Desperation for change can lead us to act in ignorance. In desperation for change and the hope we place in political leaders, we continue to plead for them to fix things for us. We act in ignorance, still begging representatives to deal with our lives rather than us doing it with knowledge. Perhaps I can say: we know not what we do, but do it because that's all we know how to do?
There is also the desperation for change when our leaders fail us. The hope and dreams they were peddling turn out to be false promises. We don't get the change we were promised. After some time, this can break out in a revolt and even revolution. Is America divided? Is the leader to blame?
This has happened many times in the past. People revolt against their "leaders" or masters/rulers, like America did with Britain in the American Revolution, and the French did with their own political leaders in the French Revolution. Sometimes the choice of action for change results in something better as intended, sometimes not, and sometimes it takes a long time before an error is detected.
Being desperate for change can have consequences, as we act in desperate ignorance and foolishness, not thoughtful knowledge and understanding. The disempowering modality of ignorance can create problems for us that we don't see, because we don't have the knowledge or vision to look ahead and see our bad choices for what they are.
You can't do "anything" you want to do, because you are not a god of reality. Even if you knew what to do, truly, you can't stop all evil or fix everything on your own. You're not the king. And if you were, the results wouldn't be optimal anyways. Suffering under the delusion of "if only I were king..." is something to overcome once you understand the problem of the belief in authority over others and how it infringes on the freedom of innocent beings.
To change things, we can't do it on our own. People need to be involved and unite together. This inability to effect change ourselves immediately, can also result in desperation for change. We keep begging the hierarchy and authority levels to fix things for us since we feel disempowered and helpless to do anything directly ourselves.
Even for more minor things this can apply. Poloniex rejected STEEM for a while, so we're powerless to do anything about our missing transfers. We go to the next option Bitrrex. But maybe centralized exchanges having issues is a lesson for us to learn not to keep our coins there in the first place. Some will keep using poloniex despite issues, errors or warnings.
But what about in more important things in life? What about our way of life?
Think of politics.
If we vote and don't like one politician the most, we go for the other options even if we don't like them either. Sometimes we can even convince ourselves that we actually do like them :P
In the case of a crypto exchange it's just another place for us to use for our coins. But in politics, we're making a choice based on what we don't like in the other politician(s) or political party. Since we can't do what we really want ourselves, or get the person we actually want to have as a leader, so then we do what we can right now, often in ignorance, and it's also often not the best thing to do. We can be taking a wrong option in a broader understanding, but it might be the better choice given our limited perception or awareness, such as thinking in a false dichotomy.
What do many people do?
"I will keep voting, but this time I will rally for the liberals instead of the conservatives, or the 3rd party NDP!"
They Live
Those are the avenues that we continue to use because that's how we see our options. We don't see another way.
We act now, thinking we need to live in these levels of authority, rather than learn and know what the better option really is. We act "now" in what we can do now, because we don't know the things we don't know and don't want to take the time to figure out what really is the right thing to do. But truth takes time. We keep doing the same things and think we will get that change we want. I think that's been called insanity?
Here's an example of how we don't find out what's really going on and just support bad decisions because thats what the majority of us see. 9/11 happened, so let's go invade Afghanistan even though most of the alleged high-jackers were from Saudi Arabia. Right when opium production was being reduced by the Taliban to 10% of the former years level, in comes the US invasion and the opium industry in Afghanistan gets revamped.
We don't see what is really going on and we make bad decisions in desperation. America was weakened by an attack, and some lost hope in a safe future. Not only safety and security, but the American symbol of freedom itself was under attack. Fear was in the air after the trauma of 9/11, and that desperation led many to support foolish action, in ignorance. To launch wars and call them "Operation Enduring Freedom" (Afghanistan) and "Operation Iraqi Freedom"/"Operation New Dawn" (Iraq), just shows how this was a desperate act to revive the lost hope and faith in American freedom and security and create a revamped America 2.0, more "bad ass" than before. Check out PNAC, Project for a New American Century.
So to come back to the original issue, is that we want action NOW. We feel powerless and seek to channel our energy into whatever avenue that can get something done NOW or ASAP. To change our way of life would be complex and that would mean it comes about in the future, not now. Long-term thinking is less preferable to short-term thinking and the immediacy of a benefit we can receive, even if the long term benefit is greater. Transition can require sacrifice, and this is also a reason for avoiding the best options we can think of and so most of us don't even bother to think of them...
We prefer to keep doing the same things, and rally for other people to fix our lives and the lives of others. "I'm going to support this political party because it's what I can do now to try to get things to change." And we keep doing this over and over, looking at the options we have in the present, now, thinking we're doing something but we're doing nothing except perpetuating more of the same.
Asking, begging or expecting some representative or leader in the levels of authority and hierarchy to change things for the better without us knowing which way is better isn't really going to work in the long term. Sometimes we can see their choices aren't the better option. Think about it, even if you can't imagine or envision and better way yet. The state or government acts like a nanny-mommy-daddy with political flavors that are the nurturing mother of left welfare or the strong protecting father like right isolationism and protectionism. Things won't really change if we don't change ourselves and our ways of thinking. We need to look at the long-term consequences of what we're doing, from all the industry and continued consummation of planetary resources, to the pollution, toxins, chemicals and waste that results from our activity.
We can often be blinded by our desires to do something now, anything, as long as we feel like we're doing something to change things. Is it really the right thing? Do we really understand how to have freedom for each individual and truly empower ourselves to direct our way of life? Seeking representatives can never represent everyone accurately and have their voices heard. We individuals are always more disempowered the more a society grows.
It's more that people are going through the motions of what they are conditioned to believe will work, what they believe is the only way to create change, the only way to fix things. We're going through the motions of preselected channels of directing our energy, and not using our imagination to figure out better ways of doing things that really empower us.
This can also be called learned helplessness, where we get conditioned into a certain way of living and keep the chains on ourselves rather than to free ourselves from them.
If we can't see the chains, then we need to correct our vision, to have the real eyes to realize the real lies.
They Live
In large part, we're being conditioned and living as "zombies", unaware, no thought and essentially non-thinking with low quality thinking, ignorant of what's going on.
They Live
But just because we see more, doesn't mean the desperation is gone. With knowing more and seeing the need for change yet being unable to make it happen, that can create a loss of hope, despair. Change takes time when we are powerless to change it ourselves. Our own personal lives have much about them that we are empowered to change; such as our jobs, our friends, where we eat, where we buy food, etc. But much of the larger parts of life -- the inertia of society, the flowing current of our current condition -- pulls us in a direction we don't want to go. Trying to create change is hard indeed.
Speak your mind, let me know what you like or dislike about the post :) I know it's a touchy subject for many.
Do you feel desperate for change at times?
Does it feel like you are powerless to effect change?
Are you aware of how you may have fallen into learned helplessness?