The Loss of Guidance

In looking back over my Invisible Stick Theory post I realized that I had written about only a small part of the overall influences that have brought mankind to its current state. I feel compelled to talk a little about another aspect of the invisible stick that I didn't touch upon. I call it "The Loss of Guidance".

What is "The Loss of Guidance"? Simply put it is the abandoning or removal of traditional influences and subsequent replacement with tenants of the invisible stick. Over the last 100 years the world has changed in a great many ways. Most would say that humanity has made positive strides towards the future with the introduction of technologies that we now use on a daily basis. To certain extent this isn't an incorrect judgement, it's true that I enjoy cars, airplanes, television, telephones, the internet, etc. but I temper my love for these things with the knowledge that they can no more make me a better person than a rock or a stick can. So I am not here to discuss the ramifications of a world with TV or how the Internet is killing true knowledge and wisdom, rather I have decided to discuss what we lose as humans due to the technological society that we live in today.

Firstly though a note: I would like to point out that I feel that much of the problems of society today can be boiled down to the interference of government in personal affairs, and as such in a world without interference we might not suffer from quite the same effects as we do from technology.

The Loss of Guidance is the loss of all those things that turned fairly-good children into good adults. Would a Spartan father have told his son to Google sword fighting? Would Plato and Aristotle have told their students to get a kindle app for their iPhone in order to read the latest theories on life? Would a monk have typed out the bible in Arial Font and made 200 copies on the printer at FedEx Kinkos? Would a dairy farmer in the Midwest tell his wife to get in the minivan and go get a gallon of milk?

Technology is a double-edged sword, on the one hand man finds himself tied to the convinience of having everything at arms length, but the humanity of...well...humanity is lost by not knowing about the world around us in a more personal way.

Examples:
I can tell you how many people died in a suspected terrorist attack, but I can't tell who my next door neighbor is. I know when my favorite sitcom is coming on but I need facebook to remind me when my friend's birthdays are. Instead of talking to someone face-to-face I prefer to text them. When I need help with an assignment in school I wikipedia the subject instead of asking my dad, or going to the library. When I come home from work I sit and watch a landscaping show instead of going out and planting my own garden. Instead of knowing where my food comes from I trust that the government will keep me healthy, and so on and so on.

As a species we are losing our historical identities in favor of a more global view. If Queen Victoria did something in England over 100 years ago, a man in Arizona may not hear about it for months, if ever. If the Queen of England is grabbed inappropriately by a celebrity today I can read about it 10 minutes after it happened online. What were once just stories about the world of men have in fact now become ongoing concerns for us on a daily basis. Why should I care about what's going on in the Middle East? Why should Angelina Jolie's life be a subject of discussion between myself and others? Why does it matter what the President's been doing while on vacation in Hawaii? And why do I care about the idiotic redneck who tried to jump a house in a snow mobile? The truth is, I shouldn't care at all, I will most likely never meet these people or deal with them on a one-on-one basis. They shouldn't preoccupy my thinking nor should they be of concern to me in my daily life. I can't afford to take on the extra burden of the global issues that I most likely will not change and which ultimately never affect JUST me. I should focus closer to home and realize where my focus should be. But mankind chooses to fail more often then we choose to succeed.

So what then is lost because of technology and the world around us today?

Families are decimated because of the world today. 50-60% of all couples get divorced. Children cannot be taught in schools because they respect nothing, they are killing each other and themselves because no one told them that it was wrong, or even that they were loved. Parents have consciously and unconsciously given over their parental responsibilities to schools, television, popular culture, and the internet. I again reiterate that I am not against these technologies, however I feel that many people think they come to represent the replacement of familial obligations. Indeed it is hard for parents to even be an influence to their children. With work obligations these days both parents may be working, kids get shuffled into day care...then later left to their own devices until the parents come home too exhausted to cook dinner and too beat down by their job to want to answer their children's cries for help. Child counselors, psychologists, and medications have replaced parental love and guidance. But sadly this is not the only reason we're messed up as a species.

The family's destruction is a small part of the much larger community decimation agenda. Not too far back if a neighbor saw a child doing something wrong they'd go out on their front porch and say something. Now-a-days, the neighbor says nothing to the child for fear of retaliation from the child or the parent, fear of retaliation from the state (Child Abuse etc.)or they simply decide to call the police and turn something simple into something very dangerous and potentially life-threatening.

The loss of family and community also affects development at school. Teachers now fear student reprisals, outbursts and even violence. Metal detectors and police create a small prison system where children must go to learn. Gone are the days when kids came and went from classes in a happy atmosphere, where walking home from school wasn't a struggle against bullies and violence and where disputes were settled with words and sometimes fists, but never with the intent to kill or seriously injure another. Romance wasn't about who could get pregnant first, and children dressed their age.

We did this to ourselves, we allowed it to happen. Try as you might to argue for the current system, either as a necessity or inevitability, the fact remains that we as a species are not in a good place, and I feel that this is due in large part to the destruction of those positive influences that have shaped mankind since it first took steps in the deserts of Africa. Our first teachers were our families, then our community, and then our educators. Our teachers were never our technology, our government, or the corporations. These institutions work in concert to remove all of our free will and separate us from the true influences, because they want to be the only thing we listen to. If we listened to our parents then Eminem wouldn't sell 10 million records, and if we'd listened to our neighbors we wouldn't be in juvenile detention for vandalism, breaking and entering, or assault. If we listened to real educators we wouldn't be struggling as a nation to compete in the world economy. If we stopped listening to our governments we'd realize that raising a child is like breaking a stallion, not coddling a kitten with an ego. If we stopped listening to our televisions we'd know that our world doesn't need to be this way if we decide to change who we are, rather than what car we drive.

The Loss of Guidance is a key component to the success of The Invisible Stick.

Rise of the Invisible Stick Theory

I was wondering this past week how it is that humanity has gotten to where we are today and the "evolution" of mankind as a social species. Homo Sapiens Sapiens appeared in Africa about 200,000+ years ago. To put that in perspective that's 100 times longer than we are away from the birth of Christ. We were a hunter/gatherer species that slowly spread its way across the world. "Out of Africa" humanity made its way across Asia, Australia and later into Europe and then the Americas. The majority of our species' history is scientifically speculative and certainly there is little specific information regarding man in the times prior to about 3700BC or 5700BP (Before Present). Recorded human history is about 2% of our entire species existence. For the lion share of the time prior to recorded history mankind was little more than small nomadic groups that followed the food supply.

So what's my point? For all of recorded human history, and presumably much further back mankind has struggled against nature; and yet we remain irrevocably the flesh animals of our earliest evolution. The struggle for survival pitted man not only against nature but inevitably against each other. Not merely survival of the fittest, mankind used his blossoming intellect to not only dominate his surroundings but ultimately to dominate others of his own kind. All things being equal between men the need for a tactical advantage arose...who knows when, but given our present trend of violence towards each other I imagine that conflict amongst ourselves was an early adopted trait. I surmise that the first way to dominate others was in fact by the use of tools, or simply, the man with the biggest stick gets to be the leader. But it's more than that, because men don't just go and get a stick and suddenly they're in charge. There's more to it than that. Men rule over other men not only because they can physically dominate them, but because they can also mentally dominate them. The fear of perceived strength is what I call "The Invisible Stick". This invisible stick is how man maintains his dominance over others. Once conquered, mankind does not need to be physically dominated in order to stay in line. They merely need to "believe" that they are dominated and their own insecurities and fears will keep them more or less in line. The invisible stick however is a delicate balance between force and benevolence. A man will only take oppression so long before he needs to free himself from tyranny. Our instinct to be free is strong and therefore rule through force and intimidation can only go on so long before the oppressed rise up to throw off their oppressors. Thus the evolution of both the "physical stick" and the "invisible stick" had to happen. Mankind used tools to both improve their lives and also to protect themselves from others. The stick evolved: Clubs, Spears, Swords, Bows, Guns, Bombs, etc. are all merely man's way of creating a better stick. To imagine that the invisible stick did not evolve also is foolish at best. I postulate that the invisible stick's evolution was much more subtle and devious.

Power. That's what man wants. Even more than survival man strives to dominate everything around himself. Once mankind dominated nature through agriculture they turned towards dominating others. Thus the rise of society. And how can a small group dominate those around them? Laws. The greatest breakthrough in invisible stick dominance came with the introduction of Law. Once again though, how does that work? Just because one person says something it does not necessarily mean that others will accept what they're told. The earliest invisible stick still needed a physical stick to maintain order. But what if the invisible stick could be backed up by another invisible stick? The invisible stick got a big boost from those who used deities as a way to create law. The "gods" who makes the sun rise and the rains fall must indeed have a very large stick because they can use their powers to control the entire earth. Link the two invisible sticks together and you get fear of a greater power. All manner of religions use fear in order to dominate. The perceived penalties for disobeying god/gods must be much worse than getting beaten with a stick. Physical abuse pales in comparison to the eternal torture associated with the afterlife for those who step out of line. This particular aspect of the invisible stick has lasted our entire recorded history and still exists today. It's a major part of the human experience...but it is not the furthest evolution of the invisible stick. Indeed the use of God as a way to keep man in line lost a lot of power in the last 400 years. During the dark ages and middle ages religions used the fear of God as a way to impose law onto the masses. Kings ruled because they were "divinely" appointed to be the rulers. It was a way for the church and secular leaders to maintian control. No man has ever been divinely appointed to RULE anyone. Those who subscribe to the Judeo-Christian traditions know that Jesus never ascribed to rule by force or even rule by divine appointment. The greatest commandments are these, Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself. God to man, that's the connection, it isn't God to government to man, although all governments would have us believe that they are above us.

The truth is this: The "invisible stick" only has power when we believe it has power...when we GIVE it power. The invisible stick is not wielded by the oppressor, it is wielded by the oppressed. We fear the consequences of our own capitulation to a system that is only in place because we allow it to be. Governments then use the "physical stick" as a way to insure that the invisible stick cannot be broken. That's what police/soldiers are for. To "Protect and Serve" has given way to "Enforce and Intimidate". And notice that the physical aspect of the stick is only used as a last resort. The threat of the use of the physical stick is what keeps most of us in line.

The best implementation of the "Invisible Stick" is one that does not require that we recognize it. If the invisible stick remains invisible man cannot react to it. If we don't know that we're being controlled and merely accept our circumstances as the De Facto way of life then we can't even recognize that there is a stick at all. I postulate that even those who actually wade through this theory will have a hard time accepting the truth; which is another evolution of the invisible stick. If one does not recognize that they're being controlled then one cannot throw off the oppressors because one does not recognize the oppression. We as humans have lulled ourselves into believing that fundamentally there is nothing wrong with one person or a group of people benefiting from the control of others. Here in the United States we all like to say that "All men are created equal", yet no one says that "All men remain equal".

We must not only see that we are being controlled but we must also KNOW that a system is merely a system because we accept it. Once we KNOW that we are free, nothing but the physical stick can hurt us. I could be shot and killed, but inside my head I was still as free as any person. Even locked away in a dungeon, my mind is still as free as those outside. The invisible stick cannot control a free mind.