Not long ago after about 2 months without talking, a friend of mine texted me. Out of the blue.
Normally you’d expect: “hey, how’s it going?” or a “It’s been a while , what’s up?”. Instead she asked “what’s your political stance, left or right?”, she caught me completely offguard, Personally i think that it’s simply wrong to try and label the complexity of humanity into 2 terms, “you are either this or this”, Thus I answered that I don’t see life as black or white, and that within that question lies a big problem: where is the middleground? I was baffled by her reply: “I don’t really think you can find middleground nowadays, you need to go to extremes.” And I just wondered: Is this really where we’ve gotten to?
Politicians who prefer their power over people, have taken concepts that we see virtue in, and manipulated them for their own benefit. I´m talking about education, and capital freedom.
The educational system we still work with was made 2 centuries ago in Prussia, because of a lost war to Napoleon. They saw their flaws and needed the society to be “raised better”, that in case it ever happened again they could form a well organised, homogenetic military front, where people followed orders. The Dutch education system saw its benefits and applied it. They put it as: All children must be USEFUL and virtuous members of SOCIETY. Sounds nice enough, by saying: “alle neuzen dezelfde kant op” so we will never fall again, but to whose benefit is it really?
People in power, have used this educational system to their advantage: giving us only the information they want us to know. Then they show us problems and tell us: “I have the answer” – it might even be a made up problem with a solution that just sounds really good, so we can be: “oh, thank God they know what to do so I don’t have to think of a solution”. We´re just toys in the game of politics.
Then, capital freedom, as capitalism expanded, wealth and opportunity increased, but so did the pressure on individuals. Success began to be seen as a personal achievement, and failure as a personal fault. This encouraged us to build our identity around status, competition, and ego. Instead of supporting each other, we compare ourselves to one another. When the priority becomes backing up our arrogance, we don’t care anymore for emotional fulfillment, we’ve lost any care for the love for knowledge, and no thought is given when you wonder: “What does it mean to be happy.” In this way, a system seemingly built to create freedom creates isolation — where being right matters more than being kind, and winning matters more than ever learning something.
In this case divide and conquer: Just let us fight endlessly and never give us time to question those at the top.
Our whole system has grown into killing curiosity, and nurturing our ego’s, making us forget the real joy in our lives: to develop, to grow, to care, to connect and to love. To beat those challenges that life gives us, to listen and doubt, to understand that change is the only constant.
I would like to ask you please, bring back all the colors of thought, so we can leave this earth fulfilled, so we didn’t just fight each other and die, instead, we made full use of the gift that consciousness is. Let’s make sure we plant thoughtful trees, so that in the future our children will have shade within a diverse and beautiful forest.
Speak Up and Listen