Let's think of a farm, thousands of sheep all alike, same food, same bleating, same wool, same milk, a perfect biological machine at the service of the shepherd; now let's look around us, the society we live in is doing the same thing to human beings, each of us is unique and unrepeatable by nature yet the capitalist system has standardized us, made us all alike in desires, thoughts, behaviors; it has created the standard man.
The ideal model of this man is the person who spends their life between home, work, and consumption, is obedient to authority, submissive, dedicates ten or twelve hours a day to wage labor and the time left over they spend buying useless things; it is a closed-loop life: produce, consume, produce, consume; what I am describing is not a conspiracy theory, it is already before our eyes.
But how is such a human being manufactured? The system has three powerful tools that shape our minds from childhood.
The first tool the system uses to standardize us is school and here we must make an important premise, I am not saying that all teachers are bad, there are teachers who try to do good for their students, who encourage them to think for themselves, who help them discover their passions but these unfortunately are isolated cases, they are exceptions that confirm the rule that school, as it is structured, is a factory of future workers; this factory has evolved over time, it no longer produces workers as it once did, those who spent forty years in the same factory performing the same gesture, today's capitalism needs a different product: the flexible worker, precarious, submissive, willing to do anything not to lose their job.
To understand how school manages to produce this type of human being we must look at what it teaches, not in the official curricula but in the way of relating to others, school teaches that obedience to authority is the most important virtue, the child must sit when told, must stand when told, must speak when told, must do the homework assigned to them, must learn what is imposed on them, it does not matter if what they study will be useful to them when they start working or if it will be absolutely useless to them; whoever does not obey, whoever transgresses, is punished, punishments have changed over time but their essence is always the same; when my parents were little they used canings on the hands, when I went to elementary school there were shoves and slaps, physical pain was a tool of discipline, today physical violence has been largely replaced by more subtle, more psychological violence, today labels are used, they say one child is hyperactive, another is dyslexic, knowing full well that these words harm the person's well-being; in addition to this, peer pressure is used, if you are not as good as the others, if you are not obedient you are isolated, teased, excluded; the psychological label and social pressure are the new tools of discipline but the purpose is always the same: to bring children to their knees before the teacher.
The teacher, in the school context, represents authority, she is the first figure of power the child encounters outside the family; if the child learns that they must bow their head before the teacher, if they learn that the teacher is always right even when they seem wrong, if they learn that disobeying is wrong and entails consequences then, once grown up, they will do the same with the entrepreneur, with the office manager, with the executive, with the policeman, they will kneel automatically without thinking because they have been trained to do so since childhood; the act of bowing the head becomes a conditioned reflex, like Pavlov's dog that salivated when it heard the bell.
School does not only teach obedience, it also teaches another lesson equally important for the system: flexibility; today young people are told they must be flexible, adapt to any job, be ready to change even ten jobs in their lifetime; it seems like wise advice but in reality it is a command, it is the voice of the system saying: "Prepare to be exploited in any way, at any time, in any place because if you do not do it, someone else will do it in your place." School, to make this message even more effective, also teaches that the fault always lies with the victim; they tell young people that the underpaid have no money because of their own fault, they tell them that the unemployed have no work because of their own fault, because they did not study or did not make an effort, and so young people grow up thinking that if they do not succeed it is only their fault, that they should be grateful for any job, even the most humiliating, even the most exploitative.
No one at school tells the truth, no one tells that the entrepreneur who tells the unemployed person they have no work, a few hours later threatens employees to keep them doing overtime off the books for a few euros; no one tells that in small and medium-sized Italian businesses, where unions do not enter, workers' rights are worth less than the paper they are written on and exploitation is an everyday occurrence, no one tells them that being a flexible temporary worker is not a choice but a sentence, no one tells them that the labor market is structured on purpose so that there are more workers than jobs, thus keeping everyone with their backs to the wall and making them accept any condition.
The second tool the system uses to standardize us is institutionalized monotheistic religions and here too, as with school, we must make an important premise, I am not talking about that personal feeling that many people feel toward the Divine, I am not talking about spirituality or sacred texts, I want to talk about institutionalized religions, therefore those organizations that have a hierarchy, a leader, rigid and immutable rules, I am talking about those structures known to everyone that have power, money and political influence.
It is no coincidence that these structures are funded by the state, politicians know well that religion, if used well, is a very powerful tool of social control, it is much more effective than the police or the army because it acts from within, in people's consciences, it makes people control themselves without anyone having to control them from the outside.
The fundamental message that these organizations convey, often interpreting the sacred texts in their own way, is that there is a God to whom we must submit, an omnipotent God who created the world and established precise rules on how we must live, rules on what to eat, how to dress, who to be with, what to do, what not to do, even on how to think and the representatives of this God on Earth are the monotheistic priests, imams and rabbis; they are his spokespersons, his interpreters, they presume to know what God wants and we must listen to them and obey because if we disobey them we disobey God himself.
This way of thinking creates the psychology of the subject, the teaching is that there is always someone higher than us, someone to whom we must bow, someone who knows better than us what is right and what is wrong, first God, then the priest, then the father, then the master, then the state, a chain of command that starts from heaven and reaches down to the office manager; they taught us something absurd, they told us that the person closest to God is the one who accepts this chain, who submits, who does not ask questions, who obeys; all this creates the perfect psychology for those who will have to become employees or workers because the worker who has learned to bow their head before the priest will bow their head before the entrepreneur as well.
And then there is the teaching of endurance, the various imams, rabbis and monotheistic priests teach that one must endure, that one must accept one's suffering, they teach that the arrogant will be punished by God in the end so we must not rebel, we must not fight, we must endure, pray, and wait for God to do justice; instead of telling us to fight for a better existence here and now, in this life, on this earth, they tell us that pain is the key to reaching paradise; with this teaching the energy for social change is diverted toward a distant hope, instead of fighting for fairer wages, better working conditions and a more dignified life people are encouraged to endure, to hope that reward will come after death.
Above I said that institutionalized monotheistic religions are tools of standardization but it would be wrong to think that this flaw belongs only to them, in the last century paganism was reborn as a path to freedom but, as a polytheistic pagan, I must recognize that in the past it had its dark phase and it did quite a bit of damage; at first it was a lived spirituality, not imposed, that arose from below, but then in some parts of the world, when priests acquired political power, when temples became centers of wealth and control, then paganism also became a tool of standardization; history teaches us that money and power kill spirituality.
If school and religion form submissive individuals, advertising manufactures passive consumers, they delude us into thinking that happiness and personal fulfillment are achieved by purchasing goods, in this society uniqueness is seen as a flaw but be careful, the system is cunning, it does not tell us that we must be like others because that would be too obvious, they delude us into thinking that we can express our uniqueness through what we buy rather than through who we are; the system does not tell us "buy only these shoes" because that would be too blatant, it tells us instead: "Choose between Adidas, Lotto, Nike, Puma or other brands, you choose the color and the model but buy." The freedom they grant us is a freedom inside the fence while the freedom they do not grant us is that of not playing their game therefore the freedom to say: "I do not need it" without feeling like an outcast; if we wear faded clothes or refuse soft drinks and drink only tap water or fruit juices, it happens that colleagues and friends make fun of us, the system has built a very powerful psychological mechanism: social shame, shame whispers to us that if you do not buy what everyone buys you are a failure, you are out of the world, you are a poor wretch; at this point, even knowing that we do not need that t-shirt we buy it, even knowing that our phone works perfectly we throw it away to buy the latest model but not because we truly desire those products, because we are afraid of being judged and of being excluded from the group.
All this standardization is a slow suicide of the soul, it dulls us, deprives us of the most precious thing: the possibility of choosing who we want to be; the system chooses for us the dreams we must pursue, they are dreams of possession, of appearance, of status but when we achieve them we feel a great emptiness inside us because those goals were not truly ours, chasing someone else's aspirations is the perfect recipe for unhappiness.
Waking up from this sleep, rejecting the role of sheep in the flock and living a life that is truly ours is the first step to rediscovering ourselves but a total and visible rejection would make us hit a wall, the system does not forgive those who leave the fold in full light, for this reason, in my opinion, the right path is that of the spiritual warrior tactic; we should wear a mask, pretend to be part of the flock, deceive others and the system itself into believing that we are part of it and at the same time detach ourselves and perhaps invite the most trusted friends with the same ideas as us to follow our path; I report below six strategies that in my opinion are the most important to get out of the fold.
In my opinion, to live a life that is truly ours, the first step we should take is to ask ourselves a question, we should ask ourselves whether what we desire we truly want or whether it was sold to us as such; let us think for a moment about everything we desire: the job we dream of, the car we would like, the house we imagine, the type of relationship we seek, our hobbies; after doing this let us ask ourselves whether they are our aspirations or whether they are images that we have seen so many times in movies, in advertisements, in the speeches of parents or friends and we made them our own without realizing it.
the capitalist system is cunning, it does not order us to want something but, through television and the internet, it constantly places before our eyes images of happiness linked to those things, we see a smiling person in a new car, a happy family in a huge house, a successful actor with a serene appearance wearing a certain type of clothes, a joyful man with a wad of banknotes in his hands; we see these images dozens of times every day and at some point our brain automatically connects a certain material good or a certain idea of family to happiness but it is a borrowed happiness, not ours; many people choose a profession only because it pays well, in their mind money is linked to happiness, many men and women go to the gym to appear muscular in the eyes of others even if they hate doing those exercises and would prefer to watch the sunset by the sea, they do it because we have been taught that being attractive makes us happy, this is true but muscles do not always make a person attractive.
To get out of this mechanism it can be useful to take a journey backwards, to go back to when we were children, when we were not seeking status or the approval of society, when no one told us what we were obliged to want and what we were obliged to be in order to feel accepted; we should, for a moment, go back to reasoning with that mentality that was silenced by the voices of parents, teachers, television and ask ourselves what our authentic desires are.
The second step concerns the relationship with material goods, what I write may seem like a paradox but it serves not to fall into a harmful extreme path; some people, when they understand the game of the capitalist system, start riding bicycles, dress in faded clothes, reject smartphones and any modern object but this is a trap because it would isolate us from the world and furthermore the system is happy when someone becomes extreme because it can point them out as different; the real challenge is to redefine the relationship with material goods without giving them up, we should learn to consider them for what they are, therefore only tools and at the same time we should wear the mask of those who consider them symbols so as not to attract the attention of the system and not be marginalized.
In my opinion we should keep our nice car, our smartphone, our computer, our comfortable shoes but let us not change them every year if they still perform their function and are passable in the eyes of people; we should pretend to be interested in the latest smartphone model, the new Rolex, let us pretend to boast about our car and our designer shoes, all this serves not to isolate us, not to become the different ones that everyone points out; it is important that while we are acting, in our head, we have it clearly in mind that those things are only tools, they are not happiness, sometimes they are tools that can create happiness but they do not define a person; the trick consists in separating appearance from substance; we play the game of appearances but we focus on our true desires and we commit ourselves to achieving them; by doing so we will appear to the world as sheep of the flock but in reality we are following our own path.
The third step is the one that causes the most fear because money is involved and without it one cannot live, let us talk about work; we should try to dedicate only the necessary time to work but everyone knows how difficult this goal is to achieve, we all know that in small textile companies one works eleven hours a day, we all know that in agricultural companies and construction companies in summer one works until half past seven in the evening; in large factories, where there are unions, these abuses do not happen but in the thousands of small and medium-sized companies, which in Italy are about ninety-nine percent of the total, there is not even a trace of unions and injustices are an everyday occurrence.
So what to do? The most radical solution would be to create work for oneself, let us imagine gathering the most trusted friends, those with whom we share the same ideas, we can put together our skills, our savings, our energies and found a cooperative without bosses where decisions are made together, where relationships are horizontal and not hierarchical, a company where the time dedicated to work is not inhumane and shameful but is fair, balanced and dignified.
All this seems like a dream, a utopia and in part it is because it requires skills that, many times, working in companies of the capitalist system that function more or less like assembly lines, we have not acquired, they have accustomed us to tightening the usual ten screws, cutting the usual pieces of wood; creating a cooperative requires courage and a solid plan in people's heads, one must face bureaucracy, compete with companies that exploit workers and can afford lower prices, it is difficult and full of obstacles but it is not impossible.
The fourth step is apparently the most pleasant but in reality it is one of the most insidious, let us talk about free time; capitalist society steals ten, eleven, sometimes thirteen hours a day from us with work but it does not stop there, it is not enough to steal our active life time, it also wants to take away the time that should be ours, that in which we could finally breathe; all this is done because the system is afraid of silence, it is afraid that we spend hours immersed in boredom, in idleness, if we remain alone with ourselves we begin to think and a human being who thinks is considered dangerous because they begin to ask themselves questions about the meaning of their life in this society and to question the system itself.
The system has invented a brilliant trick, instead of granting us time that is truly free it fills the few hours we have left with distractions, stimuli, messages, images, advertisements, it makes us believe that free time consists of TV series to watch one after another, social media to scroll through incessantly, videos and messages to post, shopping, it deludes us that having fun means being in front of a screen or buying useless products but it is all false, it is a deception because this is not free time, it is time in which the system continues to tell us what we must desire, what we must buy, what we must be.
We should use electronic devices when they actually serve us, for example to watch an interesting movie, to write an engaging post but we should use them in moderation, we should not keep them on all the hours that we are not busy with work; for a few minutes we should immerse ourselves in silence and ask ourselves what makes us feel alive, what we would truly like to do in the hours available to us, then what we truly like will emerge in our head, it does not matter what it is, the important thing is that it is authentic and that makes us happy.
In our free time we should dedicate a few minutes to idleness, it is a term that the system has taught us to despise, to consider a vice, a waste of time and instead it has its importance because it is in boredom, in those moments when we are not busy with anything that the brain brings out buried desires and, sometimes, makes us understand something important about ourselves.
In our free time we should then dedicate a few hours to our true emotional bonds because real life is not made only of likes and followers, it is also made of time spent with the people we love.
The fifth step is the one that requires the most strategic intelligence, let us talk about the relationship with authority, with those who consider themselves superior; capitalist society to function needs obedient and submissive people, it needs someone at the top and someone at the bottom and that those at the bottom accept this arrangement as if it were a natural law, for this reason the system has created a real invisible social pyramid and on each step of this pyramid it has placed an authority figure: the parent who knows everything, the teacher who is not to be questioned, the capitalist, the doctor who has the last word, the policeman; all these figures, according to the logic of the system, are superior and we should bow our heads and not ask questions.
But the uncomfortable truth that the system does not want us to know is that there is no natural superiority; science, in particular genetics and neuroscience, has never demonstrated the existence of a superior person or a natural hierarchy among human beings indeed, studies show us exactly the opposite, research emphasizes that most of the differences we observe between people are due to environmental factors, life experiences and social circumstances and do not support in any way the idea of intrinsic superiority, saying that a person is superior because of their genes is scientifically unsustainable; superior beings do not exist, there are only people who have found themselves in a position of power and some of them, over time, begin to believe they are truly superior, begin to have delusions, to think they are special, to confuse their role with their identity and to consider themselves entitled to trample on others but it is only a delusion; the trick of the system is that it has built an entire psychological structure to make us believe that superior beings exist, we have been taught since childhood that we must respect those above us, that we must obey blindly, that we must not question authority because it is superior to us.
If we do not want to play the game mentioned above, if we treat the capitalist as our equal and refuse to call him engineer or doctor when all the other workers do, the system crushes us; they begin to point us out as rebels, different, dangerous, colleagues avoid us, our life becomes an agony and in the end we can lose our job; at this point we blame the entrepreneur but in reality the fault is always the system that allows certain figures who are at the top of the social pyramid to act in a certain way.
So what to do? Also in this case it can be useful to apply the tactic of the spiritual warrior, one must wear a mask, pretend, play the system's game without believing in it; let us call the owner of the company engineer, let us bow our heads to the policeman and call him sergeant, let us call our children's teachers professors, politely; we do everything the system expects from us but in our head we must be very clear that those people are not superior, they are our equals; by wearing the mask we are simply playing a part to navigate a world that does not belong to us and protect ourselves.
The last step is difficult to face, let us talk about the family, the capitalist system does not stop at work, free time, material goods or social hierarchies, it also wants to enter our homes, our dining rooms, our most intimate affections.
Many parents raise their children with the idea that their lives must follow a predetermined script, this script varies slightly depending on the culture but in substance it is always the same: find a stable and well-paid job that keeps us busy every day from morning to evening, buy a large house with a mortgage, buy a luxury car that looks good, get married in church or mosque and have children; parents demand that we follow the path they have imagined for us, many times they do not do it out of malice but because that is how they have lived and they cannot imagine that one can follow a lifestyle different from that imposed by capitalist society.
When a child begins to take paths different from those imagined by their parents, for example when they have a relationship outside the norm or decide not to get married or not to bring children into the world, then conflict is triggered; parents feel betrayed, they feel as if their project is failing and they begin to ask questions, to put pressure, to make their children feel guilty. "But don't you think about your future?" "Why at thirty haven't you gotten married yet?" "When are you going to introduce me to a grandchild?" "What will we look like to the relatives?" "Are you sure about what you are doing?" These are the most frequent questions; in those moments we have the temptation to get angry, to raise our voices, to withdraw into ourselves, some have the temptation to give in, to give up on their dreams but none of these paths is right; anger creates wounds that are difficult to heal while surrender makes us live a life that is not ours, a life spent trying to please others is a wasted life.
The right path is that of calm, when parents ask us why we do not follow their path we should respond with calm, let us simply tell them: "I am fine like this, this choice makes me serene." Our serenity is the clearest proof that our choice is right; it is possible that our parents will never understand us, some are so trapped in their convictions that they cannot see beyond but we must not despair, we must not feel guilty because our life is ours, we are not an object of possession of our parents, children are not an extension of their parents' dreams, they are not a trophy to show to friends and they are not an investment for old age; children are people, human beings who have the right to choose their own path even if different from the one imagined by those who created them.
21Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXNbyOYSD9G
and then Add to home screen.