Get rid of all the information on the internet; what are you left with?
Perhaps we should build something more tangible than the brand and appearance of success we create online.
Most of what we see on the internet is what people want to see. An illusion. A trick.
Wishing for things to be different zaps power out of our hands. It wastes energy that we could use to accept how things are. When we have power, we can, indeed, change things.
For we cannot change the past, only the future.
What do we choose to keep score of?
Whose voice do we listen to?
Who are we trying to help?
What do we collect?
What do we seek?
Where do we want to go?
How do we conduct our business?
Now…why?
Our minds constantly wander off to be somewhere else. Why is that? Are there evolutionary advantages to this? We transfer ourselves from our current circumstances (even if we are happy) to the next.
Wondering, however, is different. Unlike wandering, wondering requires focus. We let curiosity take us somewhere. Exploring the blank spaces on a map.
We have way more options than we think we do.
We decided it was too risky to go anywhere, so we stayed put.
After a while, that can limit how we see things,
Too much time is spent beating ourselves up over the choices that led us here.
Perhaps a better path is to focus on the choices we have in front of us rather than living in the past.
He failed because he built wings and fixed them with wax.
Perhaps that is all he had to escape.
We have the luxury to decide what materials we want to use to fly with.
But too many of us are afraid to even try and do something so bold and daring.
We can hope for different circumstances, but we can’t control them. They often change on their own. You are on top of the world for one minute, and the next, you’re not. The space we cannot live in is denial. When we can’t be honest about where we are, we can’t see where we need to go.
There’s a really toxic view in our culture today about the association of wealth and hard work. There are lots of ways to make money and many ways that don’t require a lot of work. Going to work every day, working multiple jobs, carrying the stress of any day going underwater. That is hard work. Sure there is risk in any venture. But having access to capital, being taught how to manipulate, and understanding that currency has a bias—doesn’t give people the right to judge where someone else is at. It’s low competency not understanding how money works.
The combination of the trauma of losing meaning in our work and the mass marketing efforts to fill that hole with stuff—we saw a dramatic fall in religious institutions starting in the 1960s and ‘70s. With the current trends, Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within just a few decades. It’s a dramatic shift from centralized religious institutions to a do-it-yourself spirituality. Many critics at the time blamed the hippies, secularism, as well as, the rise of atheism, and the mysticism surrounding hallucinogens as culprits. But in actuality, surveys show that a belief in God, an afterlife, and prayer increased during that period. Large religious institutions were shrinking not because of the “wickedness” of the world. Worshipers were still as spiritual as ever but sought a place that better fits their belief system. The rise in choice, individualism, and the marketing efforts of smaller churches slowly picked off enough people to make a dent in participation in mainstream institutions.
Slowly, Gurus, Prophets, and Sages grew a platform to have their voices heard. Today, in the social media era, we call them Influencers. As New York Times Columnist Ross Douthat has pointed out, “It was a golden age if you wanted to talk about UFOs or crystals, the Karma Sutra or the I Ching.”
The cruelty and evil displayed to slaves during the early days of the United States is perhaps unmatched in any period in human history. Slaves were indoctrinated that they were born inferior. It was preached that it was part of god’s plan. Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians (King James Version, which is what was used at the time), “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ.” There are plenty of other passages that god sanctioned this type of behavior that justified slave owners.
In 1828, Federick Bailey was born into the world of slavery with no legal rights or protections. He was separated from his mother during his infancy and sent to his grandparents. His father was a white man who may have been his mother’s slave owner. At six, he was separated from his grandparents and was sent to a plantation. Bailey was then sent to Captain Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia at ten. Bailey felt fortunate when he was sent to work in the home. In the home, Bailey began interacting with books and letters and discovered “the mystery” of reading. Bailey made the connection that the lines of the page correlated with the sounds people were making. Bailey began studying Webster’s Spelling Book. He memorized the alphabet but struggled to understand the sounds made to the letters. Bailey broke down and finally asked Sophia Auld to help him. At the time, slaves were prohibited from learning to read. Whether it was ignorance or empathy, Auld agreed to teach young Bailey. When Captain Auld discovered what had happened, outraged, he ordered it to stop immediately. Captain Auld explained to Sophia in the company of Bailey:
“A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now, if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.”
Bailey later recounted, “I now understood…the white man’s power to enslave the black man. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.” It’s important to note that in 1860, it was estimated that 5% of African Americans could read and write. By 1890, it was 39%. It wasn’t until 1969 that literacy grew to 96%.
Without Sophia’s help, Bailey continued to find ways to teach himself how to read and then taught his fellow slaves. Bailey wrote, “Their minds had been starved…They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul.” Bailey eventually escaped and fled to New England, where slavery was illegal. He then changed his name to Frederick Douglas and became a social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, statesman, and the most important civil rights movement leader during the 19th century.
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