Who or what is pulling your strings?

 image: florian szillat

Subjective - that’s what we are. A man wins the lottery, he is happy, a woman loses her purse she is unhappy. We are influenced by things around us. We are like sheep herded by the dogs of cultural nuances. Whatever is happening in the world drives us, whatever the zeitgeist is colours what we think, feel and do.

Is this the totality of the human condition. Is this what we, as individuals, are obliged to engage with? Is this what you would choose to engage with?

The factors of this are simple enough. Yet they consume us as surely as though they were a monster. Let’s take a reality check here.

We are born. There is no choice in that, we are actuated by the actions of two people over whom we had no direct influence. We are born into a world that we had no part in creating, we enter it as an already up and running system. We did not create the Universe which upholds the planet we appear upon and we did not create the planet that sustains and supports our life. So we are born innocent, we are not culpable in any sense for where and how the world is or isn’t, what it may or may not be.

We grow and are educated by the world we find ourselves a part of against its criteria. We are given an education based upon cultural requirement. That education either ignores or does not deal with the most fundamental issues raised by our existence and, again like the sheep earlier, we are driven by the dogs of cultural imperative to the pens and enclosures that it wants us to occupy.

There is an old folk tale concerning the people of Hamelin in Germany who were plagued by a rat infestation. The legend tells that a man, a musician, turned up in the town claiming to have the ability to charm the rats and lead them away from the beleaguered town. He made a deal with the burghers of the town and cleared Hamelin of the rats. When the man claimed his payment the town’s leaders reneged upon the deal they had struck.

The man left the town and returned later whereupon he played his pipes and enchanted the children of the town, compelling them to follow him. He lead them into the mountains where the legend has it they entered a cave and were never seen again. Two children survived, one who was deaf and the other who was lame and unable to match the pace set by the piper.

The meaning and interpretation of this tale is fascinating in itself but the significant feature here is that the children became fascinated and enchanted by the tune that the piper played, they danced to his tune and followed him to a place of his choosing where he had them at his mercy.

Let’s shift the story and cast ourselves as the children and the world as the piper. Do you see how you dance to a tune that you never created? How you are fascinated and entranced by a world you never made? Is there anything wrong with this? No, of course not, but, the point here is that you are not in control of your own destiny.

 You become the marionette of something else that pulls your strings and makes you dance to its tune. The question here for you concerns the nature and intention of that which holds your strings in its thrall.

I say this simply because we are in the midst of, according to whose media stream you drink from, the most severe economic crisis ever, cataclysm, doom and gloom and all the rest of it. If you are in the west or a wealthy nation, let’s talk turkey for a moment, you own too much, eat too much and are absorbed by a false sense of entitlement. It’s OK, that’s what the world wanted you to become and it’s what you became. How do you solve the problems of the world? It’s simple, you go shopping! (Excuse me, did I hear that right? That is actually the advice being given by certain world leaders at the moment)

We could all do with slowing down, gross consumption has made us fat fools and lazy incompetents, do I exclude myself from this? Of course not, I’m in the same culture as everyone else and therefore not immune to what ails it.

The lifebelt is this: whatever the economic system does, however the markets react, whatever the situation regarding your personal equity, the Universe goes on. It really doesn’t matter - yes, it has immediate worldly ramifications, absolutely, and if it’s your livelihood that’s threatened then you have already decided I’m an idiot - but in the bigger picture it is of little consequence other than to the life you give it by thinking about it. This is a man made problem that doesn’t exist except in a conceptual universe of notional profits and losses.

The Universe has invested in you and implores you to be true to your birthright as a human being rather than a wage slave. What is the one poignant thing about the rat race? It has to end, there is no such thing as a race that never ends - remember our ancestor in Hamelin who lead the rats away, he actually charmed them into the river where they all drowned. The only thing about the rat race is - it is run on a carousel so you never see the finish line and usually it’s too late, by the time you realise it the moment has passed, you have given your life to a fickle master that probably never even knew you existed.

Make your truths permanent, base yourself upon foundations that do not shift like the sands in a desert, whatever anyone tells you about finances, derivatives and so on, it is all nonsense, if everyone cashed in their chips the system would be exposed for the house of cards that it is. Confidence is the key, your confidence is better invested in the Universe whose ways are timeless and true, unchanging and constant.