The Hidden Consumer

A lot happened in the decade of the 60’s and 70’s that have changed the world forever.  Most young people today live the legacy that thousands if not millions helped to forge.  Between the years of 1969 – 1971, over 3 million American citizens, military, and government employees were dosed with LSD.  Most are completely ignorant to that fact and even more to this one –

In 1969, there were over 30,000 bombings in the United States!

“What?”, you might ask. That’s right. The counter culture started to transform into a movement, into a revolution. Young people flocked to gatherings, communal living, and political activist groups. These activist groups felt disenfranchised as just another amorphous expression of free consciousness in ‘the system’. Everything was changing but the system was not. The system simply ingests all change and churns forward. It absorbs extreme ideas and pacifies them into new styles, consumer products, and marketable ideas.

The market has turned years of struggle and optimism into pre-packaged consumer products. We are the hidden consumer.

What must we do? Avoid good and bad.

I feel like the aversion for us to experience what is ‘bad’ is dangerous. Cocooning in pleasantries and niceties, in forcing the mind to only focus on what makes the mind happy and ego feel good, sharing only what sounds appropriate. This just seems to be a result of post-corporate consumer culture and the affect when spirituality gets co-opted as a trend, a healthy choice, an alternative to mainstream.  I’ve just been inundated with everything being so amazing and beautiful, meanwhile, it’s not. I hate to ruin the parade, but yes the world is filled with the most amazing wonders, literally look at your hand. Look at anything around you. Yes it is amazing and beautiful, God’s gift, unlikely mystical convergence… but it’s not necessarily heading in a direction that is for the better of all being, or yours, or ours, or anyone really.  It’s the elephant in the room and when are we going to own up and start talking about it. Things are messed up and they are not going to fix themselves. Yes happiness is important to your own well-being and, of course, we want to live out this life happily, but for the sake of most people in the world that are not living happy lives, can barely survive, living in completely destitute… I realize there is a lot going on, a lot of people are doing some really amazing things to help the planet and people live better lives, but in our day to day, I just ask that you consider including in conversation more about what we can do to live? What is the legacy I’m leaving behind.

There is no good or bad is this world. Everyone needs to realize this. All perspective is a fiction of the human psyche.  We are left with just what is.