Have you ever had one of those moments when you thought your demise was imminent, and your life sort of flashed before your eyes? At times like that, one is often beset with regrets. What is the nature of those regrets? Individuals who have experienced this sort of event will know exactly what I'm talking about here ...
You do not fret over the fancy car you couldn't afford. You do not fret over whether your neighbors appreciated your finely manicured lawn. You do not fret that you didn't spend enough hours in the corporate meat grinder, or that your income wasn't high enough. The regrets you have pertain to people -- almost always people other than yourself. You regret the people you might have wronged that you never made whole. You regret the time, attention and support that you should have given to loved ones, but did not. You regret the things you could have done that would have helped others, the results of which would have survived your physical death. You regret your cowardice for opportunities untaken and your failure to do the right things when you still had a chance.
At that moment in time when you are certain that your soul and body will soon part, the things that you can't take with you -- titles, money, envious neighbors -- lose their meaning. They don't really lose their meaning ... really ... because they never had any meaning intrinsically anyway. Imminent death concentrates the mind, bringing an awful clarity so that we can see that things like wealth or a closet full of Chinese manufactured junk could never be legitimate ends, in and of themselves. Rather, such things as wealth, material goods and status only have value -- the kind of value that transcends death and leaves us with no regrets -- if they are employed in certain meaningful ways. Certainly, accumulated wealth can serve as a seed to help the next generation's accomplishments -- but ONLY if you have already imbued the next generation with a noble character worthy of their inheritance. Eric Wodening encapsulated the idea I am describing beautifully when he said: "We are our DEEDS." You are not your car. You are not your house. You are not your job, bank accounts, titles or degrees. What you are -- and ALL that you are -- is your deeds.
The trouble is, when you experience an accident, heart attack or stroke and are on your way to the emergency room in a screaming ambulance is not the time to figure that out. As your bodily systems shut down and your consciousness becomes a narrowing tunnel that shrinks to a pinpoint before finally being extinguished forever -- you do not want your final thoughts to be of bitter regret for things undone. By all means, there will always be deeds undone and wishes unfulfilled; but you should also have the satisfaction of knowing that you truly did your best, that you lived a good life, and that your deeds -- the essence of who you are -- will bear fruit in succeeding generations.
As I said, during a sudden heart attack, stroke or other calamity is not the time to figure that out or have an epiphany. Usually, by then, it is too late. If, by that time, you have not figured out that the purpose of your life lies in deeds rather than material things, it's too late and you will have lived a life devoid of meaning. In essence, you will have accomplished little more with your life than mark time while being used like a gear in a machine to produce, consume, borrow, spend and obey. In terms of the all-important content of your deeds, you will be the walking dead as your meaningless life will be no more eventful than your death ... just marking time between the delivery room and the funeral home.
Hopefully, if you are listening to my voice, you've already figured this out. That's good. If you have a long enough time horizon to already anticipate your own death, then you are making your life COUNT. That's good too.
But too many of our people -- FAR too many -- don't know what you do. They still think life is about shiny cars, upscale neighborhoods, working 60 hours a week, impressing neighbors or coworkers and worshipping their own hedonistic whims -- no matter how ultimately destructive their whims may be. This is a psycho-spiritual illness, and the results are staring us in the face every day of the week.
How do I prove the widespread nature of this psycho-spiritual illness? Through just a handful of statistics you SHOULD find truly horrifying.
According to a February article in Scientific American, "Remarkably, in 2002 more than one in three doctor’s office visits by women involved the prescription of an antidepressant, either for the writing of a new prescription or for the maintenance of an existing one, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."(1)
As often as violence is reported in the news, you may be shocked to learn that suicides outnumber homicides in America by 5:3,(2) and that 72% of all suicides in the United States are committed by white men.(3) Children are far from immune. Over the past 20 years, the suicide rate for kids aged 5-14 has doubled(4), and suicide has become the third leading cause of death among our teens.(5) According to the latest statistics, "As many as 8 percent of adolescents attempt suicide today. And completed suicides have increased by 300 percent over the last 30 years."(6)
Depression has become a huge problem, so pervasive that the World Health Organization projects that by 2020 it will be the second largest cause of debility in the developed world -- second only to heart disease. Just as with suicide, our children aren't immune. According to government statistics, "The statistics on teen depression are sobering. Studies indicate that one in five children have some sort of mental, behavioral, or emotional problem, and that one in ten may have a serious emotional problem. Among adolescents, one in eight may suffer from depression."(7)
Naturally, drug and alcohol abuse has skyrocketed. Among high school seniors, 6.5% have use ecstasy, 7.8% have used cocaine, 8.4% have used hallucinogens, and 11.4% have abused prescription drugs such as amphetamines, sedatives, tranquilizers and pain-killers.(8) Alcohol abuse has become so endemic that the combined death toll of over 47,000 per year -- and that EXCLUDES accidents and homicides -- dwarfs the total number of people who die from violence in which a firearm is used. And that INCLUDES all of the gangland drive-by shootings in the inner cities.(9)
Let's be honest. You don't have to be a genius to look at statistics like these and understand that our people suffer from a psycho-spiritual illness. Besides the above, this illness has increased rates of divorce, reduced rates of marriage and childbirth, and increased the proportion of our children born without fathers at all.
And it gets even worse, as alienated young men have penned suicide notes before committing murder-suicides. Before killing innocent people and committing suicide in an Omaha, Nebraska department store ... Robert Hawkins wrote tellingly in his suicide note – and I quote -- “I've just snapped. I can't take this meaningless existence anymore.” He also made note of the values he had absorbed from popular culture when he wrote: “Now I'll be famous.”
This phenomenon isn't only for kids. When Charles Carl Roberts murdered innocent school children, his suicide note read: “I am filled with so much hate - hate towards myself, hate towards God, and unimaginable emptiness.”
“Meaningless existence” and “unimaginable emptiness” aren't just phrases used in suicide notes left behind; they are also prevalent in therapy sessions attended by people struggling to overcome depression, anxiety and other illnesses: illnesses that are reaching epidemic proportions among our people. The cause of these problems can ultimately be traced to a lack of transcendent meaning in the lives of our people. Life is hard. Work is hard. Learning is hard. Coping with tragedy is hard. Anything worth achieving is hard. And it doesn't matter how smart or strong somebody is; in order to get out of bed in the morning they need a reason to put their feet on the floor. That reason is the meaning of life – a meaning of which too many of our people are utterly bereft.
At certain points in life, we can derive meaning from the approval of authority figures. But eventually we see that the emperor is nude, so his approval isn't enough anymore. At other times, we can derive meaning from the acquisition of material possessions – both from the way those possessions represent us to others, and from the possessions themselves. But at some point we reach a realization of our own mortality, and see their pursuit as being empty when pursued for their own sake. We can seek meaning in climbing a corporate ladder – until we are downsized for the third time in yet another corporate merger and realize that there is very little relationship between success in a corporate structure and our intrinsic value as people. As these transitory sources of meaning fall by the wayside, depression rears its head until we are either medicated enough not to notice or latch onto something else for a time. For a while, we can latch onto the continuation of our own lives as sufficient reason to get out of bed in the morning. But as we get older, we become more aware of the fact that in the end, we are dead anyway; and we need a reason to postpone the inevitable.
Most mental health workers are at a loss to truly help people in these situations; which is why insurance companies are more likely to pay for an anti-depressant medication than long-term psychotherapy. Long ago psychotherapy, as a profession, was hijacked by a dialectical materialist world-view that too often propagates the very illnesses it purports to cure. In fact, far too many psychotherapists are more likely to pathologize the solution than apply it. Finding a good psychotherapist is not impossible, but fairly arduous -- a very difficult task for the people who need help most to undertake alone.
So – where do we turn to solve this problem? We have to cultivate a sense of transcendent meaning in our Folk. What do I mean by that? I mean that our people have to have a sense that the world is bigger than them – that it existed before their individual births, and will continue to exist after their deaths. They need to see themselves as a part of that – as the inheritors of history, and also the progenitors of history, even if in some small way. They need to have a time horizon and value system that emphasizes the effect their actions of today will have on the world of tomorrow, and they must care about the world of tomorrow. The specifics of how this manifests will vary from person to person, because of differences in both inclination and ability; but the overall framework must be in place.
There are a lot of paths to transcendent meaning, and these paths are as individual as the people who follow them. Moreover, these paths are not usually mutually exclusive, so that a given individual might follow more than one. Certainly, for many of us, raising our children is a substantial source of meaning. The next generation is both an awesome and a joyful responsibility that allows us to directly affect the path of the future. After that, we can find similar meaning in grandchildren. But these things only work to the extent that we can love -- truly love -- others enough that we can put their best interests above our own selfishness.
Some of us are able to find meaning in our occupations, through the direct or indirect positive effect it has on the lives of others and the future. But there are only so many jobs where one gets to save lives, enlighten minds, find cures for cancer or things like that. Most of us work fairly unexciting jobs as interchangeable and easily replaced "human resources," and those jobs are insufficient in and of themselves to justify getting out of bed in the morning, except to the extent that they facilitate our lives and participation in other things that ARE important.
And the final way that people infuse their lives with meaning is through participation in various religions, community institutions, causes and advocacies that they believe will make their society into a better place for the next generation.
One of the problems we face is that, through media programming and the compulsory indoctrination camps we euphemistically call government schools, far too many of our people do not know what causes deserve their support.
The religion of their parents and grandparents is mocked and they are forced through peer pressure into a sort of one-size-fits all mindset in which no religion has value, because they are all seen to be equally valid. Their religious institutions become corrupted through so-called "interfaith councils" that effectively subject their holy books to a redaction marker while writing new things into the margins. Over time, many people have walked away disgusted.
Their community institutions were long-since co-opted by implicit collectivist totalitarians with a mindless United Nations worldview that makes them feel unwelcome.
And the causes and advocacies that are "approved" by the indoctrination camps and television characters usually leave them cold; because the moment they become immersed in some politically-correct advocacy -- even if they can't quite put their finger on it -- they can feel that it's a place where they don't belong.
So they have nowhere to turn, and spend on average five hours a night -- which is all of their waking hours outside of work -- in a state of numb non-thought in front of the mass programming device we call television.
Sometimes, too, in spite of the indoctrination centers and media, due to critical thinking or a solid upbringing, folks gravitate toward patriotic causes like defending the Second Amendment right to self defense, or putting our increasingly totalitarian government institutions back into their constitutional shackles. And when they do, they find themselves to be vilified. Free inquiry and the ability for reasonable people to reasonably differ -- or for people to see both sides of an issue -- have been replaced by either character assassination or psycho-pathologizing dissent. It is no longer merely enough to tolerate the totalitarian lies, but failure to endorse them strongly enough is seen to be either proof of evil intentions or outright mental illness. East Germany never really went away -- it was rebuilt right here; and the patriotic person feels it.
So they feel isolated, and alone -- and participation in activism plummets.
Sometimes, a person with healthy instincts will understand that a whole bevy of laws are unfairly aimed at penalizing European Americans; but he dares not speak aloud about his feelings. If he does, he will be automatically tarred with the brush declaring that he secretly desires to set up assembly-line gas chambers, even though nothing could be further from his heart and mind. Of course, people who want to set up gas chambers really DO exist -- such deranged people exist among all races and peoples -- and often masquerade as something far more benign. So when he looks for people who want to represent the interests of his European-American Folk, all he can find are people with collectivist totalitarian world views that differ from those of our current masters only in terms of content, but not in structure or premise.
It makes him ill, and he abandons that cause feeling that there must be something wrong with HIM, even though his inborn American love of liberty is far from a fault. He falls into despair, knowing not just that everything is all wrong, but feeling utterly powerless and unable to discuss his true feelings even with a mental health professional for fear of condemnation.
I have already covered the ways that people invest their lives with transcendent meaning -- through helping occupations like education, parenting, grandparenting, community and causes. Many things commonly left to occupations though -- like education -- can also be adopted as causes; and it is with causes that we can make a real difference that will outlive our physical bodies. The trick -- if it can be called such -- lies in overcoming the substantial psychological barriers that people -- adults especially -- have that keep them from living lives invested with meaning. These barriers have always existed to some degree among our Folk, but in the modern West with its soft-totalitarianism and consumeristic mindset that ignores the non-material aspects of humanity they have become a serious issue.
Wikipedia describes cognitive dissonance as "a psychological state that describes the uncomfortable feeling when a person begins to understand that something the person believes to be true is, in fact, not true. Similar to ambivalence, the term cognitive dissonance describes conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions) that occur at the same time, or when engaged in behaviors that conflict with one's beliefs." Most importantly, the article goes on to state: "Maintaining conflicting principles (e.g. logically incompatible beliefs) or rejecting reasonable behavior to avoid conflict can be increasingly maladaptive (non-beneficial) as the gap being bridged widens, and popular usage tends to stress the maladaptive aspect. Cognitive dissonance is often associated with the tendency for people to resist information that they don't want to think about, because if they did it would create cognitive dissonance, and perhaps require them to act in ways that depart from their comfortable habits."(10) The problem is that when a cause or advocacy ultimately conflicts either with demonstrable reality or one's deepest values, then one tends to shut down, draw into a shell and shut things out. This is why the cynical politics of half-truths that prevail in the modern age have resulted in massive non-participation in politics.
But there is also a second barrier that can be defined as self-perception. Nobody considers himself to be bad. Whatever they are doing, whether it is sitting in front of the television for five hours every night or exporting their neighbors' jobs to China, everyone has developed a justification that at least makes their actions seem unavoidable (i.e. there is no choice) and possibly even virtuous (i.e. it's for the ultimate good). Nobody, whether a receptionist or a car-jacker, looks in the mirror in the morning and sees someone who is on the wrong track. Everybody from a loan shark to a communist or global corporatist has justifications built in their mind in spades for what they are doing.
Penetrating these layers of justification is extremely difficult; and is one of the reasons why Don Marquis noted: “If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.” Challenging someone's existing justifications will at a minimum raise their ire; because in a very important sense you are calling their entire life into account. In all likelihood, they will bury their head in the sand or put their fingers in their ears, either physically or metaphorically. That's why researchers have noticed that people tend to seek out sources that confirm their existing beliefs and opinions. Likewise, they surround themselves with friends who implicitly or explicitly approve of their choices.
That's a pretty hard barrier to overcome all by itself; and that barrier serves as an obstacle to people investing their lives with a real sense of meaning. It helps to keep them on the wrong track.
Usually -- and unfortunately -- the only time most adults are vulnerable to a significant shift in their mindset is when they are in crisis – when the world seems to have fallen apart, and they see this as proof that their old beliefs and behaviors are flawed in some way. This is like the proverbial druggie "hitting bottom," and then becoming amenable to rehabilitation. Sometimes even this doesn't work, as they rant about everybody and everything else but their own beliefs and behaviors being the cause of their woes. We can see this plain as day in certain public apologies where a public figure will apologize for the phraseology of a statement, but not its intent; or, even worse, own up to no wrongdoing whatsoever and instead blame their plight on those who discovered their infractions. The case of an obese man filing a lawsuit against a fast-food chain -- blaming them for causing his obesity is classic.
So -- sometimes a change in mindset can be stimulated by a crisis, but sometimes not -- and that largely depends upon the people and environment surrounding the crisis victim at the time. This is why we stress self-sufficiency of our members so strongly. The future holds a continuous downward economic slope for most ordinary people. Most people in this country have a negative net-worth as it is, and soon their debt-driven consumerist junk-buying binge will result in crisis. We're already in a modest foreclosure crisis; but what the media doesn't tell you is that foreclosures and bankruptcies have been steadily increasing for decades; and they'll be increasing overall for the foreseeable future. More and more people will find themselves en extremis, and hitting bottom. By being more self-sufficient, we will be less affected by these economic forces; and will thus be natural authority figures for people in crisis. Instead of giving them a fish, we'll teach them to fish too -- and along with it we will teach them where to find real meaning in their lives as an active participant in history.
There is also a third barrier to people finding true meaning in their lives, and that can be described as "public self-image." This can be defined as the way a person thinks that other people see him. This is much more insidious than merely choosing to drive a Volvo instead of a Buick in order to create a particular image; because that is merely window dressing. Far more important is the way the modern Left-Right totalitarian axis of evil incessantly moralizes and publicly condemns those who dare to disagree with their ideas or policies. Such condemnation usually questions either the moral worth of a disagreeing party as a human being, or the party's mental competence.
This public moralization approach is extremely effective for a lot of reasons. First off, it moves debate on their policies away from factual grounds and basic values where they can never win, and instead moves the debate onto purely emotional grounds while simultaneously putting opponents on the defensive. Second, it enlists the powerful component of peer-pressure or even perceived peer pressure to at least shut up an opponent if not force him to change his mind. Finally, the intense moralization creates an atmosphere of guilt by association that can create ostracism by friends and family as well as job loss and economic hardship.
These three barriers turn millions of our people into occupants of a virtual gulag. Some -- most, in fact -- don't even realize that they are imprisoned. That's because these barriers primarily exist at an instinctual, subconscious or implicit level. They believe they are in control of their own thoughts and actions, when the globalists have been using knowledge of human psychology to manipulate them from womb to tomb. They don't know they have been imprisoned, because the walls are made of glass and they are conditioned to never come close enough to touch those walls. If they can choose between a Sansa mp3 player and an Ipod -- both subjected to copyright encryption and corporate surveillance, they consider themselves to be free. If they can talk on their cell phone with the government-mandated GPS tracking chip, they consider themselves to be free. If they can call up Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly via a NSA-monitored phone system and express politically-correct indignation about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, they consider themselves to be free. They plop down in front of a choice of 200 digital channels of entertainment; all controlled by a handful of companies whose satellite uplink stations are guarded by military personnel and consider themselves to be free. The government generously allows them to keep 60% of their paycheck, so they consider themselves to be free.
Of course, those of us who advocate for our Constitution and our People know we are not free, because we bump up against the walls of the glass cage every day. We realize that the bromide that we are the "most free nation on earth," -- while true -- disguises the fact that our standard of value for comparison shouldn't be China or Zimbabwe; but the America of 1801, 1840 or 1950. We are European Americans with a unique foundation and history of freedom; and comparisons to the socialist, communist or otherwise totalitarian nations that comprise the rest of the planet won't wash.
But, now for the good news. There is a reason why I talk about psychology so much in my podcasts; and that is because knowledge of psychology is used by globalists to enslave our people -- but can also be employed as a tool to secure not only our self-determination, but a greater degree of happiness and purpose among our Folk. Before talking about the good news, though -- let me explain in broad terms how the bad guys use the three barriers I've described.
Human beings are one of the few creatures with a frontal mind sufficiently powerful that it can override the instinctive tendencies we have in order to pursue a course of action based upon beliefs and principles. Our frontal mind is so powerful that – on the basis of belief – we can willingly override even instincts for self-preservation and run INTO harm when common sense would dictate otherwise. It is this incredible power, harnessed to our force of will, that gives humans the ability to transcend the mundane and manifest our highest ideals. But it is also this power that allows people who do not have the best interests of our people at heart to cause us to act against the best interests of both ourselves and our posterity ... simply by controlling the ideas that occupy our frontal minds. This is why they work to control media and create compulsory schooling. Once detrimental ideas are explicitly accepted in the frontal mind; then the three barriers have a tendency to KEEP those detrimental ideas in place so they aren't easily dislodged.
BUT -- these barriers aren't foolproof. The fact that you are listening to me now proves that. You escaped from the propasphere, and now those barriers work to your benefit like a vaccine that inhibits re-infection with a virus.
How did you break through the propasphere?
There are three routes. In most cases you encountered facts that contradicted the beliefs our masters expect us to have and resolved that cognitive dissonance by embracing those facts and rejecting erroneous beliefs. In other cases, you had a religious belief that placed your behavior on a standard judged by an authority higher than your boss, and that allowed you to see and reject lies. If you were very fortunate, your parents prepared you by providing facts and critical thinking skills that ultimately served you in good stead.
If YOU can break through the propasphere and see the glass wall, then other people can too -- and together, we can help them do that. One of the most wonderful things about exploring the way the implicit portions of our mind works, is that once we understand it, we become extremely self-aware. That self-awareness leads to critical self-examination; and an internal revolution.
Secession occurs in four phases. First, there is a mental secession. Then, there is a cultural secession. Next, there is an economic secession. Finally, there is a physical secession that merely serves as acknowledgment of a fact that already exists. This is why the globalists in media and government put so much effort and money into the indoctrination in public schools; why outright admitted Marxists are allowed to be college professors, and why every TV news network tells the same story just with a different face. They know that the first phase of a revolution that will unseat them -- even if merely a peaceful revolution -- starts in the MIND.
Well, we're addressing that. We've created a news site at wvwnews.net that certainly puts forth opinion and ideas; but also brings substantial fact-based interdisciplinary research to the public. A lot of this research contains substantial amounts of sourcing material so that the facts are indisputable. This allows people to resolve cognitive dissonance in favor of fact. We also put forth an ethical value system that puts our behavior and lives in a proper perspective so that people can start to judge themselves by a higher standard. We are also letting people know that other people exist who are thinking the same thoughts -- so their views are supported and the opinions of the uninformed are not as important to them anymore.
Along with this, we are aiming at prevention. Our college program helps to keep young adults out of the hands of peer-pressure based globalist indoctrination; and we are working on a Euro-School program both for home schoolers and kids that go to public schools that will help inoculate our kids against the psycho-spiritual poison in the world. These are all aimed at the mental phase of secession.
Though we don't specifically endorse any particular religion, we are supportive of positive manifestations of religion that are healthy for the folk-soul of our people. We have members who are Asatruar or Odinists, members who are re-igniting the spark of the religion of the Roman Republic, members who are Latter Day Saints, members who follow Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations and Kinists with a more ethnocentric scriptural emphasis in Christianity. Those are just the religious practices of members who have shared their religious views with me -- so no doubt there are others. Soon we will initiate a special project group emphasizing re-localization of agriculture as a way of building community. We have chapters who meet regularly; and members of those chapters often become close friends. In October we'll also be having a festival and meeting to help bring members together who may work together from a distance, but have never met in person. All of these aim at the cultural phase of secession.
Finally, we have established an area on our members-only website for economic cooperation. This is the beginning of an economic secession AND economic self-sufficiency.
But most of our work and effort is directed at the all-important mental phase of helping people break the psychological bonds of our intended masters. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that you are listening to me means you've already made it past that particular hurdle. But there's a second step that needs to be made.
Last week I was speaking with a government employee who, like us, is largely aware of the handwriting on the wall. He works his job with the feds out of financial necessity. This is no surprise as government now pays more than the private sector for most occupations; and is the only "industry" in the country that is growing while the private sector continues to shrink and wages nosedive. It shouldn't be shocking that all three major Presidential candidates have already stated that tax increases will be necessary. But the thing that bothers my friend is that he knows that our government no longer serves the American people as it was intended; and has instead become a cynical caricature of itself whose strings are pulled by whatever special interests are best-heeled at the time. Every day when he walks into his job, he hates it.
And this is where the second step comes in. Even those of us who don't work directly for government still have to smile and clench our teeth while sitting through sensitivity training classes or hold our tongues when promotions are taken by less-qualified people because our Folk are deliberately discriminated against. We all have to be polite at social functions with the in-laws when the great aunt talks glowingly of Barack Obama's alleged charisma. Once you are aware of what is going on, you find yourself up against the glass wall every day; and it grates and frustrates you every day too.
Remember what I said earlier -- a life filled with meaning comes not merely from thoughts, but from actions, and also remember that I mentioned that meaning can be pursued in more than one way, and in more than one way at a time.
You now stand at the brink of that second step, the step that makes the difference between a life that you will depart filled with bitter regret, or a life that you will depart with a sense of satisfaction for a job well done. If your occupation does not give you meaning, you can derive meaning from your family. And you can also go even further by engaging with community institutions, and even further by adopting a cause.
For any person there are many suitable causes, and they are not mutually exclusive. Certainly, as one of the Directors of EAU I commend our own causes and objectives for your consideration; but there can be others. The most important thing is that you find one or more causes, and act upon them. These causes need to place you within the historical context of a person who is contributing to something greater than himself, beneficial beyond just the immediate timeframe, and either directly or indirectly benefitting your Folk. Obviously, other Folk could also benefit and that's okay -- nobody should cut off his nose to spite his face -- but the more you see your cause as helpful to people who are closely related to yourself, the more motivated you will be. That's just a fact of nature that I covered in a podcast a few months back.
But the point is that no matter what it is ... do something. Join Gun Owners of America or the National Rifle Association, get on their alert systems and pound your local and national representatives with postcards and email. Speak in front of a legislative hearing. Learn and then teach others how to shoot. Sign up with NumbersUSA for their alerts, and send instant faxes to politicians to help stop the immigration crisis. Join up with EAU if you haven't already, and write a piece of positive music under the Creative Commons license that we can distribute or sign on to any of a half dozen special projects as befits your interests.
Escaping from the propasphere is only part of the story. You can't put that cat in the bag and go back to sleep, because your conscience won't let you. And every day you don't act on what you know to be good and right is another day that you will feel bad. You need to complete the story.
Completing the story means committing yourself to a just cause for our Constitution, for Our People and for Freedom. You will derive a sense of your place in history, meaning and purpose.
One of my children knows about my role at EAU, and how I work for the best interests of our people. What makes me proudest is when she told me recently that when I retire from helping our Folk due to age or illness, she wants to step in an assume that role.
You know, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Every day the perimeter of the glass cage is shrinking, and our children will most certainly bump up against it. And if you don't have children, just other people of the next generation will bump up against it. You don't want them asking you questions like these: "Mom, why didn't you keep the bad guys from taking away my right to self-defense?" "Dad, why didn't you tell me the truth about the impending genocide of our race BEFORE I married and had non-white kids?" "Uncle, where were you when our government ceded its authority to the United Nations?" or -- "Old lady, I heard that a long time ago people's phones weren't spied on all the time -- is that true?"
Certainly, I will be able to face the people of the future with a clear conscience. I worked to prevent their genocide. I spoke up. I exercised my natural right of free speech and assembly, and called people's attention to these things and contacted my representatives, and much more besides.
One of these days, and I don't know when because it is never given to a man to know the hour of his passing -- I will die. It's pretty well settled among theologians and physicists that I won't be able to take a Cadillac or High Definition Television with me when I go. But what I WILL take with me is the knowledge that my child will fill my shoes and that I have worked hard in the cause of freedom and self-determination for my people. Perhaps I will not have succeeded by then, and perhaps I will have. But either way I will have lived a life with meaning and purpose; and the one life that I have will have COUNTED for something good and beautiful. And that is all a person can really ask for out of life; and it is something that we all have the power to deliver to ourselves.
Every day that passes brings you another day closer to the day of your death. How you lived your life MATTERS. And because you cannot know how long your life will last, the time for you to embark upon a journey of meaning is NOW. Not next week, next month, or next year -- but NOW. A life that matters is within yoru grasp; because not only is tomorrow going to be another day closer to your last day, it will also be a new beginning as the first day of the rest of your life.
Do not join the walking dead in their endless hours in front of the glowing indoctrination machine or in the shopping malls. Don't be a statistic on an economist's graph measuring consumer sentiment. Be more, be better, be everything that you can be.
Life is short, and I suggest you live it. Starting NOW.
Sources
(1) Barber, Charles (2008), The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise, Scientific American, Feb 2008 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-medicated-americans
(2) Suicide facts for 1999
(3) ibid.
(4) Prescott, James (2005) Suicide rates doubled for children of 5-14 years old over the past 20 years!
http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/2004-09-22-suicide-rates-doubled-5-1...
(5) Teenage Suicide, Wikipedia
(6) Sarafolean, Mary, PhD. "Depression in School-Age Children and Adolescents: Characteristics, Assessment and Prevention," http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/depression/children.asp
(7) "About Teen Depression." http://www.about-teen-depression.com/depression-statistics.html
(8) Statistics from the President's office of National Drug Control Policy.
(9) Comparison of statistics from Miguel A. Faria, Jr., MD (http://www.haciendapub.com/edcor12.html) and Wrong Diagnosis (http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/a/alcohol_abuse/stats.htm#medical_stats)
(10) Wikipedia, "Cognitive Dissonance" retrieved 4/27/2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
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