The primal weakness of an institution is that any useful information that arises from the world and not the institution becomes a threat. It threatens the narrative that the system is the source of all good.

In a way this is correct, the “everything is connected” spiel. But it’s also very wrong as every positive interpretation of reality must be twisted to show that it derives from the system. That twisting contorts and corrupts as unnecessary pain.

A story is a self coherent entity. Every part of it must make sense and serve the story. Otherwise it’s a documentary. A story is a self-contained world.

Learning to tell a good story is great. The problem with living in accordance to a story though is that all stories end. Your life must be the only story you live in. If you choose anything else, you die before your time.

It’s like buying a new board game or video game. Some can keep you entertained for hundreds of hours. Some can become entire lifestyles. But at the end of the day they’re finite games.

When a game is played it is given life. Jobs are boring. In exchange for ‘playing’ them and giving them human life you are compensated with money that you can use to play games you want to play.

Playing a game you don’t want to play is a raw deal because you’re paying with time no matter what. Money you earn attempts to masquerade as life energy.

You can either rise to a level where the game becomes fun. Like winning at monopoly. Though most games don’t actually get more fun the higher you climb. The “fun” comes from the idea of “winning”

Taken to an extreme the pinnacle of an ambitious and competitive person is someone who will passionately try to win a shit eating contest. Because winning is winning.

Within such systems everyone is clammoring for the judge/critic roles. You kinda sorta escape the game but at the cost of having to pretend eating shit is some sort of amazing thing to do.

Monks escape in a different way. They make life into a game of I Spy. The game is to notice and be conscious of as much as possible. It’s “the” meta-game every other game derives from.

If you notice more and can act on it, you are better. This is having “vision”. This is becoming the all seeing God of the game. This is the top of the mountain.

This central point is your very own point of view when you’re not surpressing it in an attempt to climb some other mountain to get a better view of things. You already have the best view of things for yourself.

How can you tell which voice is yours and which voices are “installed”?

“You” don’t speak just like a company like Amazon or Apple doesn’t speak. You have a spokesperson like the CEO or the founder but the thing in of itself can never do anything except just “be”.

Most CEOs and leaders “are” well intentioned. They simply can’t understand why people are unhappy. They’re too removed from the more common reality. (Their reality is just as valid though)

We choose to put on a pedestal people who say “let them eat cake” because they’re removed from out reality. We wanted it because we wanted an ideal to strive for.

Blaming some leader figure or some group in power for being disconnected from reality is like being angry and sad that Iron Man doesn’t exist in real life. They are purposefully disconnected because that’s how we keep ideals pure.

We bolster them by sacrificing and keeping silent about how we really feel. We support their illusions and then complain that they live in an illusion.

We support the bolstering of grand illusions because we ourselves need our little illusions. Our sacrifices and our pain make that illusion into a reality, at least for a little while. When the pain fades, we need to cut ourselves again.