Unplugged and aware

You know, I used to think that maybe it was just me. That maybe there was something wrong. Maybe I should seek some professional counseling. At least, this is what others recommended for me—my teachers, my parents, even my boss at one time. But no, it’s not just me. Now, after twenty-odd years of pondering the situation, I’ve come to the realization that too many others feel the same way as I, yet are just as powerless to enact any positive change. No doubt these people have been recommended for professional counseling as well, but it’s a simple realization, really. Something that has been said in casual conversation, lambasted in the media, written about, joked about, used both metaphorically and in all earnestness. It’s the realization that our world has gone insane.

Well, to be honest, it’s not our world, but rather humanity’s varying systems of government throughout the world. Obviously the other denizens of our planet are continuing their lives as normal . . . or are they? We’ve encroached upon them from all sides for generations, driven them away from their lands, rounded them up and forced them into our governance, often to the brink of extinction (and all-too-frequently over that very precipice), so who is to say whether they aren’t feeling some measure of the insanity that seems to have plagued us as a species?

I sometimes envision that I am able to feel the land upon which I walk, and it feels . . . sick. Looking around me as I walk through the park, I see decaying trees dying from toxins spewed by thousands of passing automobiles, choked back by ivy that isn’t native to the region, sprayed by various chemical companies’ latest creations, to the point that that very artificiality seems to seep through the soles of my feet and infect me all the more.

I think that it’s usually artists, poets, musicians, Pagans and freethinkers who seem to awaken to this before anyone else does. We’re accustomed to seeing the world in a different light. We see the Divine in the leaves of the trees, the grass in the meadow, the clouds in the sky. We cringe as we see the planes with their high-altitude aerosol dispersal of aluminum and barium into the upper atmosphere for reasons unknown, while others are walking by, oblivious to everything except their text messaging. We notice the blossoms occurring earlier and earlier every spring, while the pundits and lobbyists and corporations and religious leaders and politicians tell us that climate change is a liberal conspiracy. We’ve learned to read between the lines in the newspaper’s articles, hear the keywords and buzzwords and sound bites and talking points being used on the radio and on the television and identify them for what they really are. Why? Because we are artists, poets, musicians, Pagans and freethinkers. We’re not “plugged in” to the world they control. We’re attuned to the world outside of their control, and they’re terrified of us. So they turn everyone else against us. We have become “them.” “They.” An object. Dehumanized. Evil. The message becomes one of hate, and it gets nestled securely into the nightly news, the daily papers, even family entertainment.

Every day, I see headlines filled with this hatred. This person killed that person because of the color of their skin, the religion or philosophy they followed, their gender, their look, or whom they loved or wanted to have sexual relations with. This leader screams about that leader, or that group, or that country, or that person, or that class, or that religion, or that whatever else. Everything is about hatred, violence, anger, terror, fear . . . and it’s growing exponentially. I’m sure if you stopped a moment, you’d feel it yourself, right now, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. It’s in the breakroom gossip, it’s on the radio, it’s in the newspapers, it’s on the television, it fills the Internet forums and chat rooms. It’s everywhere. And we can’t seem to stop it. Indeed, we thrive on it. Many people actually make their living fostering it, and these are people that many of us have come to look up to—leaders in their own right. Leaders of hatred.

We’ve set ourselves up for failure as a species since our earliest years. We look up to these leaders and try to emulate them, become them, it’s what we aspire toward, what we want to be when we grow up, what we study to become . . . until we realize that unless we’re born into wealth or have few enough scruples that we can crush others beneath us, we will simply be relegated to the majority of us who slog through, day-to-day, hoping for something better. Well, here’s the reality, folks: it won’t get any better. Not so long as we aspire to become the things we hate.

We continue to elect persons into places of power who are wealthy, then wonder why the wealthy don’t pay taxes and the poor have their taxes raised. We give our money to our religious leaders as an act of charity and wonder why our religious leaders live in mansions and drive fancy cars while we take the bus and live in squalor. We waste our money buying things we don’t need because an advertisement on television shows that it’s something we can’t live without. We have tons of junk in our lives whose sole purpose is to distract us from the junk in our lives, and fall into a never-ending spiral of debt trying to acquire even more.

Then, when we finally wake up to the reality, if we wake up to the reality, it’s too late. We’re out of money, out of time, out of options. What do we do now? We’re laid off, cast off, tossed out and left to fend for ourselves in a world that demands artificially inflated (based on current stock trends) monetary compensation for what should be rights provided to everyone—the basic human needs, essentials, requirements of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare . . . and purpose.

Those who wind up cast off are told to “get a job” and stop “mooching” off of society with food stamps, welfare, unemployment compensation, except that the market economics have always been shown to focus upon the younger generation who will work for less due to their own naïveté, societal conditioning, or desperation. All the while, these same companies completely ignore the older workers who are willing to do the same and for the same reasons, giving pathetic excuses like “they won’t stick around,” “they’ll leave when something better comes along,” “they’ll want more money” . . . and because there are always at least three people applying for any one position, they can get away with their discrimination tactics by simply saying, “We’ve hired someone more qualified.”

It used to be that you could just walk down to your local grocery store, or office building, or mall, or specialty store, or coffee shop, ask to get an application, fill it out, turn it into the manager, maybe even have your interview right away, and if they were interested (and hiring at the time), you could be hired on the spot! Then the “2nd interview” scenario began. You’re good enough for the manager, but let’s see if you’re a “fit” for the rest of “human resources” (which used to be called “personnel” and is now referred to as “human capital”). In some cases, there’s even a “3rd interview.”

First, the applications went away. You now apply online. That’s great for those who have computers, but not so great for those who can’t afford them, or don’t have an Internet connection because everything is sold in “plans” these days, with a 1- or 2-year commitment contract, early disconnect fees and, of course, a credit check. Then, the want-ads went away. They’re now online too. Monster.com, Yahoo! HotJobs, Craigslist. All wonderful ways to ignore you completely if you’re not considered, without ever having to waste a precious 15–30 minutes on a face-to-face interview, and an infinitely more efficient way to discriminate based upon your age (usually signified by the number of years you have worked at various places on your resume), your gender (normally revealed by your name), your race (often revealed by your name as well), and a wide variety of other telling factors that people in “human capital” have been trained to deduce from a casual investigation of your cover letter and resume entries.

Oh, yes! This discrimination doesn’t apply solely to age! They willfully and routinely discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, even just the way someone looks (assuming you even get a first interview to begin with) can all be discriminated against legally if there’s someone else waiting in the wings for the same job, and no lawyer will dare take up a case unless there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary . . . not that anyone seeking a job these days would ever be able to afford a lawyer to begin with, and that’s just what companies are counting on. So much for that whole “equal employment opportunities” nonsense, eh? Hire someone else, don’t even respond to the other applicants, it all gets neatly swept under the rug.

All of this, of course, weighs heavily upon the minds of those who are, like myself, looking for work. We begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with us. We begin to doubt our abilities. We begin to think that we are somehow at fault for why we’re unemployed. We begin to feel . . . worthless.

I wish I could say that this is just the situation in the United States. I wish I could take that knowledge and leave this country. I would do so in a heartbeat . . . if I could afford it, but there again, that requires money. The promise of a job waiting for me in whatever country I’m moving to, the capital to secure a dwelling of some kind (first month’s rent, last month’s rent, security deposit, water deposit, electrical deposit, pet deposit, trash deposit, key deposit, renter’s insurance, etc.), transportation, food, more deposits to utilities companies . . . and even then, it’s not a guaranteed thing as they first need to run a credit check and then decide whether you can rent from them, and that promised job may not exist by the time you get there (as I found out with a job promise in Alaska that I moved to from the East Coast only to discover they had withdrawn the position due to their own budgetary constraints), or they may have declined the offer based on your credit as well, given that more and more employers are running this check even for positions that have no association with anything having to do with finances. Yet more discrimination with a means to decide against you based upon some vague and ephemeral “scoring” that proves only that you haven’t paid your bills. Well, maybe if you had a job that would give you money to do so? Common sense, people!

But, sadly, this situation exists all over the world. Credit in one country, good or bad, is rapidly becoming recognized internationally . . . and, of course, money is demanded everywhere you go. You’re expected to have 2, 3, even 4 years of recently employed and paid experience, even in the most mundane of tasks. Your skills have to be in demand and marketable. We’ve become commodities to be brokered, and even if your skills are in demand, even if you stand a chance to get the job, it still doesn’t matter where you go, there is still that same reality looming over everything . . . the world has gone insane. Anger, fear, hatred, terror, war. If it’s not there yet, it soon will be.

Oh, some countries are more progressive than others, indeed . . . well, at least until some other country decides that they need to “toe the line,” as seems to be the case these days with oil, energy and that ever-present controlling factor: money. If you don’t toe the line, they’ll send in their planes, their guns, their tanks, their bombs and their “liberating forces.” “Do what we say or we’ll kill you.” That’s the (insert religio-corporatocratic country here) way!

So people like myself who have “awakened to the reality of the matrix,” as it were, are left wondering just where to go from here. We are in an extreme minority, surrounded and severely outnumbered by those who are still “plugged in.” We’re out in the cold, left to rot, destitute and desperate. So, what to do? Out of money, out of time, out of options . . . all that remains seems to be either homelessness and eating out of garbage cans (since the homeless shelters are all full), committing some crime so as to be sent to prison and at least be guaranteed housing, clothing, food, healthcare and purpose . . . the very things that should be basic human rights to begin with . . . or the long, very permanent sleep that comes with taking one’s own life. I often wonder if the religio-corporate-controlled governments are counting on this?

Of course, everyone says that even thinking this way is wrong. They say that someone who thinks this way should seek help. They point out special help lines that are free. They say it’s a “permanent solution to a temporary situation” and that things will get better . . . except it really doesn’t, does it? In today’s world, it just stays the same, or gets worse, as more and more older people are discovering. They’re discarded like yesterday’s newspapers and left to fend for themselves in a world that demands more and more obedience, blind patriotism and, of course, money—the one thing that you’ve just been stripped of. What’s worse is that our own leaders, the millionaires that we’ve put in office, say that it’s our own fault for not putting away savings for our retirements . . . not that we ever could, with most of us scraping by, paycheck-to-paycheck, and so more and more people are turning to these options (which should never even be options to begin with). Some take that final plunge, seeing no other alternative.

Now, of course, there are those who have even gone so far as to categorize suicide, or even suicidal thoughts, as a “disease” that is “treatable” with drugs and therapy . . . all of which, of course, costs money, and so we’re right back to square one. If you really want to get down to the brass tacks of the matter, we’re told that it’s wrong because our friends and family members are selfish. They don’t want you to leave, because you are important to them in some way. They call it love, and indeed, there is truth to that, but despite what we poets and dreamers who see the reality may well write about to the contrary, love cannot actually fill your belly, clothe your back, or keep you secure and warm. Further, so many of us are faced with a situation that our family members and friends are either in the same dire straits as we, or they’ve opted not to help you in your situation because they feel you should somehow help yourself out of it, even though it’s what has brought you to this final, desperate consideration. A noble sentiment that the poets among us should understand. The old “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy where you’ll become more independent and have a stronger sense of purpose . . . except that reality doesn’t play by those rules. Reality shows us that the job market hires young people, pretty people, naïve people. Reality lays us off but keeps the overpaid executives that don’t really do anything. Reality throws us into the street when we can’t pay our rent. Reality prevents us from ever getting another job or place to live because our credit is bad, and our credit is bad because we don’t have the money to pay our bills, and we don’t have money to pay our bills because we don’t have a job, and we don’t have a job because there aren’t any available for our skill sets, or they’re too far away to commute to by public transportation, or we’re too old, or we don’t look right, or are the wrong color, or wrong race, or wrong gender, or wrong height, or wrong weight, or wrong religion, or wrong sexual orientation, and besides . . . they’ve hired someone who is “better qualified.”

And so I find myself in this very situation now. I’m a few months shy of 46 years old, my wife is just over ten years older than myself, we’re both unemployed (though not unemployable, save for the discrimination of the labor market described above), rapidly running out of money and just as rapidly running out of options.

We have until the first week of July. In two days, as of this writing, it will be April. After that, even if we become employed, the chances of us saving enough from our combined paychecks to continue paying our rent are dubious at best. So . . . where does the awakened go from here? We can’t be plugged back in, can’t return to that blissfully ignorant sleep, that societal conditioning, that programming, that brainwashed existence . . . not that we would ever want to be even if we could, despite the fact that we would doubtlessly and gleefully love to rip the horrors and atrocities we’ve witnessed and experienced from our brains if it were only possible.

So we’re left sitting here in the darkness of despair, of sleeplessness, of stress, anxiety, anger, frustration, indignity . . . reality. Out of time, out of options . . . all but out of hope. Society looks on us not as a reflection of what will befall them, nor even as people to be pitied. No charity is extended and no desires to assist are forthcoming from society as a whole, save what few friends have been able to pool their resources together for us to extend us for another few months. Rather, society would have us become things to be shunned, classified, sorted and labeled. What do we become labeled as? Paranoid. Conspiracy theorists. Lazy. Communists. Socialists. Crazy. Satanists. Gay. Whatever label they can apply to strip us of our humanity, make it seem like we’re the ones with the problem, make us simply go away, let us be forgotten while the world rolls on, one hate-filled headline at a time.

Such is the fate of our world. Far better it is for you if you never wake up . . . except nearly everyone does . . . eventually . . .