Let me start off by saying I don’t really believe in good and evil. But I do believe in freedom – unabashed, uncompromising freedom – as a basic right for any individual.

And I know with certainty that many agents and systems work very hard every day to get each of us to sell ourselves into captivity.

Actually it’s worse – they make us even pay for that captivity. They make us buy into it.

It’s not to scare you or make you feel bad that I want to shed light on how little control we actually have over our own personal and public lives these days.

It’s to give you awareness of the exit doors to this mad society and tools to openly fight it if you so desire.

First, there is the obvious: the government.

The laws and possible physical consequences that govern you, that threaten to cage you if you do not obey.

You can’t drive certain speeds in certain places. You can’t open your beer here or plant a tree there or stage a rally here or take your shirt off there.

You have to register this and report that, and pay this and submit that. You are most physically beholden to the law because it is enforced by vast armies of uniformed thugs trained on how to use force to minimize your ability to resist them.

They have weapons, and not just a gun – they have access to that vast database of private information about you that the government has been quietly assembling over the years by monitoring all your calls, purchases, paperwork.

Doesn’t that drive you insane with rage? It should, but it probably doesn’t because you’ve grown to accept being dominated and helpless.

The second major system of control is not able to exert the same sort of physical force against you, but it’s more constant and pervasive. It is called capitalism. It is advertising. It is our vapid, shallow,materialistic culture.

The consumer culture doesn’t mind if you think you’ve found it out, it will just confound you by selling you back your own resistance via a punk rock t-shirt from Hot Topic.

It is simply set up to maximize the black hole suck of resources from sovereign individuals into itself so that the individuals are so tied into the consumer culture that they can’t imagine their identity outside of it.

It can pervade to the deepest, seemingly most sacred and pure places.

We’ve sold justice to high-priced attorneys, health care to doctors in bed with the prescription drug industry and love to E-harmony.

The real puppet-masters of many government choices are the industries its choices might affect.

The energy industry runs the energy regulators and determines our level of interest in trading with or fighting other countries.

Weapons manufacturers and defense contractors are more to blame for government overspending than welfare or middle-class tax cuts.

And the third major system is that of popularity, of relationships, of society.

In some ways this can be the most powerful agent of control because, first, it has a pre-requisite that you are in complete compliance with the other two major systems before you can be accepted.

If you don’t choose to use the Internet or mobile phones or keep up your car or living space, people will get very frustrated with you very fast.

If your job doesn’t come with status or cool factor, watch out as some friendly neighborhood barbeques turn into comedy hour at your expense.

You’ll have trouble being accepted on the scene if you have trouble with the law.

People are so protective of their own little precarious place in the safety net that they can’t risk being affiliated with a loose cannon and being implicated themselves.

You can change things about the world you live in.

All you have to do is have a willingness to fight and to let go of a little convenience and safety in exchange for the thrill of freedom.

Learn to desire less and you can live on less…and there’s less you have to lose.

Having a lot to lose has caused a lot of people to make some reprehensible decisions. They tell themselves: “gotta pay the mortgage.” Well maybe don’t get a mortgage in the first place. There’s no rule saying you have to buy yourself a 30 year fixed-rate coffin.

Don’t consume yourself with trying to give your kids greater financial opportunities than you had as a child. That just spoils them and raises more softies.

Instead, raise them with a better life than you did in terms of the love you give, the time you spend and the lessons you teach.

Develop a conscience for people outside your personal sphere of influence like sweatshop workers and local farmers and innocent civilians being killed by our forces and start making purchase and voting decisions that do more to protect and lift up and less to harm others.

Don’t vote if you’re just picking the lesser of two evils: you just let someone make you choose something you consider evil.

Don’t associate with people who don’t respect your choices. Don’t waste time trying to impress those who don’t impress you.

Choose worthwhile uses of your time, boldly cross the lines of manners to make real connections with each other.

Let yourself feel your emotions instead of drowning them in pills.

Express yourself and be okay with the consequences, because the rewards are more significant.

Basically, forget everything government, consumer culture and society have told you to do.

Follow that advice your parents always told you. The advice they knew you’d never really accept. Be yourself.

Those are two simple words of advice that our parents always offered us, and we should follow them dead-on.

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