When in doubt, simplify.  It’s not so hard to throw things out you don’t use anymore, or to give them away.  You just have to come to the point where you detach emotionally from that particular item.  The key is to get things to the point where you have everything you need to live a good life, and nothing else.  It is pure simplicity.

Just as an aside, I notice there are tons of minimalist blogs out there.  Is that extraneous or what?

Getting back to basics is the first step, like what do you truly need.  In America, we have five basic needs:  Food, water, shelter, transportation, and high speed internet.  If that was all you had, would you be just as happy as you are today?  Yes or no?  I would say yes without batting an eye.  But you don’t have to go that extreme, or you can go more extreme, cutting out the internet and transportation.  Simplicity is one thing.  Minimalism takes simplicity to the extreme, and it is different for each person, but the principles are the same:  Keep what you need, give away, sell, or throw out the rest.  It is a long, arduous process, but it is rewarding, as there is little need to organize and spend nearly as much money.

I’m still awake at 3:30 AM, so it’s probably time I wrap this up and go to bed, although I’m not that tired.  I’m probably just going to listen to some music while I lie in bed and hopefully I’ll doze off before the morning comes.  I’ll be back in the future, I promise.

Once this million dollars comes into my life, I plan to get a nice piece of land out in the country and build a small, modest home on it.  When I say small, I mean it.  Maybe 500 square feet, maybe less.  Perhaps a little more, but I’m sure most of that space will go to waste.  I plan to live there and write/explore.  I find that writing has a lot of solace in it and I enjoy it immensely.  I may write for others, or even just myself.  It won’t matter, because I won’t need any more money for the rest of my life.  I’ll eat very healthily and be at my physical peak, whatever that means for me.  And I won’t invest or anything, I’ll just have a savings account where it will earn interest at least equal to inflation.  I just need to get this damn blog on the map and watch the cash roll in.

It would be nice to be able to devote my entire life to what I believe in, but right now I still have to earn a living.  Earning a living takes a lot of energy out of me, and I can no longer work as hard on other pursuits.  We should be on the  front lines starting a revolution, but we have jobs and cars and homes to pay for and it seems only the unemployed have any free time.  These are people who are most likely wasting much of their free time drinking alcohol or using illicit drugs.  No offense intended.  I’m sure there are a lot of good workers who lost their jobs, and I’m not referring to them.  Why aren’t these people rioting in the streets?  Why aren’t they protesting our governmental tyranny?  Why aren’t they defending the Earth from corporate enslavement?  I don’t know.

There are some people out there who do make a difference, but the problem is that there aren’t enough of them.  And these people are mostly fringe, which gives them far less credibility than Noam Chomsky.  I’ve read articles about the freegans, who live without money, or as little money as possible, living off of the throw-away culture that we have created.  Here’s an article from the NY Times about this:  The Freegan Establishment.  They are considered modern hunter-gatherers.  They are living what the perceive as an ethical life with hardly any money, and people like me, and some others who are far worse, can’t see themselves doing this unless they had a windfall of money.

These people are squatting abandoned homes, eating food out of dumpsters, and traveling across the country while the rest of us are stuck at our soul-crushing jobs so that we can afford our mortgages and car payments.  They are doing what they believe should be rights to food, shelter, and autonomy.  But this world we live in denies those basic human rights to anyone who isn’t willing to become a corporate slave or scammer.  And believe me, there are plenty of scammers out there, especially on Wall Street.  This world is insane, and yet we are forced to go along with it or be shot, jailed, or simply bent to the will of our corporate masters as they kill the Earth with a giant smile.  It makes me sick, but hardly anyone is revolting.

Is it ignorance?  Is it hopelessness?  Is it depression?  What in the world is holding people back?  Do most people actually think this world is sane?  Is that the case?  Seriously?  Just take a look around you.  Look at the history books (that ironically have been edited from what truly happened, substantially).  Read books about forbidden history, the stuff that people who wrote history didn’t want you to know.  Realize that this world is under control by sinister forces, with questionable origins, and that they are conditioning you every day with their constant propaganda of telling you how to feel, what to think, who to admire, and who to condemn.  That is part of the reason I stopped watching television altogether, save for a few instances.  They can’t get to you if you don’t play their game.

When I read about people breaking free of the system and living a different way, it inspires me.  It gives me hope that there are cracks to break through.  The few people who do live on the fringes of society seem to have more fulfilling lives, because they actually stand for something.  Most people do jobs that are meaningless in the context of the meaning of life.  They usually do things that anyone could do if they had the necessary skills, and most jobs are less than extraordinary.  They are a means to and end, a fucking paycheck that most people spend completely before the next payday, thereby perpetuating their need for continuous employment.  But there is a better way.  You don’t have to let the system hold you over a barrel.

You can live very well cheaply while still working and save tons of money.  I’ve done it.  Others have done it.  You just have to adjust your thinking from the high-budget lifestyle to the low-budget lifestyle.  I haven’t bought new shoes in over 2 years.  I haven’t bought new clothes in longer.  I receive clothing as gifts, which I wear.  I eat a pretty healthy diet for less than you would expect.  I do own a car, but I bought it cheap from my grandfather for about half its value.  I very rarely buy things I don’t need.  I hardly ever go out to eat.  I am mentally out of the system, but I still hold down a job and do it well.  I just am not as dependent on it as others, whose life would fall apart if they got fired or laid off.

I’ve got some links in my sidebar about how to do this, and the most pivotal essay is Ran Prieur’s How to Drop Out. He articulates better than me, but we have similar messages.  He is in his 40s, but it feels like his consciousness is somewhere in the mid 20’s range.  This guy is what I do to the extreme.  He even bought land that he is building a cobwood house on.  He may be a semi-dropout, but he makes a hell of a lot more sense than those indoctrinated politicians, and by following this guy’s example, we can create heaven on Earth, instead of this toxic and unstable civilization.  Read some of his other essays as well.  Some very interesting stuff there.

Talkin’ bout revolution… Let’s do it!  We just need to get enough people aware of what is going on in the world.  And we need to get these people to start living the way us “dropouts” do.

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For the past few years, when people have asked me what I want for Christmas, I’ve often said, “I don’t know.”  The only thing I would possibly want would be maybe an Amazon gift card to add a few more books to my Kindle, or something that I will get continuous value from, like a mug warmer or a new desk for my computer.  But I don’t really need those things, I just want them.  The desk I have is okay, it works, and I would have to get rid of this one in order to get a new one.  What I could really use is a small filing cabinet that could fit where the tower part of a computer would go if I had a desktop computer.  That way I could be a bit more organized.  Ever since the drawer bottom came out of my one drawer in this desk, I’ve been using a box on the floor.  But it hasn’t caused any suffering yet.  It’s just a minor inconvenience.  And I could easily head down to the Salvation Army and find a file cabinet that fits my needs and I could easily afford it.

What is it we actually need?  Food, water, some kind of shelter, people who support us, and fuel for those terribly cold months some areas of the world experience.  That’s pretty much it.  It is not required to have an iPhone or a Sony Entertainment System.  Those are things that can easily be done without.  Most of us would say we need a computer or a television, but that is simply not true.  Even though today’s world is full of them, and many people’s jobs rely on these new technologies, are they really necessary?  No, but they are still worth having sometimes because we all like to use them every once in awhile.  Self-deprivation is no fun, and we should have things we use, but things we do not use or will never use should be donated, or simply thrown away.  Or even recycled.

Many people today are minimalists and they don’t even know it.  There are people who are minimalists by necessity, because they have very little or no money.  Then there are those who are very wealthy who own very little, because they’ve seen beyond the socially-conditioned way of life and choose to only own what is useful to them.  It’s all about the mindset.  Not to mention that it is wise to save money and buy less now before the complete collapse of the economy.  It won’t take long for this to happen, just a few decades at the most.  We have no idea of the times that we are headed for.  Things certainly haven’t gotten any better, and if that’s any indication of how our future will be, then we need to stop spending fast.  I just hope our government stops printing money so that we don’t experience hyperinflation, which will make all the money we saved up essentially worthless.

I’m trying to justify minimalism in these hard times, because it will be best for us when it all comes crashing down.  And that all this spending, all this debt, is exactly the problem.  Stimulating the economy through credit cards and loans is not going to solve the problem, but just make it worse.  Do you hear that, Washington?  Stop all the spending and maybe someday we’ll get out of this recession.  Stop spending all our hard-earned money on things that don’t benefit us, like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Those wars haven’t helped the American people one bit.  In fact, it has crippled them.  So has all this outsourcing to China and other countries that will willingly exploit their people to send up cheaply-made merchandise.  Is this the world we were meant to live in?  I think not.

Why aren’t people willing to do the things that are necessary to creating the world we were meant to have?  It’s going to start on a conscious level, moving down to the physical.  We need to have a global rise in consciousness before we can get anything done.  We need leaders to get those who are not quite there yet up to our level.  We need to educate people about what is really going on in the world, so that they can make informed choices on what to buy and what not to buy.  Not only that, but what to do, and what not to do.  If we stopped buying things from the corporations who exploit other nations and other people, then they would have no power whatsoever.  If we all stopped going to Walmart and Target and Best Buy, then perhaps we would see a change for the better.  If people would actually think of why something is so cheap and think of the people who actually have to produce these things, there would be the start of a consciousness revolution.

It sure is a mad world out there.  And most people would rather be left in the dark about it, because if they don’t know, they don’t feel they are contributing to it.  But that is sheer willful ignorance.  We are all contributing to this world in one way or another, and we can decide in which way we want to contribute.  We can move towards fear or we can move towards love.  We can keep going on this suicidal trainwreck, or we can stop the train and figure out which steps need to be taken to restore the world to what it once was.  For the benefit of all creatures, not just our narrow, unenlightened self-interest.  Why is it that everyone who ever told us to live together in harmony either got shot or killed in some other way?  When are we finally going to be ready to hear this, much less do it?

But I am not my ideas, because those ideas are not mine to begin with.  Nobody can own ideas.  Ideas are fluid.  It is the unique expression of those ideas that can be owned.  That is our gift to the world.  Our own perspective on things, on ideas.  That is what we bring to the table.  That is our uniqueness coming out.  And this is why every human has something to contribute.  (This is another bull shit, everyone is special post, when most people are not special, they are ordinary, but that is only because they have been conditioned not to think for themselves and to let the media and the government do all their thinking for them.)

Now I’m going to lash out at the world at large because that self-help shit really isn’t me.  No offense to those who got value out of  my posts about goal setting and following your passion.  My passion is exposing the world for what it is and how it takes from the wider world without giving back, and allows crimes of epic  proportions and we just sit there and accept it, or remain blissfully ignorant of it.  We accept what we are told by the media because nobody wants to put in the time and effort it would take to prove things wrong.  And when someone does prove that the “official story” or something is wrong, like Bush winning the election, people still believe it.  Or when 9/11 was debunked by quite a few people, they were viewed as heretics and unpatriotic, abominable to think our own government would attack itself.  If you know all the evidence, you’ll know that the WTC was an albatross, inefficient, and would need asbestos removal that would cost more than the original buildings.  Not to mention some guy just bought the building and put an insurance policy on it specifically for terrorist attacks less than a year before the “terrorist attack.”  And let’s not forget that Dick Cheney become head of NORAD, which had never happened before in the history of NORAD.  No elected official was ever put in charge of shooting down planes and for some reason, that was the time and Cheney was all, “Do NOT shoot that plane down!”  They removed all bomb sniffing dogs from the WTC 2 weeks before the collapse.  The buildings fell at near freefall speed, which is impossible for a steel-framed building unless it is being demolished with small charges at ever floor to lessen resistance to zero as the building collapses.

What happened to most of those who said something to the contrary about 9/11?  I’ll tell you what.  The people in high-ranking positions in journalism and politics were made a mockery of, many of them lost their jobs, and were told never to speak of it again.  Others were threatened and changed their official “scientific” findings.  9/11 is not about Muslim terrorists, it is about America wanting a fascist state of control and a reason to attack the middle east to get oil.  The people who are invested in the “official story” have everything to gain, while those who question it have everything to lose.  So it is a risky position, even to say that we trained Al-Quaeda is a risky position.  To say that Osama Bin Laden used to be a member of one of our government agencies is ludicrous.  But all of it is true.  They are hidden truths.  I have this theory that if even 1% of what we don’t know were let out, we would have a revolution.  But most people don’t want to know.  Better avert your eyes.  Why is it so few people truly want to know?

I’ll tell you why.  Because if they lied about that, what else did they lie about?  What other load of crap are they feeding us?  The government lies on a daily basis.  The government is not your friend.  Unless it is a friend who kills people and lies about it.  Big Brother is watching us almost everywhere we go now.  The PATRIOT Act was a total dissolvement of our freedoms in so many ways and we just stood there and took it.  People don’t have critical thinking skills, not even our leaders.  Not anymore.  The public education system, for the most part, creates a population that is a worker  bee, that will go along with the status quo or whatever the government is doing, because in school it is the same way.  Most people get their spirit broken in school.  Imagine 6 year old children forced to sit at a desk for the better part of 6 hours listening to a teacher drone on about mathematical equations when all they want to do is go outside and play and explore their world.  Even things that would be considered fun, such as kickball or singing a song is done under threat of punishment.  We are trained to do what those “above” us say and believe what they say as well.  We are conditioned since birth if our parents were really lousy and placed us in front of the television.  If they actually paid attention to us, we were conditioned since the start of school, the stupidity-manufacturing institution.  No wonder most people don’t really know what is going on in the world.  They don’t know that they don’t know that they are being conditioned and are being brainwashed on a daily basis by all forms of media.  They are told how to think, they believe what the media tells them to be true, even when it could be completely false.

Very few people take the time to question what they read or see on the television.  And that’s the problem.  If we actually did examine and pull the wool off of our eyes, we would see more than we could ever imagine seeing in this socially-conditioned state we are in now.  How the media placates us and gets us hung up on issues like whether or not a mosque should be built at Ground Zero, rather than focusing on the erosion of our freedoms of religion and speech.  The very things that are not reported in the media are the things that bear the most importance.  We never hear about secret societies that control the world on the news.  When was the last time they had the Bilderberg Group on the TV?  Or the Freemasons?  All this secrecy in the name of controlling people, and gaining more and more power, substituted in the form of money and land.  It is a power addiction that has led us to be left in the dark while those in power take everything and maybe throw us a little crumb every now and then.  They commit crimes of epic proportions, right out in the open and blame it on someone else.  As Napoleon said, “To be believed, make the truth unbelievable.”  And he’s right.  Most people can’t believe we attacked ourselves on 9/11 because it would shatter their reality.  It’s easier to believe that someone far, far away that hates us did that horrific act.  Not Uncle Sam.  Not our government, not people who live in this country and have for their whole lives.  It is just easier to believe that some brown people did it who believe in a foreign God that most people in this country don’t believe in or even understand.

It’s just so sad, because human beings have such a capacity for good, but also one for evil.  And when I use the words good and evil, I don’t mean in any religious sense.  I guess you could call them constructive and destructive.  Sane and pathological.  The choice of words is meaningless.  It’s just good and evil are better understood.  Fear and love are also easily understood, and so is love of power.  We have the capacity to create heaven on Earth, but most of us can’t because we would have to quit our jobs and possibly be homeless just to see our visions through.  The system has got us by the balls and we know it.  It is only through transcending the dominant system in small ways to start that we can begin to live autonomously, with the need for less and less from the system.  The system that lies to us and kills people.  Then we can finally begin to do good in ways that are good from every perspective.  For example, buying a piece of land and letting it run wild, like it should be.  That creates diversity and you could also live on it.  But in order to buy that land, you have to spend time in th dominant system earning money to get the land.  But once you have it, it is yours.

Dropping out completely is stupid, but the further you go, the more free you get.  If you no longer depend on your government for subsistence, then you are no longer complicit in what it does.  That is a nice bonus.  It’s not just the government, but those who control most of the world’s wealth.  When you no longer need much money, they can no longer control you either.  They can’t dangle money in front of you to silence you.  You have more integrity than that, now that you are outside the system, although you still take advantage of it in some ways.  I dislike the word dropout, because it still places the primary focus on the dominant, parasitic system, but what’s a better word?  Naturalist?  Minimalist?  Anarchist?  Anarcho-primitivist, although I don’t know if I want to go back that far.  I still want decent  shelter and some form of comfort.  I don’t want to have to try to sleep with bugs all over me.  Yuck.  What I’m looking for is a way forward where we lessen our dependence on government, technology, and hierarchical systems and start focusing on community and truly good values.  Values that come from love, not fear.  Get rid of fear completely and have a world just filled with love.  Will it take time?  Yes.  Are we ready for it now?  No way.  But is it possible?  Definitely.  We just have to make it happen.

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