That is, after all, the best way to completely neuter it.

Castration is key here folks.

You will be told what not to choose by being told to choose it. You will be assured of the insanity by being fed your own rebellion in an easy to swallow, no bitter pill.

With a sugary coating.

What you believe doesn’t mean anything any more. It’s been fed to you. Served up in healthy servings chock full of vitamins. Your anti view is the view they want you to have. You have been taught to question, so that you will feel like you are thinking. You have learned to believe that in your own way, your thoughts matter. You have been educated to the point where you can in the most educated way, decry the atrocities that you think you see so that you can take comfort in those thoughts.

Discuss your theories on economic and governmental systems at length on your illusionary platforms as much as you like.

It doesn’t mean anything. You like your job. If you didn’t, and your convictions were as strong as you lend them to be with your rhetoric, you would leave them for something less distasteful. You like your lifestyle. If you didn’t, you might choose to sacrifice your comforts for your ideals. You like your advantages. If you didn’t, and you believed that you had come by them unfairly, you would give them up for the simple fact that you don’t believe that they are valid.

Next come the excuses. You’re doing this for reasons outside of your control. You’re doing this because you don’t have a choice.

Right?

It’s all good and well to condemn the systems that you buy into because of necessity. But what you seem to be missing is the admission that they might not be necessary. You accept them because you don’t see any other choice, but you rebel against them on your off time, when your paycheck isn’t on the line.

Your failure is your example. You will show everyone that can see that you will condemn when easy, and that is a rebellion.

And they will follow your faux rebellion.

Because you told them to.

And all of your energy, all of your education, all of your investment turns against you. You r rebellion is of the easy kind, and that is what you teach. Dress it up as you will, turn all of your hate outwards and wear as much black as possible. Pierce whatever you can. Paint yourself grey.

It’s the colour you deserve.

Because you have managed to become exactly what they wanted you to be in the first place. A voice of dissent that never really acted on anything they said.

Twenty years from now, you’ll have a nice little cabin and you’ll pay your taxes with a smile because you know that the RRSP is going to pay off in the end.

So what am I getting at here…?

Well, I’m not saying that taking any sort of a stance is a waste of time.

Quite the opposite actually.

I believe in calling things as you see them, and I believe in calling out evil wherever it may be. I believe that there is nothing more important than seeking out the truth in as many ways as possible, and when found, spreading that truth as much as possible.

But I also believe that when you know the truth, and you choose to only acknowledge it when convenient, you are only part of the problem, because you effectively minimize the truth. Your message becomes lost in your own example.

Rhetoric can only dull the edge of the truth. Life never happens on your own terms. If you choose to take a stance, you had better believe in it enough to actually back it, no matter how uncomfortable things get for you. If you’re going to preach ideals, you had better do your best to live them, even at the cost of your own pride. Honesty comes from within, and if you can’t honestly examine yourself, you can’t expect anyone to believe what you have to say.

There’s a saying that you should know your enemy. I believe that you cannot until you know yourself.

Ideals are only as good as the people who live them. Not on their terms, but on the terms that those ideals dictate. Sometimes that means not easy.

Usually in fact.

But that is ultimately what separates those that believe in something as opposed to those that simply would like to.

Everywhere around you are middle class white people who will tell you of their first world problems, and announce at length how they hate the powers that be, but take shelter underneath those same powers every day and night, without objection.

And that is what I’m getting at.

Awareness and recognition folks, when acted on, those two things are the only two things that can change the world.

You have to be able to fight the battles that you believe matter without selling them out at the same time, and you have to be honest enough with yourself to not take yourself to seriously so you can recognize when you are about to sell them.

High horses only make for long falls.

Enough of that talk though. It’s entirely possible that I’m as guilty of all of these things as the next, but at the very least, I think that there’s a few decent ideas that a few certain people would do well told to give a thought to.

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