SAILING INTO SOLITUDE

by Ray Jason

My little ship’s bow was pointed towards one of my favorite destinations. It is a tropical lagoon enclosed by the steep, lush hills of a full-climax jungle. But more importantly, I was also sailing towards a “state of mind.” This idyllic bay would provide me riches that are rarely savored in the low-grade mayhem that we call The Modern World. The treasures I was seeking were Simplicity and Solitude.

For twelve days and nights, I would bask in a hideaway so pristine that it had never been violated by a siren or a car alarm. There were very few humans and most of my immediate neighbors were creatures who live in the Sea and the Sky. Occasionally, a smiling local Indio paddled past in a hand-carved dugout canoe. The tranquility was so visceral, that when a boat powered by an outboard motor passed by, it was as jarring as a chain saw at a yoga retreat.

My days of slow, quiet contemplation brought me both joy and sadness. The regret was not for myself, but for the great mass of humanity that is either strapped to the wheel of survival, or that is hypnotized by their iDistractors. Both of these groups are rarely able to break loose from their shackles and ponder The Big Stuff.

And one of the biggest things that they cannot examine is the fact that their servitude is not an accident. Their hidden masters, who steer society, want the masses to either be struggling to just get by or to be intellectually neutered as cyber-zombies.

If this criticism of those I call The Malignant Overlords seems overly harsh, that is probably because 99% of the people reading this are blessed with basic human decency. But our rulers are empathy eunuchs. They are control junkies. They want to run other people’s lives – they want to run your lives. That is why they go into politics or banking or media. Normal people who possess conscience and compassion cannot believe that such dark souls actually exist, but they do.

There is a wonderful word to describe this. It is “kakistocracy.” It means “rule by the worst.” Until recently it could be found in dictionaries. But it was removed. Guess who had it deleted … yep … the kakistocracy.

The two goals of my little voyage that I mentioned earlier in this essay … Simplicity and Solitude … are also concepts that the Big Kaks focus upon. That is because they realize that undermining them and keeping the people from embracing them, is vitally important to their goal of ever-expanding power.

They know that if the “useless eaters” suddenly realize that they do not need all the tacky trinkets that help drain their wallets and keep them on the wage-slave hamster wheel, they will lose a potent control mechanism over them. If ordinary people recognize that stuff is not an emancipator but a slave-master, then the powers-that-shouldn’t-be lose much of their manipulative mojo.

And so our leaders rulers steer us away from the eternal, elemental values that provide true meaning to human existence; and direct us toward materialistic phantom happiness. They replace Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Family, and Community with what??? Mark Twain figured it out 150 years ago when he said, “They have converted a thousand useless luxuries into necessities.”

Another aspect of “simplicity” is its anti-thesis which is “complexity.” This is another control mechanism. The less self-reliant a person is, the more dependent they are. When you have to hire an electronics expert to fix your door lock, you know things have gotten surrealistically complicated. A normal Joe used to be able to go to the hardware store and buy a new lock which he could install himself.

Aside from the financial savings of not having to hire a professional, there is the additional cost of losing the satisfaction of being able to fix something. And so another old-time value is strangled by the Techno-sphere. And again, this “progress” is not accidental. It deliberately keeps people on the wage-serf treadmill and lessens their self-confidence.

Solitude, or time for reflection, is also a great enemy to The Malignant Overlords. They realize that if they do not divert you with the stress of making ends meet or with electronic doodads, you might look more deeply into the nature of the current power dynamic. It is an arrangement that is obscenely beneficial for them – but not for you.

They don’t want you to examine a fractional reserve banking system that allows the already rich banksters to convert your $100 deposit into $1,000 worth of loans backed only by empty promises.

They don’t want you to look too closely at “representative government” that actually only represents the interests of those who make the largest campaign contributions.

They don’t want you to use critical thinking when evaluating what the news anchors spoon feed you. They particularly don’t want you to question whether they are bothering to tell you the truth.

But they do want you to become even more addicted to your Schmart Fones. They want you agitated about how many likes your latest Facebook post will receive. They want you counting those re-Tweets. Basically, they want you focused on anything but their latest clandestine plan to lessen your rights, freedom and privacy.

Unfortunately, there is another layer of malevolence that results from the pandemic of screen addiction. And that demon is message control. Now that the vast majority of people have abandoned traditional media and rely on electronic sources, they are raising the censorship drawbridge and exiling all viewpoints that the Kakistocracy dislikes (and fears.)

It was a brilliant but evil strategy. Get everyone hooked on a single stream of information and then control the dam that releases or restrains that info. Thus, there is no need for bonfires of books, when five years of blogging can just be “disappeared.”

Often, the evenings in this peaceful lagoon would seem like an encyclopedia of birds. Herons and egrets would work the shoreline. A few pelicans and cormorants would fish the surface. Swallows would scream past the rigging chasing seemingly invisible insects. The squawking parrots would head home to their roosting trees. And above them all, a lone osprey would use its incredible eyesight searching for just the right fish.

I would wonder how many hundreds of years back could the ancestors of these birds be traced. Nature usually moves so slowly and majestically.
But we humans are in such a hurry. We rarely allow ourselves an opportunity to pause and be still and reflect. And we complicate our lives so needlessly and so harmfully.

I wish we could all find a quiet lagoon like this – a sanctuary where we could immerse ourselves in the healing waters of Simplicity and Solitude.

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