Every idea that you accept as true came from somewhere. Did you arrive at your beliefs through your own volition, through observation and understanding of reality, or did you passively accept what others taught you?
Can you trace the origins of the ideas you believe in? Can you trust that whoever came up with them had your best interests in mind?
Do some of your ideas come from…
Universities? That’s where the professors who set the standards preach that there are no absolutes, that reality is something happening in your head, and that there is no right or wrong. Think I’m kidding? Look at the products of our universities: every modern intellectual, lawyer, and politician has been to college and absorbed those ideas to some degree, and it’s hard to find one who isn’t corrupt. As for the rest of us, you’re lucky if today’s average college graduate can spell his name.
Politicians? You mean the slime who are constantly calling for sacrifice and egalitarianism — forcing the best to sink to the level of the worst, in the name of equality — yet they don’t mind being the masters who would make us all slaves.
Religions? Where they all have one thing in common, whether they venerate Jesus, Buddha, or space aliens: the idea that this world you’re living in now is only a vale of tears, and that the true reality lies beyond death. Do you want to live your life only to look forward to its end? Do you believe that man is dirty, sinful, and depraved, and his only salvation lies in a martyr who supposedly died for our sake — even though he was divine, and therefore immortal anyway? Do you realize that they tell you these nonsensical things because they want you to stop thinking and obey them forever?
The food industry? They are very good at manipulating wheat, corn, and soy into products that resemble food. They are good at marketing it, to the point that most Americans think that potatoes have always come out of a cardboard box or a mylar bag and sugar is an essential nutrient. They are not good at understanding what is best for your body. They’re most concerned with profits in the next quarter or two, not with the long term consequences of their products or farming practices. Their heavily processed food may not cause any noticeable harm to your body in the next quarter — but what if you eat if for the rest of your life? Are you willing to let a bunch of short-term thinkers determine your long-term health?
The entertainment industry? When they show us a hero, he’s either a drug addict or an alcoholic. You can’t find a successful, independent businessman in any movie or TV show who doesn’t have some kind of character flaw or isn’t presented as a money-grubber. They ridicule the concept of the human ideal, and offer as their highest and best, men and women who are mediocre and proud of it.
Economists? Who say that the way to get out of debt is to spend more? Who will admit — in technical papers with a lot of math — that you can’t consume what you don’t produce, but will then invent schemes to allow our government to consume without producing? Who reject money based on some commodity like gold or silver that each one of us values independently, for better or worse, in favor of pieces of paper that only they control the value of? Do you think they want that value to increase or decrease? Hint: it has decreased consistently, sometimes rapidly, for nearly one hundred years; a dollar from 1913 would be worth less than 2 cents today. Then they scream that we desperately need them to keep it so “stable.”
Environmentalists? Who want to preserve nature for its own sake — as though it has value apart from what it means to man or what he chooses to do with it? Who claim that nature has some “right” to run rampant and do whatever it does, because it’s natural; yet man is somehow not part of nature and must have his growth and progress constrained for the sake of rocks and microbes?
Society in general? Which, if it could profess an opinion as a single organ, would say: mediocrity rules, don’t be too sure of anything, extremes are dangerous, take the middle path, compromise your principles — hell, what’s a principle anyway? — hide your true self, blend in, wear the clothes we wear, act the way we act, care about what we think, and above all else, don’t rise too far and make us jealous or we’ll bring you back down to our level.
Every action you take starts as an idea, and every idea you believe came from someplace. What you have to figure out is where your ideas came from, and whether they are congruent with the real world, or with someone else’s careless thinking or outright malevolence. Only with an active mind can you remain happy and free.
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