Wealth, Technology, Control

One of the objectives of this book is to improve the ability to detect and resist manipulation, to recognize and manage a more complicated picture of personal and global events.

Control is much more than what laws impose on us. It is also expressed by how people who seek power take advantage of the beliefs and identifications of the populace. Cultural hegemony is the term for when the beliefs that empower the ruling class become absorbed as truths by the masses.

This brings us to the connection between wealth, technology and social control.

There are different levels of wealth. Much of the population remains open to infinite wealth generation because it seems fair, if you can earn it, you deserve it. But there are many ways to make money, many of which involve increasing personal or corporate wealth at the expense of people who do not benefit. 

And there is a difference between making 70,000 or a million, and making 100 billion. This higher tier of wealth provides the aspirations of an individual ego with the power of nations, the remoteness, the potency, of Gods.

Science is a mercenary occupation. Technological development is as inclined to the market force of demand as are truth creation and other forms of labor. And just as there are many ways to make money, there are many ways to spend it. Every obstacle to the primal impulse to control (directing others for one’s own power and profit) can be destroyed with enough money.

Right now people are paid to manipulate you based on whatever your identity is attached to. The idea of America, the idea of whiteness, the vulnerability of your pride, your sense of wealth and social status.

Eventually, technology will advance to the point where your beliefs will not be needed for those with enough money to control you.

People see technology as a liberating force but smartphones are an example of how when technology advances faster than our wisdom we become slaves to the tools that were supposed to empower us.

In the way that poor nutrition and disconnection from Nature also limits the biological and psychological clarity of individuals, future access points will be applied within our bodies.

Not everyone with extreme wealth would exploit Science in this way but once the capability is there, conjoined with the realization that at some point, for someone, the desire will be there, the ancient race for supremacy will reach new, irresistible heights.

Have you ever wondered why it seems like no amount of money is ever enough for some people?

As what people can do with money increases, the cost of security, the expense of defending and advancing one’s interests increases.

Most of us will never be in such a position of power, so how it would change us is not immediately obvious. It only has to happen once, for someone to get bored of luxury and start seeking new horizons.

What would you do if you could do anything?

Is it responsible, as a society, to allow such fantastic advantages?

Because the orientation of creating extreme wealth does not benefit the vast majority of the population, consider that the reflex to defend this system is a sign of the hegemonic influence of that wealth.

You are already being controlled. Think about all of the types of people you sneer at, hate, avoid, fear.

Consider how you value or empathize with some types but not others. How you know the strategy of ‘divide and conquer’ is working is when your loyalty, your care, no longer extends to humanity, but only to a tiny faction, within which people fight based on divisions in their mind while a new aristocracy is generated by their labor.

How do you think for yourself if you don’t know who you are, if you think you are a type, an idea? If you believe whatever thoughts appear in your mind?

There is a bigger world, a bigger self, beyond the battle lines that have been instilled into us.

It was never a type of person, not even people with money, that we suffered from. It has always been thoughts we could not see outside of, that made us enemies, that cut us off from the wider human cloth.

Power is the harnessing of belief. The majority has made themselves slaves because they do not control their own beliefs.

Social media has limited people’s attention spans to what can be fit into memes and tweets and then they wonder why world events unfold beyond their collective control.

If you cannot intellectualize your way out of the well-financed agendas, or into the depths of the subconscious, the only way to regain sovereignty is to discover the world beyond thought, the space of awareness already inside each person.

This book uses words as a bridge to their limits. On the other side, across the desert of your disagreements, is another view of you, of who and where we are. Of what threatens us and how we can release ourselves without falling into the trap of good versus evil, of “us” versus “them”.

The battle has always been between us and what has been internalized inside us.