What Do I Have to Do with It? And Why Me?

“Tout se tient”, they say: everything in existence is connected. Economy and economic suppression are no exception. And the key connections trace back the branches to the less visible roots. In the subtitle I wrote, “find out where you are”: that is the first step to get anywhere; and you are the core of where you are. There are branches and roots, and you are the basic root.

With all the important things we’re already forced to care about, why this, too? With all the interesting things we would like to mind about if we could just have the time, now why this instead? If you’re a goldfish and the level of water in your fish tank keeps going down despite the fact that the tap keeps on being turned more and more open, it’s time to take a good look at the deep end. If the result of the inspection is that not only there are many drains open, but one of them alone drains about ninety percent of the water, it’s worth assigning it a priority in ratio with the risk of dying of asphyxia.

Conspicuous and important are two quite separate qualities. There are subjects so conspicuous that we see at once we have to take some care of them, and then there are less evident subjects, but which may even be the hidden causes of the conspicuous ones, too. The real cause may be different than it seems at first sight; and as a general rule, the puppeteers foment from behind the curtains, unnoticed and undisturbed in the shade of all the noise and destruction carried out on stage by the apparent cause, the mere puppets. So where are our efforts likely to yield the most?

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What did you say? You don’t have time to cure yourself because you’re sick, so to have time to heal yourself you’ve got to heal first? You don’t have time to confront a problem because you have that problem, so to have time to confront it it’s got to solve first?
Let’s put it that way: then you rely on the hope that it resolves itself? Or that someone else, fate, Providence, Santa Claus or something does? Or you just do not rely on any hope at all, and you just hold on, shut your eyes and that’s it?
All this is paradoxical. And a trap, with the bottom covered with blades. Because it will never happen. Experience shows that when you let go of the wheel your car ends up in the trench. And in the meantime you keep on sinking since long before it does.
Hope is a surrogate for competence. If you are competent, you know what can be done, so you know it can be done.
What did you say? No time to become competent? It has been said that the reason why you don’t have time is that you’re not competent. No competence, no time.
And I’ll tell you a trick: any improvement is attained despite the apparent circumstances saying it can’t be done; the whole trick consists of knowing that, utterly disagreeing with all the reasons why you can’t, and proceeding despite it all.

Time and again and in many ways it has been said that if you do not take care of something appertaining you, sooner or later that something is going to take care of you – and not exactly in your best interest –. Less frequently it has been specified that the most difficult thing to confront is Evil. Which unfortunately means that the more something is likely to hit you hard – and therefore the more you ought to confront it – the less you’re willing to. Which therefore makes your willpower the make−or−break factor. So, please, guard it accordingly.

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And then add this crucial facet: just as your commitment in keeping the tap open proves your intention to make it, that drain wide open proves the existence of someone else’s opposite intention that you do NOT make it.
An opposite intention is not a different intention: it opposes your intention head−on; you want to eat an orange, someone wants you to eat a banana: that is a different intention; someone else wants you to starve to death: that is an opposite intention.
The point is that no intention is safe as long as there is an opposite intention. Every effort you put in your intention to make it in the presence of the opposite intention that you do not is just wasted, because it is unstable: slippage will follow advance, cave in will undermine stability, there will be ups and downs, there will be uneasiness, blunders, troubles, conducts not up to what is expected or needed, losses, and most of them unexpectedly, unwittingly, inadvertently, by surprise, and most probably right when and where you expect them the least and they harm you more. And you won’t attain your targets, or you will lose them once attained.
In the presence of an opposite intention you are liable of being stabbed in the back at any time. Actually, just like most of us, you are being stabbed in the back unbeknown to you right now. And any effort you put into your intention is wasted until the opposite intention is dealt with conclusively.
In sophisticated economic mumbo jumbo, no amount of commitment to the taps will ever do, unless something resolving gets done about the drain. And about the intention behind it. That’s why I’m calling your attention to them, first.

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Whether you’re a creative, an employer, a manager, a self−employed, an employee or an unemployed, I’m going to confirm your feeling that we’re all on the same boat in this regardless of your role in the team, your part in the show, what you do for a living. And that the way out is not through fighting each other but through unearthing and defeating those who turn us against each other and make us believe we are.

Action is based on knowledge, so to improve one the other must be improved first; and to seek further and better information one has to realize there is something unknown, and damn good reasons to discover it.

If you’re a well−meaning person, moved by the fate of a victim, ask yourself if you’re moved by the fate of a world of victims. I mean, just try to have a realistic idea of the sheer amount of injustice, abuse, suffering, heartbreak, tragedy and of the sheer numbers of victims enduring them. Then ask yourself if you’d like to be of real help by doing something effective where it matters. Well, in order to be effective where it matters you are called to bridge over an abyss: there is quite a lot of things you have to know, and confront.

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If you’re an activist of anything, be more effective by clearing any prejudice, bias and wedge driven between us, particularly if you’re not aware of it, and locate yourself in the overall scene. If you’re fighting to save a branch, find out at its roots what you’re trying to save it from. Let’s help each other better by reversing the “divide et impera” (divide and rule) enemy’s strategy: know all the fronts, who your friends are on those fronts, and that we’re all on the same side. Problems and their causes form a pyramid: many problems at a given level are caused by the same problem at a more basic level, and so no. If you solve one at a level basic enough, you have a chance to solve your one, too. So, whathever branch we fight to save, let’s make common cause at the root.

If you’re an artist and you see, feel, dream and conceive ahead of your fellows, awake among the asleep, whatever your hopes, plans and chances to wake them up to human decency and beyond, they all need a safe base: if the problem of your fellows is sheer survival, lack of hope, dehumanising ignorance or being on sleeping pills, you can easily estimate your chances to wake them up if you don’t handle that first.

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Do you have any loved ones you hold dear? They won’t survive unless the environment they are in is a safe one: one where your fellows agree that your belongings and loved ones have the right to exist, operate and survive. Classic cars are doomed to the scrapyard in the sky, sublime music is doomed to oblivion, and any Robin Hood won’t survive long in a world where there are too many Sheriffs of Nottingham and too many people are degraded into siding with their enemies against their friends. No room for the soul among the soulless, no freedom, no ideals; thus, no future for your loved ones in an unsafe environment. So, if you have any, please help build a safe environment for the sake of them.

Do you feel a hole inside? Do you keep on repeating to yourself that you know it shouldn't be that way and you keep asking yourself why, but you can't give yourself the answer? So you live on the verge of breaking away from yourself – or you've long chosen to flee and drown into abjection to hide away from yourself? Well, if you're still there, take a look here – a deep, thorough look…

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What is you problem, right now? Whatever it is, only you know. But whatever it is, it traces back to the basics reported here.
On one side, only you know which precarious branch you’re sitting on; on the other side, whatever the branch, the roots of the tree are here. Therefore, no one but you can see both sides and thus trace the link back from your own personal branch to the common roots. And this is the case with whatever branch.

If you look at things from the point of view that you can be cause or effect, a first point is that the more one is cause the more one is likely to make things go right, and the more one is effect the more one is likely to make things go down the pan: stay behind the wheel, and you get through; let go of it, and you crash.
A second point is that thought is the requisite of action: you won’t do a given thing unless you consider you can do it and you’re going to. Thus no one will ever be more cause than one considers one can be.
A third point is that thought not only is the requisite of action, but it also affects it, and thus its outcome, too: given equal physical shape, the force applied by the optimist is greater than that of the pessimist, and so are his chances to get through.
Therefore it’s not a matter of assessing how much cause one can actually be, it’s a matter of assuming the most useful viewpoint available: totally cause.
In other words, to avoid any risk of clipping one’s own wings, one’d better assume the viewpoint of being personally, boundlessly, totally cause. Who cares how much it’s true: it’s functional, useful.
This way, one avoids any risk of missing anything one could have achieved due to considering it out of reach from the start. If one is to have a chance, that’s indispensable; after all, life already provides enough barriers without us siding with them against ourselves, isn’t it?

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Thinkers and artists create things, and workers and managers produce them, so that we all can have them. And then the safeguarding of all this is up to each one of us.
Whatever your role on board, when you realize the ship is the questionable property of a shipowner which is sinking it with all its passengers, you’d rather sound the alarm and head the reconquest, if you ever want a chance for us all to survive.
And at that point, if you understood what do you have to do with it, and why, then you know that “the bell tolls for thee”, and that if you don’t act, no one else will. If you don’t, why should another?

So, here’s the answer to what do you have to do with it, and to why you:

If you don’t, no one else will.