This is part 7 of a 7-part series.
Click here for part 1
Two of the main focuses throughout this series have been the self-empowerment of individual people through overcoming outdated concepts and divisive ways of thinking, and the unification of people in general through a non-ideological and non-identity-oriented philosophical discipline which can, hopefully, contribute to the beginning of a truly civilised world.
Just as individuals face serious barriers, wider society also faces some truly monolithic challenges. This, as reiterated many times, comes in the form of our most dominant social institutions that refuse to change — namely, the political and religious establishment, along with our economic institutions which serve as the life-blood and vehicle by which they can co-opt the time, energy and work of individuals, and weigh in on any societies or communities that do not wish to live along the same lines.
Their reliance on pushing tribalistic ideology, the tendency towards authoritarian control over everyday people that distant bureaucrats have, the endless corruption inherent in the establishment, their willingness to lie, to gatekeep truth for political and financial power, to drag us into irrelevant wars, and the ongoing campaign to convince people that “everything is political” — these are just a few of the fundamental aspects of these obsolete systems that now threaten to take us beyond the danger point, and are based on premises deserving of constant scrutiny.
So what do we do?
Resistance and civil disobedience is fully encouraged and even required by the BADN philosophical discipline — as it would be with any discipline which has its sights set on truth as opposed to belief — first and foremost through education, but always keeping in mind that the central point is to outgrow failed institutions and to overcome outdated social and psychological customs.
This means that, while it is necessary to stay informed and highly critical in order to assure that we hold our so-called leaders and broader social institutions accountable for their endless failures, we have to stay constantly vigilant as to no longer allow our minds and our energies to be captured and co-opted by them.
The claim is that, when it comes to solving social problems, the institution of politics is a failed social experiment, built on outdated and otherwise erroneous conceptual abstraction. Their flaws are fundamental, intrinsic to the very nature of the systems themselves. A great majority of our problems may come from them, but we can not keep deluding ourselves into thinking they can also offer solutions.
This is no right-wing/left-wing argument. No politician, no matter how moral or capable, will bring about the kind of change required to overcome our most pressing problems as a species. Not only do they not have the global reach that would be required for that kind of task in the modern age, but it would more than likely threaten the stranglehold that political and financial powers have on social influence.
Aside from that, the growing trend that governments are giving up the façade of representation and are instead emerging as self-serving ideological activists makes it difficult to trust that they will actually represent the interests of their constituents, and makes it more likely that they’ll instead lecture them on who they ought to be.
“How can someone claim to represent you and then tell you what to think?” — Michael Malice
Partly due to the emergence of widespread decentralised technology, along with artificial intelligence, there is no telling what forms government and local councils will take in the future. All we can currently be sure of is that they are central pillars of everything that stands in the way of us reaching our next stage of maturation.
Taking this into account, the important focus here is that we are now reaching a danger point, where, if we do not get the establishment in check and make sure they can’t use advanced technology purely as a tool of enforcement, we run the very real risk of finding ourselves living in some kind of scientific/technological dystopia. The claim is that any real solution to this can not be achieved through political protest alone, but has to first be guided through a shift in our philosophical and intellectual outlooks.
Political protest alone is inadequate as its goal is to seek solutions through changes in policy or institutional reform. Any perceived solutions to problems that can be gained that way are far outweighed by the damage caused by clinging to such a divisive, corrupt system.
Beyond that, under current conditions, it holds a high likelihood of feeding into tribalistic tendencies towards dehumanisation, political persecution, censorship, and violence, all the while blinding people to their connection to each other and to nature, and leading them further into fragmented ideological states.
The final claim is that, when it comes to our social institutions, our real challenges are not matters of policy, but matters of philosophy, culture and communication, and it is in those areas that we’d be better off channelling our energies to look for solutions.
With language, we are able to communicate the wealth of insight and understanding we have gained throughout the centuries, and with the arts, science and technology, we are able to put them into action.
It’s time to communicate, to learn, and to create, and allow ourselves to be guided by a philosophical discipline that is more likely to foster unity than the divisive, self-preserving ideological disciplines that have dominated throughout history. Once that has been set into motion, we stand an infinitely greater chance of being able to force the establishment to fall in line with the will of the people, rather than being continuously pushed into endless conflict with ourselves and each other.
It’s also time to disprove the H. L. Mencken claim that the average person would rather be safe than free, along with the broader assumption that those same people are so ignorant and uninformed that they will eternally need to be told how to live, what to think and what information they are and are not allowed to handle.
With the rise of the internet and alternative forms of media, the percentage of people who are taking active interest in staying informed has been skyrocketing, and there’s no reason past censorship and other ideological interference to assume that this trend will stop.
Life, in many ways, has been becoming so volatile that it has been calling for people to seek empowerment through knowledge and wisdom. And, I’m happy to say, huge numbers of people have been stepping up to heed those calls.
Stay informed, stay vigilant, and do whatever you can to no longer allow your social conscience to be reduced to political ideology.
Thanks for reading.
