Author’s note: I am in talks with a very dear friend to draw artistic interpretations to accompany my posts along with the music. I am looking to make this as full of a cerebral experience as possible and I believe that will get us one step closer. Stay tuned. This is going to get very interesting.
Today’s music selection: Friend of the Devil by the Grateful Dead
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Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation… The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

-David Foster Wallace

The story teller makes no choice his job is to shed light and not to master.

-Robert Hunter (Terrapin Station)

Look, I have never written about this issue and I’m not going to make it a regular topic on this site, this is a political site, but at least once I feel the need to get right down to the brass tacks of the problems that I talk about.

I realize that if anybody reads this article they will find it controversial. I can’t say I apologize because it has become so necessary.

We live in a Godless nation.

By worshiping fame and power the public has begun to feel insignificant.

This manifests itself in various ways. Drug and alcohol addiction, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, isolation, shyness, mental illness…etc.

That is why I like the David Foster Wallace speech quoted above in which he states that the ways that people feel inadequate manifest in their lives in different ways…to paraphrase…if you worship money, you will never have enough, if you worship beauty and sexual allure you will always feel ugly, if you worship intelligence you will always feel intellectually inferior and a fraud, if you worship power you will always feel weak and seek ways to control others to numb your own pain so the only answer is worshiping God because only then can you feel comfortable in your own skin as His child.

How did we get to the point where the media became our god? I’m not sure, but it has us in a bad way. Until we realize that God created all of this and begin looking at the stars again we may just be doomed.

When did we stop looking at the sky on a nightly basis? That is a quite serious question and the lack of this activity gives us the tunnel vision that allows us to mourn Michael Jackson and worship Barack Obama.

If you worship the power of the government, you will see them as the only saviors. You simply cannot be a happy human being by buying into a man made system. You have to be free in the system of the creation of the Creator. You have to realize that kids.

It is not a coincidence that many freedom lovers are people of faith.

If you worship anything of this world you set yourself up to be a sucker. And I see it everyday. We’ve seen the worship of leaders rather than the approval of elected representatives that also believe in the freedom inherent in the universe.

I’m sorry but I am so sick of it. Sick of other men imposing their agendas on me, regardless of where their motivation is born. It is time to elect people that are interested in freedom.

To be completely honest I start to lose interest in politics when the narrative presented by the mainstream media is condensed to such a narrow path that I have to spend 400 words telling people what is really up, just to step out of what Chomsky calls concision.

I’m going to bottomline this for you kids. I don’t know many people that don’t deal with either depression, anxiety, loneliness, drug/alcohol problems, body image issues, relationship problems, workaholic, money obsession, tireless pursuit of power…etc. (Well Shaun it sounds like you are hanging out with the wrong crowd…::cue rimshot::, sadly I’m hanging in the wrong nation, a nation I deeply love.) We are very broken as a nation. And it is time to wake up, beyond the level that is often discussed regarding the government’s inherent systemic evil. Most politicians, and I’m talking the stereotypical money and power grubbing type, are just case studies of the heart of the nation’s problem.

First thing you can do is turn off the television, stop flipping through the celebrity magazines and search out the real deal media.

In the end, in a way this article mourns David Foster Wallace, a man who attempted to convey these truths but was eaten alive by this world where he probably had a tough time finding confidants. God blesses you Mr. Wallace, for hanging on as long as you did. Thank you for everything. I’ll understand you someday in heaven.