“It’s just a ride” – Bill Hicks

Throughout history, many species on this planet have instinctively sought a “leader” or someone who can bring a sense of security to them. Humans however, take this a step further. We not only seek those we see in physical form in our daily lives (i.e., charismatic co-worker or schoolmate, a physically dominating person, or a physically attractive person), but also people and idols that we will most likely never see or meet in our lifetime (i.e., “Jesus,” Barack Obama, Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones, etc.). I can understand that first part of someone you see or know in person from a primal psychological sense, but if you sit back and think about it…how odd is it that we worship and/or value people on a TV screen, picture, book or audio clip and believe them as if they have earned our personal trust in the slightest way? While looking at the follower mindset in a day-to-day life routine is important from a basic psychological sense, the latter part is, in my humble opinion, far more interesting—and at the same time ridiculous, to me.

Let’s jump back a few million years to primal man. And yes, I say a few MILLION years because contrary to popular belief, man is far older than what is believed (or so I say). If you think we went from an apelike creature to a human with our brain size, vocal skills and everything else in only a short few thousand years, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn, NY you may be interested in purchasing. Primal man lived in a harsh environment; there was everything from animals, disease, starvation, injury and even the earth itself that posed significant threats to early man’s life. Man being a social species, it only makes sense that we would have come up with the most basic, yet effective, survival strategies, right? As we advance and get more populated, the “alpha” type who had control of their group or groups became more of an idol figure rather than someone actually living with and hacking their way through life like the rest. Just think—somewhere, sometime, an alpha decided that he (or she) felt that he should rest a little more, have sex with just one more, or just do something that benefited him or her in a way that deprived the rest, even if it was in the slightest. At some point, a group of people said “Well, okay. He can do it because he IS the leader after all;” and from that very moment, we went into a downward spiral of selfishness and cult worship that plagues us to this very day.

Leaders/alphas, however are not the only ones who people rally behind or value. People in any form of spotlight are, for some odd reason, found to be of a “higher value” than Joe Ordinary, who is not.

I like to think of this current human experience we have been stuck in for many centuries now as the “Grand Sewing Circle.” We instinctively believe what we are told, and seem to pass it along as fact without ever experimenting for ourselves or investigating the information first hand. Now granted, SOME things are impossible to prove or disprove on your own and you have to take that leap of faith, so to speak, and make a 50/50 decision about whether you will accept whatever information you were given, or not.

My personal tool is logic and intuition, but that is still no guarantee that I am in any way right about anything.

So what are some examples of what I am talking about? I could easily say religion, but I think we all can agree that religion is a far tougher shell to crack when trying to convey a point to others not receptive on either side, no matter how logical an argument is. Instead, I will use an example that, in my humble opinion, has destroyed the human ability to think far worse than ANY other tool in human history; and that is mass mainstream media. Media has always existed in civilization; however, how useful is it, really? It’s no secret that emperors, kings, supreme rulers, presidents and prime ministers, along with their government-funded media, have always spread the information that they wanted for propaganda and distortion of reality. That being said, why are we still listening, watching and reading from these establishments that have an endless history of being skewed? And furthermore, why do we trust and idolize other human beings that we have never so much as even spoken to on the phone? Let’s say you like CNN’s Wolf Blitzer or Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly—why do you like them? Why do you trust them?

Not to be a hypocrite, but I’m guilty of that as well. We all are.

As I said before, I base my judgment off of intuition and logic, but even still it is not a guarantee. I remember in high school taking tests using this method, and rarely did it work…so why should it work when I receive new information? Based on my test taking track record, I’d say my odds were 60-40 of being correct, which is a very large gap to be considered effective.

So, how do we accept information as reality???

I’m going to use a quote here from the late, great Bill Hicks:

“The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real, because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round and it has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud. And it’s fun, for a while.

“Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: ‘Is this real? Or is this just a ride?’ And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say ‘Hey! Don’t worry,don’t be afraid — ever — because… this is just a ride.’ And we kill those people.”

This quote is one of my favorites because one can’t help put ponder on its awesome meaning: if this is true, and this life is just a dream, perhaps we create our own reality? And society, and media, and doctors, and life gurus are what keeps us from doing just that. I mean, what is on the news after all? Nothing! Absolutely nothing that will ever affect my life at that moment, other than the feeling I will get from intaking its information and processing it. Prime example: 21 December, 2012! MILLIONS of people were panicking that the world would end, based off of absolutely nothing! The Mayans never said the world would “end;” they said it was the end of a Bahktun (time cycle) and the start of a new. So why was so much hype and stupidity amped up and shared as common knowledge? Even if you thought “doomsday” was bogus, you still knew about it; and that is just what is wrong with all this information being so recklessly brought to light.

Imagine this: imagine that we lived in a world where propaganda wasn’t aimed at an external problem—like war in some distant country, or the economy, or some drug addicted celebrity. Instead, it was aimed at the individual mind tuning into itself for everything from seeking higher knowledge to art, and doing something internally to better one’s self, which in turn would affect the energy of everything and everyone else! That is not fantasy, that is quantum physics in tangible motion. Inner self-satisfaction DOES have an effect on the surrounding environment, and HAS been proven in many studies from cellular biology—like in the works of the brilliant Dr. Bruce Lipton and many others, including Dr. Masaru Emoto who discovered that simply talking to water can affect it at a vibrational, molecular level.

Just think how much shit we ingest into our brains on a daily basis that is considered “societal norm.” And on top of the “new” social norm information (shit), we still have drilled into our brains the crap we’ve been taught our whole lives! I think it’s about time we change that. I think now—more than any other time in (known) human history—is a time to be weird and not a part of the mold, no matter what that mold may be. I know that I personally have some far out ideas and, in an odd way, those ideas DO shape my reality and perception of my world. Because in the end, that’s all this is—MY world, as it is YOUR world that you are living through your own experience and ideas.

Author: John Smith