiderweb all connected and dissected into a non-connected, passionless,
‘blank-stare’ world where ‘working people’ are treated like animals. Many of
us are treated even crueler until we pass the self-censorship culture tests
by memorizing all the right lines to say and obey, or risk being labeled then
ostracized from society with the rest of the animals branded as defiant non-
conformists who revolt against the ruling elite and influencers.
So, what are working class taxpayers and the poor worldwide up against?
Well, the U.S. government has 750 armed military bases around the world
and America controls 60% of the world’s wealth. The next closest country,
China, has only 40 armed military bases worldwide and controls less than
5% of the world’s wealth making America easily the most authoritarian,
domineering, threatening nation on the world stage.
Furthermore, the shortsighted, uninformed, reactionary, ‘for profit’ news
media is too often, for whatever reasons as noted here above, ‘late to the
party’. For example, nearly 3 years too late in late 2022 after the
coronavirus pandemic of 2020, NBC-TV news admits that prolonged
masking of the public inhibits herd immunity. Critics charge, those
vaccinated for the Covid-19 virus may be at higher risk of having
‘inflammation of the heart’ compared to those studied who were never
vaccinated with the Moderna and Pfizer coronavirus vaccines. Herd
immunity is the only thing protecting all humanity from viral pandemics in
2000 years of recorded history.
Not reaching herd immunity allowed the 90 million members of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) to unsuccessfully impose on China’s one billion
people brutal zero Covid-19 mandated masking and lockdowns for the past
3 years resulting in civil unrest in China. The CCP is converting China’s
currency into a digital currency. Digital currency can be voided or ‘turned
off’ for any individual who revolts allowing the CCP to literally starve you to
death. Foxconn City in China is Apple’s iPhone factory, what critics call an
unsanitary ‘sweatshop’, where one million Chinese live working 12-hour
shifts. Reportedly, each worker shares a bed with another worker that
works the second 12-hour shift and ‘suicide nets’ were eventually installed
around the exterior of the multi-story plant housing the million workers to
catch workers who cannot take it anymore and try to jump to their death.
Also, in late 2022 during the uprising by the Chinese people against the
CCP’s Covid-19 lockdowns, and NOT normal procedure to make changes
to Apple’s iPhones without notifying iPhone customers first but to appease
the CCP, Apple disabled their ‘Airdrop’ app on all iPhones ONLY in China
so the Chinese people could not use their iPhones to communicate with
each other and contribute to or cause more civil unrest.
An aside, in Cuba the Cuban government’s communist/socialist dictators
control how much protein (beef) every Cuban is allowed to buy every
month from the government. The government owns all the beef cattle in
Cuba. The law in Cuba is if you accidentally hit a cow and kill it with your
car you are allowed to butcher the cow, hence the herding of government
owned cattle on to roadways to be ‘hit’ conveniently, accidentally on
purpose.
Similarly, the liability laws instilled by the China’s communist/socialist
dictators of the CCP force the driver of the car at fault in a car accident that
hits a pedestrian on a roadway to pay all medical costs and all lost pay
costs of the pedestrian injured in the accident. Thus, too often the driver at
fault that hit a pedestrian will back over the pedestrian hit, then run over
the victim again and again until the pedestrian is dead because it is
cheaper to pay for a funeral than it is to pay for an injured victim’s medical
costs and lost pay. Life is cheap in China.
In America, the privileged must also be held accountable by the
underprivileged. For example, in 2022 a crypto currency titan said his
apartment was burgled by a couple of lower income individuals and the
culprits were caught in a matter of days and immediately jailed. However,
this same crypto currency titan, in late 2022, wonders why a fellow crypto
currency titan, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), is not yet in jail. SBF is 30 years
old and has always lived a life of privilege with his parents who are M.I.T.
law professors; and SBF just so happens to be America’s 2 nd largest
political election donor in 2022, as well as having very friendly ties with the
Chairman of the 2022 U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In
2022, SBF bankrupted many crypto currency investors by mismanaging
billions of dollars of crypto currency funds he was trusted to manage.
However, in late 2022, SBF is still walking the streets unfettered and
untouched by law enforcement months after misappropriating billions of
dollars of investors’ funds.
All we want is accountability and equality which will allow us to standup on
our own feet, take a stand and tell ‘the man’ you do not own me or the land.
But ‘the man’ says we all owe taxes to pay back ‘the system’ that ‘the man’
created if we want to keep our freedom. If we do not pay up ‘the man’ will
go to war against us. So, submit to the taxes and now, in 2022, also pay the
new taxes via high prices on most everything we need to survive…high
prices that are not going much lower anytime in the foreseeable future.
This war costs too much making us underprivileged ‘have nots’, slaves to
‘the man’ and ‘the System’. Get a clue and walk away from or revolt against
‘the man’ who owns the land, chopped down the forests and keeps us
slaves on a tight leash and complacent by distracting us with ‘cheap thrills’
like stimulants and depressants. Pay the taxes and pay the bills to the
corporations, government and politicians that created the ‘fictitious
entities’, like consumerism, capitalism and socialism just to name a few,
that you are trained and indoctrinated to believe in. ‘The System’ is all so
self-serving and corrupt and we are enslaved by it.
Nothing is free and there are no rights to save us. Life offers no solution.
Who is really free? We cannot even breathe. Global conflicts are created
like factories by the gods of ‘the System’, the psychopath leaders without
love, who kill the innocent for money offering them up to ‘the System’ like
sacrificial lambs for the leaders’ love of death, fear, hate, corruption…and
money.
And you want to try and live like this in a factionless world run by dollar
bills where there are only bills to pay. We, the factionless, do the work no
one else wants to do and in return we get food, clothing, shelter and maybe
a small bank account but never enough. Go try to eat a dollar bill. We are
slaves to ‘the System’. It was not meant to be this way. The leaders of ‘the
System’ took our freedom.
Wake up. Standup and revolt. The ‘f___ing rich man’ and political power
elites thrive on division. UNITE and take back the rights to your fair share
of the land, and fair share of the riches it produces, and fair share of what
is produced on it. Too often employee unions in America are corrupted and
‘in the bag’ for the corporations and political elites then settle union
disputes with corporations for crumbs, offering workers wage increases
and more paid sick days instead of a big cut of corporate profits…the
whole time the ruling elite is laughing behind the workers’ backs for the
workers lack of backbone to resist and revolt.
During the 1800s in the Old South in America, in many cases, slaveowners
and the slaveowner’s crew on the plantation were outnumbered by slaves
one hundred to one. The slaves could have easily revolted and killed the
whole slaveowner’s crew…but never did. Today, America’s corporate slave
masters wonder the same thing about working class taxpayers
assuming…one day…the working class will get some backbone and revolt.
You are brainwashed and made to feel unequal to those in power, to those
with wealth, to the big movie stars, professional ball players, corporate
titans and so on. Your only chance for equality is to organize and UNITE.
There is no power on Earth that can beat strength in numbers.
Are you willing to die for what you believe in like many of our ancestors?
Life gives you essentially 3 choices. You can do nothing and submit or
‘quit’ which is akin to suicide. Or you can deny or blame and live
unsatisfied, relatively unhappy, maybe even miserably. Or you can be
disobedient…mutinous. Rise up, resist, rebel in defiance…and revolt.
The first to make the ultimate sacrifice for ‘the Cause’ to beat ‘the System’
requires existential heroes who explore the problem of human existence
and centers on the subjective experience of thinking, feeling, and ‘acting
out’ in response. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to
the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence. The existential hero
fights for freedom and rights without expecting reward, because this hero
is destined to ‘the calling’ with a duty to fulfill an obligation to humanity like
so many of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution and signers of
the Declaration of Independence in 1776 who were mostly daring young
men ages 30 to 40 willing to put targets on their backs and die for freedom.
What is the ‘unofficial’ history of ‘the System’ in America? The U.S. was
born in the 1700s in a revolt against the British monarch’s system of
taxation, government and its corporations. After the Boston Tea Party
revolt in the Boston harbor in 1773 and the ensuing Declaration of
Independence, subsequently for 100 years Americans remained extremely
suspicious of corporate power and were careful how they granted
corporate charters in America, including the powers that were granted to
corporations.
So, initially corporations were controlled by the states which granted
charters to incorporate, and the states could dissolve any corporation if it
violated its state charter. Limitations were set by the individual states on
how big and powerful companies could ever become.
Moreover, corporations were not allowed to participate in the political
process and they could not buy stock in other corporations. If caught
doing so the consequences were severe. This means at one time the
people, not corporations, were in control of corporations
.
So, what happened? After the Civil War in 1866, this essentially marked the
beginning of the struggle between corporations and civilians. During the
Civil War corporations made huge profits off supplying war materials and
services and thus began to pay-off or buy political legislators, judges and
supposedly even U.S. Presidents. Ulysses S. Grant was the first elected
President after President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Grant has been
accused by critics as one of the most corrupt U.S. Presidents ever.
Before President Lincoln was assassinated, he warned that corporations
have become enthroned and corruption will follow as corporate power and
‘money’ will be used to work on the prejudices of the people to help
aggregate the wealth into the hands of a few, thus destroying what our
Founding Fathers envisioned as the republic and the true spirit of
democracy.
Remember too that just a few hundred years before the U.S. Civil War of
1860, currency had become standardized by the aristocracy to maintain
and sustain power, and to this day everyone is still forced to use and
borrow this same standardized currency from the aristocrat landowners
who, in turn, became the governments, bankers and insurers we have
today.
No one in power paid much attention to Lincoln’s protest about the
corruption of corporate power and money. In fact, corporations
subsequently grew stronger and more powerful until they were able to have
the laws governing their very creation amended so that states could not
revoke corporate charters and corporate profits could not be limited to how
they would be used.
Eventually, even the U.S. Supreme Court virtually turned on the citizenry by
declaring in a court case that a private corporation was entitled to
protection under the Bill of Rights, which then gave corporations all the
rights and privileges enjoyed previously only by the people, and this also
included freedom of speech. Freedom of speech gave corporations the
same powers as private citizens. However, considering the vast financial
and political resources wielded by corporations, they became far more
powerful than the average citizen, essentially gaining more freedom than
the citizenry as well as the ability to defend and exploit corporate rights
and freedoms more than the citizenry.
This act by a few men on the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to undermine the
U.S. Constitution of one man one vote and equality in public debates. Sixty
years later, Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, said this one court
case that gave corporations protection under the Bill of Rights had no
historical precedence to be based on and was illogical and unreasonable.
This one great legal blunder by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 19th Century
seems to have changed the whole idea of democracy in government
governing corporations making politicians beholding more to the
corporations than the citizenry…working class taxpayers. Today, in many
cases, corporate trusts are far too powerful to be challenged and the court
system seems to tend to consistently favor corporate interests. Also, many
critics feel that America is now ruled by a coalition of government and
business interests.
For example, with all the questions swirling around the pharmaceutical
industry concerning health risks and profit motives, like those of the Pfizer
and Moderna’s coronavirus vaccines, all ‘big pharma’ should be held to
higher, safer standards. First, drug makers can develop drugs but should
NOT be trusted to test them and NOT trusted to hold on to data about the
drugs they develop as they are today. Second, ‘big pharma’ should NOT be
allowed to fund (give money to) the regulators that decide if the drug
maker’s new drugs are going to be allowed on the market for public
consumption as they are today. Third, ‘big pharma’ should NOT be allowed
to contribute to politicians’ political campaigns as they are today.
Unlike a military takeover that could be pointed to, American corporations
waged a gradual, subversive, covert takeover of power. Now many
corporations are more powerful than many countries. The top 500
corporations in America hold 40% of the world’s wealth. They control the
airwaves, bankroll elections and constantly lobby legislators to set the
corporations’ own industrial, economic and cultural agendas.
We, the People, have lost all control and have unknowingly even accepted
it. We citizens go to corporations on our knees and say please do not do
this or do that. Have we forgotten how to stand up straight? The unofficial
history of American corporations is a story of democracy derailed. The
revolutionary spirit has been effectively suppressed. We, the People, have
been reduced to servitude.
We, the affluent People, may be in no mood to revolt against our way of
life…consumer capitalism. The masses seem unmoved by ecosystems
collapsing all around us and wholesale corporate takeovers. We seem more
concerned about getting good seats at sporting events and ordering drinks
to celebrate our minimal, ‘token’ wage increases and newfound wealth,
provided by corporations and the stock market, that keeps us complacent.
Today, you are either a player on the inside with your hand in the cash
register and head in the sand with your egregious lifestyle choices being
approved by the unaware, unknowing and uncaring news media; OR you
are on the outside looking in and considered to be of no consequence, just
a pawn for the players to push around as they see fit.
Are the political and corporate power elites ignoring the angry rebels
boiling up under the surface? As with most revolutions, the elite never
really seems to notice the rage that is building invisibly, except for
‘flashpoint revolts’ like the Black Panther Movement of the 1960s, the
Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s, the Paris Latin Quarter Riot of
1968, the Vietnam War protests of the1960s & 70s, the Soviet and Berlin
Wall collapse of the1970s, the 1910 Zapatista Mexican Revolution, and yes,
even the Seattle protest of 1999 which was rage against the World Trade
Organization (WTO) ALL of which planted the much needed seeds for
social change.
Remember, the WTO has given corporations so much power that even
countries are essentially powerless to enact legislation capable of fighting
the biggest worldwide corporate conglomerates. Now, is it any wonder then
why large numbers of activists gathered in Seattle in 1999 to protest the
WTO? Radicals in the past have fought for intangible ideas that seem like
dreams. Today, we look back and ask, “Was there ever any doubt that
particular events and social movements would NOT affect social change?”
In future protests about corporations, they may be chanting “Remember
Seattle” like revolutionaries used to chant “Remember the Alamo.”
Remember the movie The Fight Club? In a strange way this movie
expresses consumer rage against the deadening forces of commercialism,
consumerism and corporate takeovers.
The movie’s main characters harness the discontent of a generation whose
identities have been forged from clothes, cars and other creature comforts.
In the movie, government officials tell the band of rogues, called the Fight
Club, that they are wasting their time and their defiant, rebellious efforts
will be like trying to fight a 700-pound gorilla.
However, in real life existential heroes and cynical anarchists will UNITE to
remind the government, and its corporate overseers, that ‘the People’ they
are trying to keep down are the same people that government and
corporations depend on to cook, clean, service, produce and even haul the
trash, as well as guard them at night, so in the long run, do not mess with
‘the People’ whose strength is in their vast numbers. The bottom line to all
this may be something as simple as, “Remember Seattle!”
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: ANONYMOUS, INDEPENDENT
FREE-THINKER DECEMBER 2022