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“Billy sometimes courage is just being able to recognize your own weakness and to do something about it”--Billy The Kid, The Series
I was thinking the other day about the complexity of the human body, or more specifically the human mind and spirit.
I often get inside my head with such thoughts and I really couldn’t tell you why other than to say that I’ve always been this way and that I’ve always been an introspective individual.
As I was thinking I began thinking about the mystery and phenomenon of the act of thinking. Whatever thought would enter into my mind really wasn’t the point, but the main point was rather the miracle and amazement that there are thoughts inside all of our minds in the first place, at least for many of the people who are listeners to this podcast and blog.
I say that because I’m convinced that you as a listener and reader to this show are some of the smartest group of people on the planet and I don’t say that lightly. I get emails, questions, ideas, and shared content from many of you on a frequent basis so I know this to be a fact.
Regardless, I was thinking about the miracle of all of us having the ability to produce a thought. This is such a mystery.
Now do yours and my thoughts come from the brain?
Perhaps, but I tend to think of the brain as merely being a physical conduit for the transfer of thoughts. I believe the brain has a lot to do with this, but I also believe that our deep thoughts come from somewhere else. I happen to believe that our genuinely good thoughts are actually a miracle coming from our souls, but I digress.
So why am I diving into this deep philosophical matrix with you today as it relates to the origin of thought?
This is incredibly important because even though the origin of thoughts may cause many of us to debate on where they come from, the one thing that’s critical to point out is the evolution of those thoughts.
In other words, you can have a thought, or what can also be described as an idea, a perspective, or a viewpoint, and it may remain right there inside your head, or you might choose to speak it into existence.
So the next evolution of the thought would have to come in the form of speech or writing. This is why invention and certain qualities of life that we all enjoy are a miracle because they all began as a thought.
Now that you understand that, take a moment to ask yourself why would it ever be a good idea to allow the suppression of thought? In other words, if the invention of everything that exists within society began as a thought or idea, then why would we allow the suppression of ideas or thoughts in the form of suppressing free speech?
Highway Hypnosis
I remember years ago when I was in college and took up a summer job working in pest control for Sears.
It was a different experience because as a newbie coming into the job in those days I was assigned to do a ride along with a veteran that had been on the job for a while.
For a summer job it wasn’t a bad deal at all as once I met the requirements for training I was issued my own vehicle which consisted of a small pickup truck that would contain all the materials I needed to administer any number of treatments for pest control.
Furthermore, it required a lot of driving which made having the work truck a real blessing in terms of transportation. Regardless, it was a challenge because I had a daily lineup of appointments that I had to service and at times those appointments would be spread out all over Athens, Georgia and even beyond so there were days when that truck literally became my office quarters.
I remember when I was on the ride along with the guy that was training me at the time and one time we were on a long drive coming back to the office at the end of a long day and had about an hour or more long drive ahead of us.
As we were settling into the drive late into the afternoon there was a moment when the ride got quiet. We were both exhausted from having been out on the road all day and it was in the middle of the summer in Georgia so we were fatigued from having been out treating homes in the heat as well.
As I watched the road ahead coming at me through the windshield with little to no sound and no distraction I felt myself starting to get drowsy and realized that I was fighting the urge to fall asleep.
It was like the long drive of staring at a monotonous view of a dull highway was trying to lull me to sleep.
It was at this point that the veteran must have taken notice and suddenly allowed the vehicle to drift a bit to the right so that the wheels would roll over the rumble strips on the road resulting in the loud noisy vibration of the tires which caused me to immediately sit upright.
It was at this point that he asked me if I had ever heard of the phenomenon known as highway hypnosis. At that point in time had not, but I kinda understood what he was getting at after having that little experience on the drive.
To give you an example of this unusual phenomenon imagine that you’re driving along a desolate road and you see the road sign telling you that your destination is like 60 miles away. The next thing you know you’re shocked to see another sign telling you that your destination is only 30 miles away.
At this point you know you didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, but what happened to those 30 miles? How did it seem that those 30 miles went by in only a brief moment?
You may have even experienced driving through town and finally coming to a stop light not realizing how you arrived on the opposite side of town due to having little memory of your journey across town.
You might wonder if you were watching the road the whole time? Did you use your turn signal? Did you stop at all the stop signs? If you really think about this I’m sure you’ve lived this unusual experience a few times throughout your lifetime.
When you go through this experience known as highway hypnosis there are some warning signs to note regarding this phenomenon that may include the following.
Sleepiness
Loss of focus and a cloudy mind
A dazed feeling
Slow reaction time
Loss of time
Heavy eyelids and constant fighting to keep your eyes open (Source: Healthline)
So this is exactly what I had experienced during that time in the ride along with the Sears pest control guy. This wouldn’t be the last time, but it was one of the first times I could remember having the experience identified as highway hypnosis.
The reason I chose to tell you about this phenomenon of highway hypnosis is because to me this experience isn’t unlike the societal construct of mind numbing education and media messaging that much of society has gotten spoonfed now for many decades. This has taken place due to the gradual decline of institutional rot that has largely gone unnoticed, much like those highway roadsigns in my moment of highway hypnosis, until now.
If you think about it, the largest institutions here in the states are responsible for a great deal of actions that must be carried out across our individual lives and we have grown to just go along with the messaging, recommendations, and mandates of these institutions without ever thinking twice about them for a very long time now.
For instance, when it comes to the education system in our country the performance of the financially literate functioning citizen has degraded significantly over time due to a gradual rotting of the education system and breaking up of the family structure.
For instance, according to Statista the percentage of adults with a high school graduate level of education in 1960 was at 41% while college graduate level was at 7.1%. Compare this to 2022 where you had 91.1% of adults with a high school graduate level of education and 37.5% with a college level graduate education or more. (Source: Statista)
Now having established the education level and the vast differences in terms of the percentage of adults with high school and college graduate level education nowadays versus in 1960 then why has consumer debt grown by 25% in the past five years and even doubled since the turn of the century? (Source: The Center Square)
I know what you’re thinking, well Brandon with the advancement of education there are many more people who have mortgages now compared to the 1960’s. You might be correct there, but these statistics omit mortgages and the entirety of this debt is coming from personal credit card debt that has exploded to be 40% of the median household income as recently as 2018. (Source: The Center Square)
So why am I telling you this?
Well, what is it that I’m always advocating for in regards to being a Zenith?
I’m always talking about how to understand your environment and in doing so these statistics clearly demonstrate how much as a society we have lost our understanding of fiscal responsibility as individuals and what the concept of wealth creation really means.
After all, if we did understand it then as a society why would we be experiencing all of this financial turmoil both at the household level, as well as at the level of the federal government?
After all, it seems that both the federal government and individual households love to keep running up their own debt to the detriment of both themselves and the country at large. As a society we are simply not enforcing fiscal discipline and the lived experience of our daily lives is bearing this out with the out of control personal debt, as well as the 40 year record high inflation which is a marker on the out of control debt of the federal government and the dangerous printing of money by the federal reserve.
At this point it is obvious that the latter of those directly fuels the former, but it seems as a society that we’ve been unwilling to hold and enforce accountability for either of these causes of the debt bubble.
Given that both of these realities concerning both the exploding personal debt combined with the exploding federal government debt means that we are headed for a cataclysm that will cause a great financial crisis unlike anything this country has ever experienced if I had to make a prediction.
The reason this has happened is because the population has suffered from its own version of highway hypnosis. As a society we have lacked the knowledge, focus, and alertness to understand the environment and to do what was necessary in order to prevent this coming crisis from ever being the significant issue of moral hazard that it has become in the first place.
This journey of the gradual growth of the personal and federal debt crisis has been due to the fact that society has been undergoing a numbing towards the development of the individuality construct.
So what do I mean by this?
In my observation this numbing of the individuality construct is where society has been hustled into exchanging their individual sovereignty for the trust and convenience of receiving goods and services that the major institutions within our society provide.
By gradually giving over more and more of our trust and sovereignty we end up giving up more and more of our individuality because we have fed a corrupt and massive institution for far too long without ever having fed an alternative competitor to serve as a buffer to keep the major institutions more honest.
When it comes to the education system this is now obvious as the math clearly demonstrates that nowadays people aren’t more financially literate throughout our society at large. If there were more financial literacy then there would have been more aggressive accountability for both the out of control spending caused by our federal government, as well as the majority of our personal households throughout our society as well.
The Experience Machine
If you’re not familiar with the The Experience Machine concept it is a thought experiment that presents a scenario involving you having the option to experience a perfect life without having to face any consequences.
The scenario involves there being a machine that exists which gives you the option and ability to plug into a virtual world to experience anything you desire without the consequences. It is said that in this scenario you would not be able to tell the difference between the simulation and the real world much like we would associate with the Matrix nowadays.
However, eventually the thought experiment poses the question of whether you would be willing to plug into the Experience Machine for the rest of your life?
Given this thought experiment I can personally see the warning of this with what Huxley wrote about in Brave New World.
Once again, on the surface such an Experience Machine may sound like a good idea, but then again to me this would only work on people who couldn’t care less about their individual sovereignty and also lack a personal depth in terms of grasping the significance of what it means to have a purpose driven life that fuels the spirit.
The Wrap Up
Without purpose people lack hope and without hope there is absolutely nothing.
I opened this episode talking about the miracle of how each and every single one of us possess the ability to produce our own thoughts. Without this ability then we are incapable of contributing to anything in life.
After all, what would be the point of life if we couldn’t push our thoughts into existence?
To take this even further, what would be the point of not being able to experience the consequences of your thoughts whether those thoughts transitioned into reality with either a good or bad outcome?
In fact, the reason that the world is burning right now is because society has been lulled to sleep falling into its own version of highway hypnosis for quite some time and now society finds itself wondering how we all ended up in this world that is currently falling apart.
The education system has been a numbing agent, the media has been a numbing agent, the rat race of life has been a numbing agent, and the explosion of the digital age may be the biggest numbing agent of all.
After all, The Experience Machine may be a hypothetical thought experiment, but the idea of it points to a technological advancement that offers the experience involved in the thought experiment in the first place.
When you combine this with the steady growth of gaming, virtual reality, and the coming specter of AI is The Experience Machine about to graduate to reality no longer having to be pondered as a thought experiment among intellectuals bouncing around ideas about the human experience?
I believe we’re all in this War With The Inimicus and we’ll eventually find out, but for the time being this is why you’re here.
My guess is that you’re choosing to be a sovereign being and wouldn’t plug into that Experience Machine to live a fake life. I’m guessing you’d rather create the experience you desire from the thoughts that are derived from God and your own soul so that you can create the experience of life yourself rather than ceding that purpose over to some artificial collection of plastic, metal, and circuitry.
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The Specter of Numbing The Individuality Construct