Those who make up the highest percentage of the privileged upper tier of society on Earth possess not only economic and political power, but also control education, the media, and intellectual discourse.
When the famous Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, based on his research, argued in 1632 that the Sun lay at the center of the solar system and that the Earth revolved around it, he was brought before the Catholic Church’s Inquisition the following year and forced to renounce the ”false doctrine,” because, according to them, it was self-evident that the Earth was the center of everything. Galileo was subsequently sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. Today we know that Galileo was right, just as so many other ”heretics” and visionary individuals throughout history have been ridiculed for questioning accepted ”truths” and presenting alternative interpretations of various theories and claims instead of the official ones.
Regardless of where in the world it occurs, it is a fact that when people are born into a system, they will, whether or not that system is compatible with their deeper nature, perceive it as normal as long as they have no other frame of reference. Since most people accept the established order and act according to the information, self-esteem, and opportunities for survival available to them, they will, in accordance with what they have been taught, defend the prevailing order and instinctively reject anything that deviates from official doctrine.
If people then happen to encounter information that more clearly indicates that they have been misled or misinformed regarding how society and the world function, and that this deception is the result of systematic planning at the highest levels, they are consequently confronted with a situation that turns everything they have previously learned upside down. They then become inevitably forced to make one of the following three choices:
- Persistently question the information and refuse to believe it.
- Ignore the information and continue as before.
- Examine the information with an open mind.
The most common response is for people to choose one of the first two alternatives, both of which can be described as a result of cognitive dissonance—that is, when different thoughts are in conflict with one another. For example, when we intuitively feel that the work we do is not really what we want to do, but we are too afraid to change because we are uncertain whether we will be able to handle a new job adequately, whether it will truly be better, or whether we will continue to have a secure income. Instead, we may rationalize the situation and convince ourselves that what we are doing now is actually the best option after all, whereupon a sense of cognitive balance emerges. Even if we are unhappy and that balance is based on illusions, it still provides a certain feeling of security in life.
Part of the difficulty in communicating new facts, of course, stems from the way the human psyche operates according to a kind of economy principle: we instinctively tend to dismiss anything that requires significant mental effort while readily absorbing information we want to find or believe. Since we are often stressed and frequently carry suppressed frustrations that make us easily emotionally affected when confronted with situations where opinions differ, our discussions typically do not have the primary goal of discovering the truth. Instead, they often become contests of prestige in which we compete to have the last word.
Because the vast majority of people today are so occupied and distracted by the demands, expectations, and constant stimuli of modern society, it is only natural that they generally lack the time, energy, or desire to deeply investigate the mechanisms that have shaped—and continue to shape—their surroundings, especially on a global scale. This is no coincidence. From the perspective of the great power elite, it is obviously easier to govern and exploit people who are uninformed than those who are well informed.
The ruling forces on Earth have, of course, been able to take advantage of the realities described above in order to maintain their exercise of power over humanity. As a consequence of the distorted view of reality imposed upon people, the exploitation of humanity has also been facilitated, since ownership and political, religious, and economic power have historically been concentrated in the hands of a small number of initiated and privileged individuals—a process that unfortunately continues to this very day.
The fact that this situation has been able to persist must therefore be understood against the backdrop that most people unfortunately possess insufficient knowledge about how the world’s political, economic, and religious structures are organized, as well as how these structures have shaped—and continue to shape—our thinking, behavior, and decisions. Most people today are limited to the worldview presented to them through schools, television, and newspapers, and from this they attempt to construct an understanding of the world around them. Since the conclusions we draw and the decisions we make are never better than the information upon which they are based, we assume that our education and learning will lead us in the right direction.
In today’s society, we may occasionally receive information about abuses of power, but such incidents are usually portrayed as highly unusual events that can be traced to the flaws and weaknesses of individual people. The idea that the system itself—the system around which the political, economic, and religious hubs of our lives revolve and upon which our societies are built—could be corrupt and inherently harmful to the majority is something that the average academic or citizen typically cannot absorb, much less communicate to others, without risking either paralysis or fear of being perceived as an out-of-touch eccentric or a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Consequently, most people tend to dismiss any information that contradicts what they have learned to be the causes, effects, and proper order of things.
Those who nevertheless persist in claiming that the current system is fundamentally flawed and that we have been deceived are often grouped together with extremist movements on either the political left or right and labeled as somewhat irrational or crazy. Not infrequently, this occurs with considerable assistance from politically correct rhetoric promoted by journalists, politicians, and academics who have been effectively conditioned by consensus regarding what constitutes the ”correct opinions” and who willingly force those views upon anyone deemed foolish enough to challenge them. As a result, individuals commonly shut out information that suggests they themselves may have been misled.
Those who occupy the highest percentage of the privileged upper levels of the social pyramid possess not only economic and political power; they also influence education, the media, and intellectual discourse in ways that benefit themselves. This is evident in the fact that the prevailing system keeps most of the world’s population in a state of both powerlessness and poverty, while a small elite demonstrably owns a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth and resources. The real holders of power, who are not usually the politicians, generally feel little loyalty to any particular ideology or nationality; their allegiance is to power itself. Ideologies, religions, and race are most often merely instruments through which power is exercised.
In order to solve all of the problems described here—our collective amnesia regarding history, our own internal conflicts, and humanity’s suffering—we must, in my opinion, develop a reasonably accurate understanding of both what shapes our thinking and behavior and of the society and world in which we live. The path toward that goal lies through introspection, self-awareness, increased self-respect and self-esteem, and through strengthening our knowledge of history and society. Only then can we seriously begin the process of breaking the artificial and destructive patterns that create so much pain and destruction in the world.
Those who have not yet begun to question the version of reality that is presented to us will, of course, shake their heads at most ideas that challenge the consensus. Yet in much the same way, those who consider themselves awakened also risk rejecting everything they read in mainstream newspapers and imagining conspiracies behind every other event. An alternative to these two approaches would be to pursue a third path—one that combines skepticism with openness and humility, and that refuses to remain either unknowingly or cynically gazing toward the horizon. Instead, it begins, without preconceived assumptions, to investigate what lies beyond it.
Written by Michael Delavante, Beyond the Horizon
Sources:
(1) Sweet Remedy – Why Is Society Being Dumbed Down?
(2) Elite Political Power of Today similar to Mesopotamia and Pre-dynastic Egypt. G N O’Dell March 27, 2012.
