All our problems basically come down to narrative control.
People are manipulated into believing the story that Israel’s existence must be preserved at all cost because of this religious belief or that political ideology.
People are manipulated into believing the story that western elections are real and that voting in the two-party system is the only path toward beneficial policies.
People are manipulated into believing the story that capitalism is the best possible system, and that socialism always fails (organically, all by itself) because its tenets go against human nature.
People are manipulated into believing the story that the US-led liberal world order, while perhaps flawed, is still our best shot at a just and stable world.
People are manipulated into believing the story that the mass media are telling us the truth about our society and the world, and that everything works pretty much the way we were taught in school.
People are successfully manipulated in these ways because the wealthiest among us control the media and own all the largest platforms, which gives them a very high degree of narrative control. They decide what stories get told to the largest audiences about how the world works, so they control public perception of reality.
This has been happening for generations, so we grow up with our parents, teachers, preachers and pundits teaching us the narratives that they were trained to believe when they were young.
So we grow up marinating in this. It’s so rife throughout our society that most people don’t even notice it’s happening; they just think all those narratives are what reality objectively looks like.
But they’re not. They’re just thoughts. Mental noises. Stories made of words. Pick any of them apart and you’ll find that’s all they are: empty narrative fluff. Their power comes entirely from large numbers of people imbuing those narratives with the power of belief.
The consciousness of the average human is dominated by mental stories, so if you can control the mental stories the average humans are telling themselves, then you can control the humans. Get them buying into your preferred narratives about reality and you can exert huge degrees of influence over the way they think, speak, work, shop, live, and vote.
Our entire civilization looks the way it looks because of this vast network of influence. It’s what made the Gaza holocaust possible, what makes homelessness possible, what makes ecocide possible, what makes war and militarism possible. If the public were not being successfully manipulated into accepting the narratives which justify these realities, then everyone would start un-jacking their minds from the psychological control network and building the kind of world they would prefer to see.
And what’s interesting is that believed mental narrative is also the source of suffering in humans as individuals. The only reason you’re unable to be present in the moment and rest in peaceful contentment with a serene mind is because of all the thought-stories about reality that you are holding onto inside yourself, both consciously and unconsciously.
As we grow up and experience traumas in early childhood, we start forming beliefs about reality and who we are and how we need to be, which we then carry in our bodies deep into adulthood. With a lot of inner work we can begin releasing these old beliefs and freeing up the energy our bodies have been feeding into them this whole time, liberating ourselves from the internal commotion and dysfunction they cause.
“I am unworthy.”
“I am deficient.”
“The world is a hostile place and I need to protect myself from it.”
The young human organism forms all these belief constructs about itself and its reality, and then those beliefs quickly become maladaptive because they were built in youthful naivety without taking real-time feedback from life’s ever-changing circumstances. It is only by becoming aware of them and consciously removing the power of belief from them that they release their grip on our lives.
It’s a challenging process, but if you take it deep enough it will completely transform your entire experience of reality in some surprising and delightful ways. You will discover that even your most fundamental assumptions about what you are, what your world is, and how your experience is happening were never anything more than believed thoughts held on a subtle energetic level, and that life is so much simpler and more peaceful than you had ever imagined it could be.
Our collective untangling from believed mental narrative is unfolding in the same way. Gradually we are learning together that everything we were indoctrinated into believing about our world and how it’s happening was completely false from top to bottom, and we are beginning to deconstruct our power-serving worldviews one by one.
The more this happens, the weaker the hold our rulers will have on our minds at mass scale. The less we buy into the old narratives, the less capable the manipulators will be of influencing our thoughts, words and actions to their advantage.
And from there, anything is possible. If human consciousness becomes liberated from believed mental narrative on all levels, we could truly have paradise on earth.
I am more convinced then ever that this is possible. I am more convinced than ever that it is already happening.
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And what’s interesting is that believed mental narrative is also the source of suffering in humans as individuals. The only reason you’re unable to be present in the moment and rest in peaceful contentment with a serene mind is because of all the thought-stories about reality that you are holding onto inside yourself, both consciously and unconsciously.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves, there is no escaping narrative, there is no alternative, or rather the alternative and the basic job of the artist is to be an enemy of simple and suffocating narratives and shatter them into kaleidoscopes of nuance. In the end though you are still immersed in narrative no matter what.
The problem is narrative, the solution is narratives.
