I recently decided to offer my couch to weary Costa Rica travelers via the popular web site Couchsurfing.
And I just entertained my first surfer. A nice young fellow named Peter.
My goal in this is to meet interesting people and indoctrinate them into my revolution.
Well, that last part is me being a tad facetious.
But, really, Peter would make a great revolutionary misfit. He strikes me as a sort of real life Alexander Supertramp.
And he’s the one responsible for the idea of putting my voice to these blog posts. So that now you can access an audio version at the end of each post.
Hey, I’ve been told I sound a lot like Matthew McConaughey.
No ladies, I don’t look anywhere near like him…
but you can always fantasize!
Peter also turned me on to the Zeitgeist series of movies.
Now yesterday was one of those days that I laid in bed suffering from self-induced pain.
The kind that comes from a little too much Friday night fun.
But I did manage to view all three movies in the Zeitgeist series.
They are an intriguing set of flicks that can be accessed completely free on YouTube.
Now, I am not into this whole conspiracy thing. I am just too skeptical to believe that there’s some vast conspiracy behind our economic and monetary systems, or behind the tragedy of 9-11.
But the underlying premise of Zeitgeist is something to which I do readily subscribe…
and that is, that the world is fucked up.
And that the reason it’s fucked up is exactly what this (my) “revolution” is railing against…
greed and indifference.
Those are the dictators that this revolution seeks to depose.
That’s why the subtitle of my up and coming book (soon to released on Amazon), The Revolutionary Misfit Manifesto, is…
A Guide to Deposing Dictators with Impact Mindfulness.
I also will subscribe to the idea set forth by Zeitgeist that the problem is not the “system” itself…
but our way of thinking about it…of accepting it.
Why do we do that?
Because we are conditioned to.
Not as a result of some vast conspiracy, but just because “it” has gradually infiltrated our collective cerebral cortices as the default way to think.
Hence this blog.
You see, I don’t really hold out much hope for a change in the system. It’s too entrenched. It’s been around too long and it would cause major disruption to life on our planet if it were tossed out tomorrow.
Not gonna hold my breath for that happening, certainly not in my life time.
But if we change the way we think, we can have a major impact on the way our lives are affected by that same system.
We can admit (can’t we?) that capitalism currently runs on greed and self-interest.
Hell, Milton Friedman even admits that it’s so.
But what if it didn’t?
What if we lived in a free market that really did seek the common good of all people?
Is that possible?
It is if we adopt the principles espoused in this blog…
those of impact mindfulness…
those that tell us to put…
and to embrace the idea that we’re all in this boat together, the idea of the so-called Big US…
and to set aside the impact blinders that blind our mind’s eye from seeing the truth.
The truth that unless we change, as Zeitgeist alludes, we, and those that come after us, are in for a not so pleasant future.
I believe that by simply changing the way we think and then act, we (the people) can take the wind out of Walmart…
and Wall Street.
We can form a more perfect Union.
We can change the world.
After all “the market” is…
us.
image credit: Corey Holms via Compfight cc