The Lie We Live

The Lie We Live

By Spencer Cathcart
Information Clearing House
March 27, 2017

At this moment you could be anywhere, doing anything.

Instead you sit alone before a screen.

So what’s stopping us from doing what we want?

Being where we want to be?

Each day we wake up in the same room and follow the same path,
to live the same day as yesterday.

Yet at one time each day was a new adventure.

Along the way something changed.

Before our days were timeless, now our days are is this what it
means to be grown up?

To be free?

But are we really free?

Food, water, land.

The very elements we need to survive are owned by corporations.

There’s no food for us on trees, no freshwater in streams,
no land to build a home.

If you try and take what the Earth provides you’ll be locked away.

So we obey their rules.

We discover the world through a textbook.

For years we sit and regurgitate what we’re told.

Tested and graded like subjects in a lab.

Raised not to make a difference in this world,
raised to be no different.

Smart enough to do our job but not to question why we do it.

So we work and work, left with no time to live the life we work for.

Until a day comes when we are too old to do our job.

It is here we are left to die.

Our children take our place in the game.

To us our path is unique, but together we are nothing
more than fuel.

The fuel that powers the elite.

The elite who hide behind the logos of corporations.

This is their world.

And their most valuable resource is not in the ground.

It is us.

We build their cities, we run their machines, we fight their wars.

After all, money isn’t what drives them.

It’s power.

Money is simply the tool they use to control us.

Worthless pieces of paper we depend on to feed us, move us,
entertain us.

They gave us money and in return we gave them the world.

Where there were trees that cleaned our air are now factories
that poison it.

Where there was water to drink, is toxic waste that stinks.

Where animals ran free, are factory farms where they
are born and slaughtered endlessly for our satisfaction.

Over a billion people are starving, despite us having enough
food for everybody.

Where does it all go?

70% of the grain we grow is fed to fatten the animals you eat
for dinner.

Why help the starving?

You can’t profit off them.

We are like a plague sweeping the earth, tearing apart
the very environment that allows us to live.

We see everything as something to be sold, as an object
to be owned.

But what happens when we have polluted the last river?

Poisoned the last breath of air?

Have no oil for the trucks that bring us our food?

When will we realize money can’t be eaten, that it has no value?

We aren’t destroying the planet.

We are destroying all life on it.

Every year thousands of species go extinct.

And time is running out before we’re next.

If you live in America there’s a 41% chance you’ll get cancer.

Heart disease will kill one out of three Americans.

We take prescription drugs to deal with these problems, but
medical care is the third leading cause of death behind cancer
and heart disease.

We’re told everything can be solved by throwing money at
scientists so they can discover a pill to make our problems
go away.

But the drug companies and cancer societies rely on our suffering
to make a profit.

We think we’re running for a cure, but really we’re running away
from the cause.

Our body is a product of what we consume and the food we eat
is designed purely for profit.

We fill ourselves with toxic chemicals.

The bodies of animals infested with drugs and diseases.

But we don’t see this.

The small group of corporations that own the media don’t want
us to.

Surrounding us with a fantasy we’re told is reality.

It’s funny to think humans once thought the earth
was the center of the universe.

But then again, now we see ourselves as the center
of the planet.

We point to our technology and say we’re the smartest.

But do computers, cars, and factories really illustrate
how intelligent we are?

Or do they show how lazy we’ve become.

We put this “civilized” mask on.

But when you strip that away what are we?

How quickly we forget only within past hundred years did
we allow women to vote; allow blacks to live as equals.

We act as if we are all-knowing beings, yet there is much
we fail to see.

We walk down the street ignoring all the little things.

The eyes who stare.

The stories they share.

Seeing everything as a background to ‘me’.

Perhaps we fear we’re not alone.

That we are a part of a much bigger picture.

But we fail to make the connection.

We’re okay killing pigs, cows, chickens, strangers from foreign
lands.

But not our neighbours, not our dogs, our cats, those we have
come to love and understand.

We call other creatures stupid yet we point to them to justify
our actions.

But does killing simply because we can, because we always have,
make it right?

Or does it show how little we’ve learned.

That we continue to act out of primal aggression rather than
thought and compassion.

One day, this sensation we call life will leave us.

Our bodies will rot, our valuables recollected.

Yesterday’s actions all that remain.

Death constantly surrounds us, still it seems so distant from
our everyday reality.

We live in a world on the verge of collapse.

The wars of tomorrow will have no winners.

For violence will never be the answer; it will destroy every
possible solution.

If we all look at our innermost desire, we will see our dreams
are not so different.

We share a common goal.

Happiness.

We tear the world apart looking for joy, without ever looking
within ourselves.

Many of the happiest people are those who own the least.

But are we really so happy with our iPhones, our big houses,
our fancy cars?

We’ve become disconnected by idolizing people we’ve never met.

We witness the extraordinary on screens but ordinary everywhere
else.

We wait for someone to bring change without ever thinking
of changing ourselves.

Presidential elections might as well be a coin toss.

It’s two sides of the same coin.

We choose which face we want and the illusion of choice,
of change is created.

But the world remains the same.

We fail to realize the politicians don’t serve us;
they serve those who fund them into power.

We need leaders, not politicians.

But in this world of followers, we have forgotten to lead ourselves.

Stop waiting for change and be the change you want to see.

We didn’t get to this point by sitting on our asses.

The human race survived not because we are fastest
or the strongest, but because we worked together.

We have mastered the act of killing.

Now let’s master the joy of living.

This isn’t about saving the planet.

The planet will be here whether we are or not.

Earth has been around for billions of years,
each of us will be lucky to last eighty.

We are a flash in time, but our impact is forever.

I often wished I lived in an age before computers,
when we didn’t have screens to distract us.

But I realize there's one reason why this is the only time I want to
be alive.

Because here today, we have an opportunity we never had before.

The internet gives us the power to share a message and unite
millions around the world.

While we still can we must use our screens to bring us closer
together, rather than farther apart.

For better or worse, our generation will determine the future
of life on this planet.

We can either continue to serve this system of destruction until
no memory of our existence remains.

Or we can wake up and realize we aren’t evolving upwards,
but rather falling down...we just have screens in our faces
so we don’t see where we’re heading.

This present moment is what every step, every breath and every
death has led to.

We are the faces of all who came before us.

And now it is our turn.

You can choose to carve your own path or follow the road countless
others have already taken.

Life is not a movie.

The script isn’t already written.

We are the writers.

This is Your Story, Their Story, Our Story.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44357.htm