Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Earlier this week, I published a lengthy thought piece titled, America is Being Divided and Conquered Into Oblivion. I ended it with the following paragraphs:
All that said, I don’t want to end this post on a negative note. I think the real thing that’s missing from the equation is too many good, talented people are doing nothing. I’m not trying to be judgmental here. I personally had the ability and resources to quit my job and do what I do. I didn’t have a family at the time and didn’t have to provide for anyone else. That’s not the point. You don’t have to do what I did to make a difference and influence people. You don’t have to quit your job and fight the status quo with every breath you take. Life doesn’t need to be seen as an all or nothing endeavor in everything you do. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to consider the following (as an aside, I try to ask myself these questions all the time).
Think about your everyday life. What are you doing to push forward the decentralization of power and unite people? How are you being potentially divisive in life, and how can you bring people together as opposed to tearing others down? If you were brought up privileged and financially well off, you arguably have a greater responsibility to society. What are you doing to give back? Is it sufficient? Is what you do for a living accretive or extractive to society? What are you doing to make the world a better place than you found it? If nothing, why not?
While there are plenty of fortunate people out there doing jobs merely to chase cash and stroke their ego, the vast majority of people genuinely have major financial commitments and therefore have no choice but to stay in spiritless, soul-sucking jobs. I get that. For people in the former group, I ask you to consider the fact that you have one life to live and this battle is an existential one.
If you can dedicate your talents and creativity to something positive, consider doing so. If you are in the latter group, I understand that providing for your family is of the utmost importance, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make meaningful contributions in smaller ways, even if it’s as simple as trying to be less divisive and more self-reflective. As Gandhi noted:
“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”
But even this is not enough. We need to heed the words of Huxley in 1958:
“If you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.”
We can’t rely on politicians and we can’t rely on hope. We need to rely on the power of our own actions coming together to ultimately make the world a better place. The window of opportunity is now and the world needs you. All of you.
I was thrilled that the above post touched a lot of people, but I didn’t really provide any specific suggestions for personal growth. Fortunately, I just read an excellent article by the Daily Zen’s Charlie Ambler, which does just that.
Here it is, republished in full: How to Actually Make America Great Again.
There’s a lot of platitudinal talk about making things “great” again, which is a good way to engage any regular idiot without providing any sort of prescription for what should actually happen. I find this particular election cycle to be revolting and don’t feel personally connected to it in any way. As I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals, about Lincoln and other American political figures during the Civil War era, I can’t help but think that these events of 2016 are just further signals of the decline of both American society and the West at large.
Sorry, folks, but we got our freedom and we squandered it fewer than a handful of centuries. We stopped reading books. We gave up on the nuclear family. We skewed the meaning of words and let other people and institutions do for us what we could have done ourselves. We lost any semblance of identity other than that reliant on the hedonistic narcissistic whims of the individual. Identity politics have emerged alongside a complete loss of cultural identity— what a supreme irony! It really feels great to get this off my chest.
In this sense, there are obvious ways to “make America great again” that don’t involve trusting a wealthy NYC landlord. After a few years of dealing with those guys I can assure you they’re bad news. How do we make America Great Again? A few ideas for individuals, since the whole purpose of this place to begin with was that individuals had the opportunity to live virtuous lives without needing to rely too heavily on their institutions to provide for them or stifle them. Let’s review a few individual tactics that can help bring some sanity back to the Western cultural-political landscape:
Return to the family.
There’s no great human society that didn’t place a high value on the nuclear family. The modern West has experienced a fracturing of the family due to various technologies and cultural excitements that made it seem unimportant. Many people went their own way; love became about promiscuity, drama and money, rather than sacrifice, honor, humility, modesty or child-rearing. Success became about money and the career ladder rather than passing wisdom and virtue onto one’s kin.
In New York City, the apotheosis of the peculiar type of modernity we see in 2016, I see mothers who dress their babies like tiny hip college students and then go off to work, leaving the babies with a random babysitter who spends the day walking them in circles around the park. If you want to rescue the modern world, return to the family. Focus less on culture and careerism and more on teaching children how to live a meaningful life. If the example we set is that work is more important than family, the next generation of children probably won’t even bother with raising families. These priorities should be reversed.
Read more.
Many of the men who founded America and sent it forward in the beginning were voracious readers. Before you could spend your leisure time by just going on your phone and playing Angry Birds or getting laid on Tinder, smart people would spend hours each day reading for leisure. They would digest the timeless works of the past not for any real practical purpose but to cultivate a fuller understanding of the world, history, and human life. If they wanted correspondence with someone, they would sit down and draft a thoughtful letter by hand.
Information was scarce and ambitious people sought it out. Today, the great books are open to literally everyone. What do young people do? They complain that the authors weren’t multicultural enough. I really have no choice but to shake my head at the sheer arrogance and spiritual void that exists in my generation. I’m often embarrassed by it. Liberal arts college students should start actually reading books again; they’ve clearly taken a break.
This is not to say, “Aw man, the good ol’ days, right!?” Most people in Lincoln’s era and before, war notwithstanding, only lived until their mid-40’s on average. But we should understand from the past just how insane our current notions of leisure are. We have lost so much discipline, so much capacity for patience and knowledge that people not that long ago were willing to cultivate. Read more. Read every day. Honestly, read as much as you possibly can. It will transform your life in a way that you won’t recognize until you see.
Don’t be scared
When America started, most people didn’t even think about retirement. Retirement wasn’t an option. This was because it was unlikely for anyone to live to middle-age, let alone past it, thanks to poor medical science and general uncleanliness. It’s not unusual today for someone to live to 80, 90, or 100, the irony being that they’re usually stuck in some sort of boring post-industrial retirement home or a hospital bed. And up until retirement they likely spent their entire life working to save money for retirement. The logic in these scenarios really just reflects a population that does not reflect!
That would you do today if you knew you were going to die at 40? Would you worry so much about petty things? We can learn from the past how to keep the present in perspective. Modern society’s current degradation is the best argument against “situational progress” that one can muster. People emotionally shift and become just as uncomfortable in a state of supreme comfort as they are in a state of supreme discomfort, the same way many people who get rich aren’t any happier for it. We adapt. It’s in our nature. If we can spiritually train ourselves to be less uncomfortable, less fearful, and more grateful of life, we will stop being so collectively petty and greedy.
I don’t write very many political articles, but when you get to the root of politics you realize that it’s everywhere. Everything you do is a reflection of your beliefs. The way to make America great again isn’t to kick out all the brown people or give everyone free money or fight strange conflicts abroad, but instead to have a complete spiritual overhaul! Politics is a reflection of our collective spirit; clearly today that spirit is nearly-bankrupt. Our priorities are insanely out of order.
If we want to reclaim a sense of greatness and virtue, it takes individuals to reconfigure themselves and cultivate greatness on a spiritual level. It takes people who have an appetite not for mindless destruction and distraction but for knowledge, reality, humility and gratitude. Meditate, folks. Read more. Love your family. Stifle your ego. This might be our only hope.
If you liked this piece, please consider supporting Daily Zen.
Thank you for writing this, Charlie.
The post How To Actually Make America Great Again appeared first on crude-oil.top.