Know thyself...bitesize philosophy...part 2

KNOW THYSELF

It's attributed to Socrates, but it's totally irrelevant who actually said it.

But it is very is important.
In the information war, it is essential. If you don't know yourself, you can be very easily manipulated.
Selling lies in the the guise of truth - and blissfully and totally unaware of the difference.
(Ideology without philosophy is a very good example of this.)

Without honesty with yourself, you can't be honest in relation to how you see the world around you.
If you are wearing filters to see the world - ones that you were never even aware of wearing, then how can you be expected see the world clearly and objectively?

When we are born – all of us - we are 'pretty much', a blank slate.

Parents - predominantly - are the first (and the biggest) influence, of the beginning of that 'blank slate', being written on.
Depending on the parental influence, our slate is chalked with differing types of irrationality, and projected fears of the parents, fears as THEY see the world, not as it is.
It's irrational.
This is not a judgement on parents, or parenting - it's an observation of human behavior.
This is what happens.
To all of us, to one degree or another.

As we emerge as young adults, the blank slate we entered the world with, is now covered in irrational scrawls not of our choosing – but of our parents .
We do not know the difference between fact and fiction - we cannot know the difference - because we have no reference.
We have nothing to compare it to.
We were a blank slate when we came into the world after all, so how can you compare your experience to anything?

Each individual has to wipe their own slate clean, ones covered in the projections of others, to have any hope of finding rationality.

We are not the product of rationality, we must discover rationality.
Rationality is the key to free.

And when you do, what then? You achieve sanity.
This is not an easy transition.

Finding you own sanity only reveals to you the insanity you are now immersed in, the insanity of your environment, of all those around you – filled with people who have not wiped the slate clean, but instead continue to use their own irrationally as the template of their lives.

Rationality and reason is the beam of light that shines into the asylum that you're living in.
And just like the character in the film 'the matrix', some will wish to return to the non thinking reality, their 'old life'.
It can be too difficult for some.
Freedom can taste very bitter to those that like the illusion of freedom.

You, me , our parents – we were all programmed to serve the needs of those who rule over us.
The government indoctrinates through the early years of your life, and we are taught to fear authority.
You are 'educated' about freedom while at the same time, being forced into the classroom.
(As will be explained in later post - trying to maintain philosophically contradictory positions is a sign of the sick mind,
just as consistency of thought and action is the sign of a healthy mind).

You are 'educated' to see peers as threats and 'the system' as a support network offering safety, in the 'dangerous' world that you supposedly inhabit. – but will also get punished by the 'benevolent' authority if you contravene its rules..
Consistency and contradictions . Healthy and unwell minds....
If the government were such good educators, why do we enter adult seeing peers as threats, but coercive authority as benevolent?

We are told that our fellow man pose constant threats, while at the same time - the state takes by force, the fruits of our labors every week via tax, starts foreign wars, and uses the money to exhort further control of the people it purports to be benevolent towards.

We are tax units, living under the illusion of freedom.
The state is made legitimate year after year by the sheep who haven't yet cleaned their own slates, and haven't found rationality.
The insane and the asylum, rings a bell

And this is the point of knowing thyself.

If you do not understand how you have been programmed, then you are little more than an organic robot.(ouch).

This is about the importance of knowing yourself, and if you are running on automatic response, then you're life is one of the faintest shadow, of your own potential.

The state encourages dependence on the state, no different than a drug dealer looking after their customers, by always being there for them. Supplying what they need.
The comfort the state offers the mob through socialist policy, numbs the pain of the present with 'free stuff', and has no concern of tomorrow.
(a person thinks, but people don't, and that is the collectivist mob).

Not having self knowledge is not knowing how you've been manufactured by the state – for the state – to be a productive tax livestock unit, to serve those in power.

HOW can you claim to understand what freedom is, if you haven't freed yourself from the state constructed prison in your own mind?
If you can't understand freedom, how can you understand free will?
If you cant see your prison, how can you know that you are even in one?

I know this can be a painful realization- but that's no my concern.
I was fortunate to a very large degree - my life choices led me to these realities early on in years, but it was more by accident, not design. And that involved some painful realities, including many years of avoidance.
I would not envy those having to explore these avenues consciously, while engaged in 'real life', I really wouldn't.
(Double fucking ouch!)

We have been programmed to avoid looking for real truths, and instead to accpet dogma designed by the authorities, to control you.

You do not pay all you taxes from a benevolent wish to help society - but from deep seated fear of the repercussions of your 'benevolent' authority.
If you live with fear of disapproval, and an avoidance of conflict with authority, or even with the fear of being offensive, you have no real freedom, just the illusion of it.

Your capacity to make truly free choices it taken away from you, with the indoctrination the system gives you.

If you don't examine your programing, your programming becomes your reality.

The illusions become as real as the laws of physics themselves - in your own mind. Unchangeable. Absolute truths.

Ergo - you are living your entire life based on illusion and not truth.

It makes no difference if you are a communist or a fascist, a priest or an imam, male or female, black, white or purple.
Following any pre-printed ideology, or stereotype, blindly - without a reference to philosophy – then you will have no free will.

Thinking that you are free to vote - when the powers that be know fairly accurately how you will vote, is not freedom – just the appearance of it.
You're allowed to vote because it poses no threat to the authority.

You are given the illusion of freedom, because the programmed 'you', will never ask for the real thing.

If you think society will collapse without government – are you free to rationally examine the possibilities of no government?
If you work for government, are you free to rationally examine the validity of your wage increase?
If you think government welfare is essential to look after the less fortunate – are you then really free to examine the free market solutions?

All of this is not too revelatory (I hope this is the case , anyway).

We all know this already - at a deeper lever, one we tend to avoid looking at too much – for to look at it is painful.
It hurts to realize you own captivity – and hurts even more to accpet it. So we avoid asking these painful questions of ourselves..

It is humiliating. It is ego crushing. It is also rebirth.

To move from being a non thinking tax unit to free human is not easy, or painless. I'm sure being born was pretty fucking traumatic, if we could remember it.
This one is also , as adults - and this time around we're fully aware.
And this time around, we have _ choice_.

We can choose the far easier option of never waking up and never fulfilling your true potential, and just stay content as tax fodder, getting more angry and resentful as every year passes.
Because somewhere - deep down inside - in the quiet shadows - you know that you lacked courage when it was asked of you.
Asked of you, by yourself.
You were a coward when you were faced with a choice. Don't be a coward. It's a bit shit. (for yourself, mostly)
This closely ties with the stupid argument of 'no free will', determinism - which I'll get to in a later post.
I'm not judging anyone, btw...
Imploring , possibly...
(Courage is also very closely connected to happiness and virtue, integrity and ethics).

True freedom must be earned – not because we aren't born with it, we were – but because the system has taken it away from us. And they will never volunteer to give it back.
It must be taken.

Only then you can even begin to know yourself.

And the price can be high.
How does your relationship alter with all those around you?

You are no longer the same tax slave, that you once were - you have changed. You are now rationally sane.

But those around you haven't changed, and are insane....

That's a tough one...Welcome to the world of being a truly sentient adult.
It doesn't get easier.