Hacking Consciousness – upgrading our human software
If Consciousness were a software programme, we humans seem to be running an archaically old version of it. It has bugs, requires malware that we can’t seem to find and run, and looks set to ultimately render the whole hard drive (us within an interdependent system) inoperable.
As I look at the way governments govern, systems vote, money is spent, democracy is falsified, forests destroyed, indigenous knowledge (and nations) wiped out, education plundered, common sense eradicated – or, at best, ignored – priorities randomized and life support systems (all the way from Kindness to Oxygen, Food, and Water) are rendered obsolete – damaged beyond legitimate repair – I find myself speechless and in shock. Politicians – the top of the social pile – as far as self-organizing social systems go – can barely make their way through a conversation without betraying a deep sense of panic and chaos, fight or flight, corruption or subterfuge.
We have been given overarchingly the most phenomenal possibilities in the way we are designed (how our energy flows, and how interactions give rise to new possibilities on so many levels) and yet we seem more than determined, in fact suicidally so, to keep using the old, outdated and evolutionary incompatible software that came pre-installed – kind of like when we buy a new printer we also get ‘free toner cartridges’ that last for less than a few pages of printing, before we need to purchase new ones. We are hanging on to the empty cartridges and it is not serving us, not at all.
The kind of violence that I have seen occurring (both historically, and today, still!) when new social change is ready to transition, the kind of deceit that people are practicing in today’s world just to hang onto a status quo that serves only them and their equally misguided thieving allies, the entitlement that some throw around as if they literally are better people than those without – it staggers me. This self-selecting superiority damages and distorts social coherence – it makes up its own self-serving value-systems and perpetuates a fanciful position that separates us into artificial hierarchies of servitude that defy the rich flow, fecundity – and novelty – that is naturally available in self-organizing living systems. It defies the logic and power of our complex diversity, it denies our inherent wisdom, our wild nature, our social progress and our right to exist peaceably. It actually denies and defies our essential belonging – challenging our existential right to be here.
Imagine all left-handed people in the World, for example, decided to create a system to serve just left-handed people (the right-handed aren’t invited to co-create this system – they are left out of meetings, but still lived here). Imagine on top of that that the right-handed people are then stigmatized and pathologized by the left-handed (as part of their economic plan) and told they are somehow damaged, less capable, humans because they are right-handed. Further imagine that they then ‘paternalized’ their position, and assumed control of your assets, your freedom and your sense of identity… sense of self. Would you still feel like you belong? Would you feel like an asset to your community… or, perhaps, more of a liability, more vulnerable, more at risk? How would you feel about others? How would you feel about yourself? Would you even feel necessary?
This is wrong, obviously – utterly and absolutely wrong. If you really think about it, this self-serving bias that alienates is, in fact, shamefully wrong: It results in the kind of systems that make homelessness a personality problem rather than an indicator of an infected, cannibalizing, system, that makes sensitivity an inconvenience, that makes empathy a fiscal liability and that makes social coherence unaffordable to minds that see limitation in social cooperation. It will always point the finger outward in order to maintain its privilege and it will always create a hostile environment.
One has to ask what leads us to allow the kind of bullying we see in these uber systems, the thievery of our resources, freedoms, relationships and our futures – to allow the presumption that anything other than consideration, respect and transparency, sharing, giving, loving, protecting and mutuality is in any way acceptable, appropriate, or worthy of our design potential? Where is our shock at the way we are treated within a system of trust? Where is our outrage… where are our standards? Finally, why are we allowing it?
The new Consciousness, the upgrade that awaits each and every one of us, has so much built into it that renders all the petty thievery obsolete but the trouble is that the consciousness that perpetuates itself through the fearful few, and the fearful many, holds onto itself; that’s part of the design of the old version that makes it malware-proof.
So how do we hack Consciousness to go so deep into the current hard drive that we kick out the virus? The virus that shows up as Colonialism, Dogma, Territorialness, Judgment, Domination, Violence, Slavery, Pettiness, Forced and Artificial Hierarchies of Superiority, Lack of Judgment, Lack of Knowledge, Lack of Joy… is it enough to understand what we are actually made of, how our hard drive is designed, so that we can remove the motherboard that no longer can be upgraded and replace it with one that is capable of running the transformed, enlightened, software… our brand new Consciousness of Liberty? What’s it going to take? How much oppression do we agree to before we champion our way through the facade, too powerful to resist, too self-aware to agree with this life-denying self-destruction?
Humans are already designed to be capable of upgrading. And we have free will. Maybe that’s the issue. Our free will interferes with our spiritual growth, because we can choose what happens next and something about us returns and returns to the familiar; familiar foods, familiar diets, familiar treats, familiar relationships, familiar life patterns, familiar stories.
A revolution is such an upheaval for our way of life that we need a gargantuan incentive, which means we need excellent, inspired, transformative education to help us understand when we are making a choice because it’s easy rather than because it’s right. And, by the way, the people who ‘have all the stuff’ don’t want to share it – they are addicted to the fantasy that having more makes them freer, more entitled, more powerful, safer, ‘better’, and somehow above the law; both human and natural. And, in the same breath, one needs to ask, ‘what are the ‘have not’s’ addicted to believing’? Each coin has two sides, each dancer a partner. One finger points forward, and three fingers point back, towards ourselves. Try it!
Many of today’s disproportionately wealthy individuals are afraid of their own shadow, as are many of the people in power (a truth for anyone, actually, who associates their power, or lack thereof, with something external). They are caught in the web of contradictions; if they co-create a new paradigm, how will they maintain their perceived security, what happens to their wealth, the wealth that gives them ‘social position’?? Everything has to change. Without change, there is literally no natural holistic progress, no cosmological evolution, no enlightenment, no transformation… no new collective moment, no life. This means letting go of attachment to ‘stuff’ as a way of identifying reality, and letting go of artificial and violent privilege, aka Colonialism and the colonized mind.
Let’s look at this; historically groups of people designed societies that suited their desire for a privileged, secure, life with assets, a system that got bolstered up with the advent of trading markets (e.g. futures, commodities, economic systems) and slavery (of so many kinds) in order to keep reinforcing their advantage, and their position, above the rising waters. If they were too oppressed by others who were doing it to them they’d simply uproot and go and do it to others instead, on other lands, and to others’ lands. These social snakes have consistently ‘charmed’ or deceived everyone else to play along (it’s a short step from charm to violence), and they’re still doing it. Politics at its most sycophantic is nothing more than magicians with words trying to trick us into believing a particular kind of impossible i.e. that somehow they can have it all and we have none of it and that a) this is fair, b) it is sustainable, and c) it is reasonable.
In 2016 – with the election of a core right-wing and corrupt Presidential administration in USA – people initially tried to keep reminding themselves that the new political environment was ‘not normal’, with every new lie, every flagrant attack on the Constitution, civil liberties, environmental security, equality, dignity etc., by the current President and his feeble party (bullies are, at their heart, essentially lacking in power, projecting their vulnerability as weakness onto others). This ‘not normal’ however, is actually something that we’ve been fighting against since the dawn of civilization. We’ve just allowed ourselves to be charmed into it, or bullied into it, with the occasional revolution when the pressure of the cognitive dissonance, or physical need, becomes too unbearable for our innocent (hypnotized?) souls to allow it anymore. What has happened to us?
The people that ‘have’ believe in scarcity and use our own civil services to confound and confront any needs and requirements we have to actually live with dignity, and ease, ourselves – they even use violence, the ultimate betrayal of trust, to kill, frighten, intimidate and control their own citizens if they threaten to interrupt their pilfering feast. This situation is so delusion it is as if they genuinely believe they are entitled to ‘lord it over the masses’ (a term still used in UK politics today); class, caste, categories and consumers; those are the labels that humans have agreed to be identified with, apparently. Your liberty should not cost a life; not your own, not someone else’s. That needs to be non-negotiable.
But the ‘haves’ are not superior or even different – they are just playing a different role – the externalized oppressor role to our internalized oppressor role. Their appetite is so insatiable that they have managed to use up most of the Planet’s natural resources just trying to feed it. It is not normal for a handful of people to be running the lives of millions of sentient beings, to be essentially running, and ruining, life. Just as it is not normal for companies to create life that cannot re-create itself – i.e. Monsanto being allowed to patent ‘Terminator’ seeds that do not reproduce themselves and then bully others into using them. THAT is not normal. And, quite frankly, it’s ridiculous. Actually, it’s beyond ridiculous – this global scenario is absolutely and utterly untenable, inexcusable and unacceptable. And it hurts – because we are so much more capable than this, and we know it. Our Soul always knows when it’s being shortchanged, we always know when we are shortchanging ourselves.
All this happens in agreement – between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. The fantasy that there is hierarchy occurs within the participants of this fantasy. Like any dysfunctional relationship, if we think we have to ask permission to live a fair and free life, an intelligent life, a kind life, then we will never be granted it because on some level we don’t think we’re worthy or capable or the people who have that power will never really believe we will do anything about it. The doubt about this is self-doubt and the seductive power of roles asserts itself repeatedly – a delusional and symbiotic groundhog day.
The government has no power. Banks have no power. Reality actually has no power. We have power. We. Have. Power. We can reprogramme all of it, by reclaiming the territory that DOES belong to us; the territory of I. I am. That means understanding our basics.
This first piece is to identify the problem – name it, call it out, identify where the sore is, the cavernous, aching, wound of denial. The next will speak to the potential that is being missed, where it lies within each of us, how missing it got us here and how to relate to it in ways that foster the conditions for our evolution and the new level of consciousness waiting to be installed. From there we get to co-create something of beauty.
Thank you for reading.
There will be more.
