Look at all the Lonely People

It is very common for thinkers to generalize--its just easier for us, for humans, to understand things that are oh so complicating, but the common complaint that many skeptics have as far as generalizing is concerned is that it is too specific, as in there are far too many exceptions to a specific rule.

Epictetus once said "only the educated are free" and they were, at his time. The only difference between a slave and a well-off commoner, who did not have a name, was education. Education truly was the key to everyone's shackles, but it isn't so today. Get your education, get your highschool diploma, get your bachelor's get your master's, hell, get your Ph.D, but in today's world, all that doesn't matter. Everything has come down to money. So, even if you get the highest degree of education possible, you will still be a prisoner, a slave to the establishment, to the system, to the norm and to the status quo. Epictetus was onto something, but he worded it slightly incorrectly.

In his view, there were only two kinds of Men, the educated and the uneducated, the free and the enslaved. But, our world has changed: being educated does not free you from the shackles of Capitalism--it binds you to them. That barrier between educated and slavery have disintegrated, disappeared. Poof, gone. There is a new fundamental truth, a new fundamental pattern of human nature that has replaced it.

The Enlightened and the Oblivious, or as Kiefer Sutherland says in 1969: "us leaves, them roots." This is the new cleavage that has risen from the roots of suffering and revolution. It is unilateral, unlike its hierarchical grandparents. It is the cause for this stagnation that is the United States.

Put it this way, every decade since 1910 has had its own "culuture." The Roaring '20s, the Depression, WWII, Roaring '50s, Counterculture, '70s Flower Power, '80s Techno, '90s computers and then, boom!, the 21st century. What is our culture? Sitting in front of this computer typing away at the world. Unfortunately, yes, the Enlightened and the Oblivious. We, the Enlightened, like the educated before us, are the ones upon whose shoulder the future of philosophy rides. Whilst the oblivious sheep roam about in Wall St. or in a 1000 story building, we are the shakers and movers of the world. We understand that there is more to this world than just us. We understand that Humans can undo the disasters caused by humans. We know no bounds and we dare not underestimate the very power of human protest, the same power that has shown its sometimes beautiful and sometimes ugly face in times of victory.

Yes, we will always have "the Lonely People" or as Einstein called them the mediocre people. ("The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly") They were called the peasants, the commoners and even worst in the past, but they have risen and somehow seem to keep our society in stagnation. I was a believer in fighting the elitist system, but now, I've realized that Elites aren't born, but are made. It is about time that the people of this Good Earth no longer sleep in their shells, oblivious to whats all around them, and begin to understand that the only way to keep this Earth in beuaty and order is to fight. And fight we must by fighting ignorance and obliviousness. A fight that must be fought far before entering any trench or declaring any war. A Democracy cannot operate until this fight is won. America - "the city on a hill - cannot exist until this fight is won. Until this fight is won.


But at the end of the day, I can write all that I can write, yet those who still suffer from this disease, this phobia that keeps them away from activism will strive to do absolutely nothing. It is about time we raise our heads, then Brothers and Sisters, and fight this battle that has been waiting us for so long. Since the Second World War, our heads keep peeking up, but they are hammered down. But not this time. This time, we will learn from our Peace-obsessed fathers, for it is only they that could help us, if this obliviousness is not conquered first. It is only they that could help us.