(This is a serialization of the draft for my book, Expectations, Hopes and Dreams.)
Grabbing You by the Throat
“Oh my God!”
Her eyes weeping, she put her hand against her lips, knuckles folded. On the screen just across the small room from her was a scene of horrific human suffering. Bombs falling and debris flying, bodies stumbling and falling, blood gushing — all crying out that she must do something!
The propagandists had succeeded. It mattered not which side she took from their point of view; the neighbors next door were weeping at the same sort of scene viewed from the other side in the conflict as they watched on their own screen a broadcast from other propagandists. While each side in this conflict had their respective propagandists pushing their agenda, what lay behind their partisan efforts was another rank of manipulators hoping very much that people would care deeply one way or another.
Not that anyone in the background actually gave a damn about the human suffering on either side, because you can be sure there was enough hatred to go around. That was the whole point: stirring up strife to keep the masses distracted. Those not directly involved should be made to feel it vicariously.
I’m not suggesting that we should stop caring. The problem is the structure and the packaging in which that caring comes wrapped. It’s entirely natural in our context that any reminder of human mortality should shake us. The problem comes in how we allow others to steer the energy that arises from it.
Keeping you tied emotionally to one side or the other will make you a slave. Even keeping you worried about warfare itself, as if we could somehow wish it away, makes you a slave. As long as you are emotionally committed to something that you cannot possibly control, you cannot be free to think and act realistically.
They have stolen your EH&D by suckering you into investing that energy in something you cannot possibly own. For those of us who begin to escape, we often use the language of not caring as a means of contrast. The language of caring has been so thoroughly hijacked that we struggle to find the means to express sanity.
