Reflecting on the current situation…
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” — George Orwell 1984 (a political novel written with the purpose of warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government.)
Is it true that Illusion is sometimes all that keeps us sane?
American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “sanity is very rare; almost every man and woman has a dash of madness every so often.”
Every so often is….how frequently exactly? I think things are shifting to more repeatedly because it’s every single day we’re bombarded with actions from those that make no sense and instead of moving forward we seem to be moving backwards. Right here…right now in our lives at present we’re witnessing a lot of history making madness.
People are just starting to wake up but in the process are we becoming more careful than need be? Or are we just afraid not to offend anyone. Because everything is coming to a head.
The Dixie Chicks have changed their name to Chicks because of the connotation of “Dixie” with slavery. Upon hearing this a friend of mine jokingly suggested the new name could be considered sexist. That maybe they should consider changing it to “the Chickens?”
I fully understand the “black lives matter” movement because to me it’s absurd that slavery ever happened in the first place. That stands for other history making events such as the holocaust. The insanity of control and intention of cruelty over innocent lives.
The people at the very top, the people in power, are the very same people who could have put an end to these occurrences. So who are we to trust? Are we responsible for blindly following the orders given by lunatics in power if we consciously know they’re in the wrong for giving them, and we for following them? Shouldn’t we take some responsibility?
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States held the nation together during its greatest trial, the Civil War. Lincoln believed his most sacred duty was the preservation of the union. It was his firm conviction that slavery must be abolished.
“I leave you hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.” Abraham Lincoln
Will we ever get it right?
Has rage replaced reason? As in…
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” – from the movie *Network.
This speech feels more relevant today than its release in 1976 and seems to predict the world we live in today. A world filled with reality TV, tabloid journalism and the overwhelming direction that media in general is taking with its anything for ratings philosophy.
The Character Howard Beale played by the late great Peter Finch, gave the following speech in the film that still resonates today.
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’
Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. (shouting) You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!’
“To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile. To undo our very ancient and very stuck habitual patterns of mind requires that we begin to turn around some of our most basic assumptions. Believing in a solid, separate self, continuing to seek pleasure and avoid pain, thinking that someone “out there” is to blame for our pain—one has to get totally fed up with these ways of thinking. One has to give up hope that this way of thinking will bring us satisfaction. Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.” – Pema Chodraon “Nowhere to Hide”
I’ll leave you with this more uplifting quote:
“Keep your Eyes on All that’s Good and Beautiful and Possible in the World. Because the Stories We Tell Create the People We Become.” – Jacqueline Lewis, Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone: a Journal to Reignite, Renew, and Refuel Your Life.
*Network: The man behind the words of this powerful speech was the American playwright, screenwriter and novelist Sidney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (the other three-time winners, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, have all shared their awards with co-writers). The trio of Academy Awards were for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976).
Have a great week!
Girl Who Would be KING on Life, Style and INSPIRATION. 