Life Through The Cracks: A Place To Start

Excerpt from my new book

"Do you have a dependable job? Can you purchase, spend time and money to maintain a house and vehicle suited to your station? Do you pay for services and restaurant meals when you are too tired from working? How much of your salary goes to pay credit interest, insurance costs, the pharmacist and other expenditures to maintain this job? Taxes take a cut too, more if you smoke or drink or drive for work. Should I mention those empty unpaid hours commuting away from family, or how much you are contributing to carbon emissions? Yes, its dependable all right, if you keep on this treadmill you will always be dependent on a job.

Just how dependable is this way of life, anyway? It only functions properly if a person is not too young, too old, nor too damaged, too poor, or too ill. Those among us without money are stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, poor health, dysfunction and hardship. You can't afford food if you can't even afford to get to a grocery store. When you can, the small quantity you buy is much more expensive than the larger size you can't afford. You must at least have an address to be connected, drive, receive social and medical assistance or vote. In our society, to be alive costs money, so what are you to do when you can’t afford to live?

Either way, in both lifestyles, we all work as hard as we can to survive our incarceration in this world of monetary supremacy. We slave, every day the same, at endless meaningless toil. The years of our lives slip by as we silently watch the clock and count down the time until we can stop. Finally home, burned out and tuned out, we watch the screen then sleep only to rise and start again.

A constant bombardment of seductive paid messages and social cues keep this compulsion alive. The people profiting from our anguish can well afford to manipulate things in their favour. We are so submissive, even governments openly profit from our poisoning. They are destroying our healthcare and keeping people sedated and confused. Our existence reduced to a fog of worry, guilt and helplessness under the power of money.

Still the gratification of buying the newest thing, of clothes not yet worn or sights not yet seen, is a powerful intoxicant. The need to spend, the urge, the indignant justification, it seems so urgent at the point of purchase. The desire is fleeting, but the craving is relentless and the fix never enough.

Those who can pay to project a perceived perfection, like celebrities and moguls, are worshiped and honoured. To their denigration as we vicariously and viciously verify value from this visualization. The masses, perhaps unwittingly, trying to imitate this expensive illusion, give consensus to its pretense. Like junkies, many are distracted to preoccupation by money, forsaking all else they might value.

The perfection precept is also used to isolate and humiliate nonconformists into silent submission. Are we cursed to believe we’re inadequate and unacceptable if we don’t have all the things we want? This belief can leave us feeling forsaken, confused, and insecure about who we are and what we want from life. Disappointments leave us bitter and full of negative judgement thoughts about ourselves, and others.

As a result, we all show up, but never show ourselves. We use disguises to face the world and deceive people to get what we want from them. She is not the person she appears to be when she smiles at you from the page, the TV, or beside the cash register. Everyday we put on blinders so we can pretend, like everyone else, not to see our bondage. We hide from our suffering with drugs, lust, gluttony and crime.

Dark obsessive oppressing greed has created a cut throat unforgiving, uncompassionate culture which is causing so much hardship to the entire world. Do we really believe the notion that mother earth has been rendered worthless, all used up and wrecked beyond repair? How else can we justify the way we slave, exploit, buy and then just throw away? It is wrong to believe the poor and suffering have somehow caused their own demise and we are above reproach. Poverty and slavery, exploiting this planet and her people, should not be accepted as the natural progression of our age.

In devoting ourselves to money we have erroneously put our efforts into an imaginary reality. Basing our existence on irrelative assumptions has continually had a negative impact on the quality of our lives. It feeds our insatiable compulsions, keeping us hostage like spoiled self-indulgent children, perverting our needs and skewing our values. Everything now askew and distorted we can no longer see how it really is."


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