Type_One_

The oppressors are those who want to control and manipulate the coercive powers of State, those who want to game the rules, change the playing board in which the game is played for their financial well-being, often at the expense of the citizen.

The oppressors are those who seek power solely for the sake of power, those who wish to legislate their own twisted version of morality on the rest of us because they believe that they, and they alone, receive absolute truth.

The oppressors are those who believe in an objective view of reality, that this is the way that it is and that there are no alternatives, they have a static view of reality, and wish to enforce that reality. The oppressors are those who are afraid of change, they are afraid of change because they are amassing financial fortunes from the present, whether or not the means that they are amassing them is immoral or harmful irrelevant, because for the oppressors, the ends always justify the means.

The oppressors are those who are hypocrites to the highest extent. They extoll the virtues of the free markets, they claim the supremacy of laissez-faire, they adhere to the religion of the invisible hand, but at the slightest disturbance to their income streams, they will cry to the State for forgiveness.

The oppressors are those who grant forgiveness to those who cry for it, because the oppressors would never want to bite the hand that feeds, they are incentivized to win their next election, their timelines are as short as their insight is shallow.

The oppressors are those who perpetuate the myths that keep the beast alive. They are the story-tellers, the myth-weavers, and the narrative-producers. That Republican and Democrat represent philosophical differences, that an economic system contingent upon finite goods can produce infinite growth, that freedom can be legislated, we are awakening to the lies by awakening to the fact of our own narratives.

The oppressors are those that absolve personal responsibility for problems they have created. It's always someone else to blame, some other organization, some other individual. They wish to break the causal chain of events.

The oppressors are those that think external salvation is coming, whether that be God, technology, or otherwise. The oppressors will never tell you that it is up to you to change things, because recognizing that, recognizes that you have power, and the oppressors do not want to recognize the power of the individual.

The oppressors believe that humans are resources and that we are here to consume and be consumed. They attempt to turn our biological urges into cash flows through the modern black magic of marketing while making us feel inadequate, insignificant, and empty. Being content with ourselves and saying "enough" with regards to what we have is their greatest enemy.

The oppressors are dividers, they aim to split, to draw us from ourselves, and to pit us against others. They do not want us to realize what we have in common. They draw false dichotomies, they sketch lines in the sand, they will create enemies when there are none.

The oppressors see you as a cell on their Excel spreadsheets, you are nothing but a potential cash flow. How can they monetize your thoughts? How can they place you into a marketable demographic? How can they influence your neuronal impulses so you can buy their poisons?

The oppressors do not care about the environment, they see the natural world as nothing but raw material to be transformed by human ingenuity into something grand. Yet they fail to realize the economy is dependent on the natural world, the natural world cares not whether our economy continues, or whether we do.

The oppressors will make friends with human rights violators, dictators, and terrorists, as long as they remain subjugate to our national goals. They will readily turn a blind eye to injustice, war crimes, and genocide, as long as they recognize their place as a pawn in our games.

We all share a common fate, and that is death, so while we are here, for this brief cosmic interlude which we perceive as our lives, let us act upon our higher human faculties to make this suffering which we know on the material plane less of a burden amongst fellow man. We can act as medicine for each other.

Our petty differences and boundaries exacerbated by nationalism, ethnocentrism, racism, and other separatist movements enacted so that we may more firmly define our groupings must be relegated to the past, a past where our internal evolution was not glimpsed nor realized, a past where we did not yet know what it truly is to embrace our humanity.

We were hunters

And foragers

The frontier

Was everywhere

We were bounded

Only by

The Earth

And the ocean

And the sky

The open road

Still softly calls ...

... How perilous

Our infancy

How humble

Our beginnings

How many rivers

We had to cross

Before we found

AMY GOODMAN: And if you’re teaching young economists, the principles you would teach them, what they’d be?

MANFRED MAX-NEEF: The principles, you know, of an economics which should be are based in five postulates and one fundamental value principle.

One, the economy is to serve the people and not the people to serve the economy.

Two, development is about people and not about objects.

Three, growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily require growth.

Four, no economy is possible in the absence of ecosystem services.

Five, the economy is a subsystem of a larger finite system, the biosphere, hence permanent growth is impossible.

And the fundamental value to sustain a new economy should be that no economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.