Think Your Free?

Two videos worth checking out, how we are set up from birth.

"To see the farm, is to leave it"

The second video has been around for a while and the guy who made it has made others that I don't agree with...anyway, the quote above (from the end of the video) is one of my favorites.

There are lots of us that see the "farm" for what it is.

Well I watched the first one and that made me a little depressed.

That second video was well done In the way it pointed out how we are less free than we believe ourselves to be.

I do think it is incorrect in the implication that this is the result of a thought out plot or conspiracy by those in power. It is more a revelation of what man is as a species.

Our species evolved for the most part by a process of symbiogenesis. A symbiotic relationship is one in which two or more organisms become stronger than they would normally be by some method of cooperation with each other. That the social contract we have evolved as human beings is enormously successful is proved by our numbers. This contract is written in our genes. It is human nature. That is what the video depicts, people doing what comes naturally, whether dominating or cooperating.

If I ask you for advice in running my coal stove it gives me pleasure in learning what you have to say and the possible benefit in running my stove in a better way. It gives you pleasure in offering advice because it implies you are smarter than me, at least in that particular. We both benefit symbiotically. It is why forums are as successful as they are.

Notice I used the word "advice" rather than "commandment" because it still leaves the option or the freedom to follow it or not. To get others to do as we wish is to tiptoe through a minefield of conflicting emotions. Successful salesmen and politicians are well versed in that art. They just have a better understanding of human nature, and that understanding may be entirely unconscious and just come naturally as part of their own personality or human nature.

That many of the actions of leaders, who have become leaders because there is resonance with the emotions of a great many leads to war, or famine, or other destructive behavior is because that leader is himself only acting out his own emotional behavior and not some well thought out plan. Any intellectualizing is only in justification.

We are less free than we believe but it is our genes that keep us there.

You may be right about the reason we got to where we are, but those who are now in power have an agenda and will do ANYTHING to stay in control and anyone who gets in the way gets squashed, just as the video suggests.
We are outnumbered by the "dependent cows" (useful idiots) in this nation now who don't see "the farm" and how we are all being controlled by TPTB more and more as time goes by. The last presidential election is further proof of this.

rockwood wrote:You may be right about the reason we got to where we are, but those who are now in power have an agenda and will do ANYTHING to stay in control and anyone who gets in the way gets squashed, just as the video suggests.
We are outnumbered by the "dependent cows" (useful idiots) in this nation now who don't see "the farm" and how we are all being controlled by TPTB more and more as time goes by. The last presidential election is further proof of this.

I think you are entirely right but where is the enlightenment to come from to overcome human nature or even recognize its role or even what it is? The crash of empires throughout history is pretty well documented yet we keep on hoping that slicing that same old baloney in a different way it will come out different.

I could define a holy man as one who has overcome his human nature and so sees the world in a more realistic manner. There aren't many of these around.

franco b wrote:
We are less free than we believe but it is our genes that keep us there.

So what you're saying is

all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

You ought to write that down. Maybe it will catch on.

jpete wrote:

franco b wrote:
We are less free than we believe but it is our genes that keep us there.

So what you're saying is

all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

You ought to write that down. Maybe it will catch on.

Since you really seem to be the conscience of the forum I would say that the folly of following the dictates of our genes is what has got us into the mess we create. That the truth shall set you free,is true.

franco b wrote:
Since you really seem to be the conscience of the forum I would say that the folly of following the dictates of our genes is what has got us into the mess we create. That the truth shall set you free,is true.

I don't know. It might be in some people's genes, but I've always been one to bristle at authority. I think many of us here feel the same.

The FF knew the price of freedom was eternal vigilance. I think people get comfortable and lazy and then the sociopaths who are naturally attracted to power do what they do and the rest of us let them do it.

We need to value a voluntary society rather than one ruled from above.

jpete wrote:

franco b wrote:
Since you really seem to be the conscience of the forum I would say that the folly of following the dictates of our genes is what has got us into the mess we create. That the truth shall set you free,is true.

I don't know. It might be in some people's genes, but I've always been one to bristle at authority. I think many of us here feel the same.

The FF knew the price of freedom was eternal vigilance. I think people get comfortable and lazy and then the sociopaths who are naturally attracted to power do what they do and the rest of us let them do it.

We need to value a voluntary society rather than one ruled from above.

Far more than most you have pointed out the absurdity of the knee jerk reactions of human nature. What you call sociopaths are not the exception, but rather the rule.

There is that sociopathic tendency to do good with complete ignorance of the harm those actions may cause as it did in housing and which it will also do in education and probably in health care as well. That tendency is genetic along with the certainty that their superior understanding warrants their acquiring power at any cost. Their appeal is to idealists, the envious, the greedy, the slothful, all genetic traits.