Who are They?
We hear the Great Ubiquitous They (GUT) invoked nearly
every time we overhear world events being discussed – They fix elections,
They control the Media, They lock away the plans for Free Energy devices
in Their Detroit safes, They cover up the truth, They aren't interested
in what we have to say, They planned A, plotted B, and have C, D and E
waiting in store for the little guy who doesn't go along… The GUT
finds its way into conversations about our personal lives as well, as when
They'd never let me do that, They have all the power/money/resources, so
I don't stand a chance, They make the rules, They say I have to (or can't)…"
Is the Great Ubiquitous They a real person, group, corporation,
government, secret society, cabal or network of conspirators out there
in the world whose insti-tutionalized unconcern for the needs of individual
human beings makes resisting Their large-scale machinations impossible
or pointless? Is the GUT working invisibly toward the achievement
of some agenda about which we have not been consulted, and with which we
would probably disagree, if given a voice in the matter? On the personal
scale, are there real people and forces in our environment working behind
the scenes to thwart our idealism, shoot down our brightest ideas for improving
the world, and/or to erect barriers against our best efforts to succeed
and be happy in life?
Let's begin this exploration by answering yes, because
it is only by confirming the possibility that real forces “out there” might
actually be working to limit our freedom, creativity, success and satisfaction
in life – even if, in our personal circumstances, no such forces actually
exist – that we can hope to look the Great Ubiquitous They in the eye,
and begin to question the root assumptions feeding the power of this globally-pervasive
and universally pernicious memeplex.
Whenever we use the term They, with a capital “T” (or
similar terms that serve the same function, like The Powers That Be, The
Government, Big Business, Experts, "People Say…” etc.), we grant whatever
pronouncement we then attach to that source a kind of omnipresent, god-like
authority the people with whom we are conversing, which could be ourselves
if we are simply thinking our situation through, are automatically discouraged
from challenging. For example, if I complain that, “Bob Smith at
the local DMV office…” says I have to jump through whatever unpleasant
or personally invasive fiery hoop of governmental regulation in order to
renew my drivers license, chances are the friend to whom I am complaining
will respond with some version of, “I’d call Bob Smith’s supervisor…,”or
a recommendation to contact my legislator, or to look up the law for myself
on the Internet to see if Bob is imposing real legal restrictions or just
being a petty bureaucrat and creating unnecessary hassle. But if
I say, “Ugh! Now the Government is making me (or worse, us all)…,”
take exactly the same actions, my friend’s options are in most cases reduced
to a choice between sympathetically shrugging his shoulders and nodding
his head in grim identification. Since what is most genuinely ubiquitous
about the Great Ubiquitous They is our common (and wholly memetic) belief
that, A) a nameless, faceless GUT exists “out there”, and B) resisting
its dictates is futile, my friend will almost certainly understand, on
an unspoken level, that when I invoke (literally, to call upon a higher
power) the authority of They when framing my complaint, I am not really
asking him for ideas on how I might effectively respond to my plight, but
rather for some kind of simple, human display of emotional solidarity in
recognition of our common helpless state.
Why would I want that? No one is actually helpless
against Bob Smith, or powerless before the directives of any specific policy,
law or legislator. In the corporate sphere, everybody has a supervisor
to whom lower-level decisions can be appealed. Written policies are
written by people, and can be (and frequently are) successfully challenged
and amended. In countries governed by democracies, we can always
appeal, complain, cajole, petition, and protest laws or lawmakers we do
not feel serve us well. If specific political scoundrels routinely
abuse the formal authority of elected office, we can work to unseat them.
If our governments of any form – democracies, dictatorships, socialist
states, etc. – become so filled with scoundrels that they become ultimately
compromised and unresponsive, we can mount a revolution. Such events
are everyday occurrences all over the world.
No real source of externally-imposed limitation is ever
actually ubiquitous in the sense implied by belief in the GUT. Rather,
such coercive forces invariably emanate from the desks, pens, mouths, executive
orders, etc. of specific individual people, legislative bodies, boards
of directors, corporate flunkies, middle managers or CEOs. This is
as true of any potential “corporate cabal,” “secret society” or “network
of global conspirators” that might really exist in the world as it is of
our local Department of Motor Vehicles, telephone company or neighborhood
elementary school. To the extent than anyone is actually out to get
us in this world, their unwelcome intrusions into our lives are never genuinely
faceless acts of power. Individual people with faces and names and
lives and loves and needs and desires and fears much like our own take
specific actions against or make demands of us, toward which we are called
to respond. People pursuing exceptionally noxious agendas often seek
to hide behind the monolithic facades of obscure governmental depart-ments,
multinational corporations, think tanks, global trade or banking organizations,
etc., but such GUT "Trojan Horses," are universally filled with ordinary,
flesh and blood human beings who make choices and take actions for which
we are free, at any time, to hold them personally accountable, if we can
find the courage to ferret them out and call them to task. Even where
there is a real threat of retaliation for resisting such intrusions, as
when opposing the actions of an oppressive regime puts us at risk of arrest
and imprisonment, what we feel compelled to resist are always specific
actions, policies or requirements set in motion by identifiable individuals
or groups. We may choose not to resist, for fear of incurring the
threatened reprisal, but we are at least making a conscious choice, and
not merely surrendering to the irresistible mandates of some invisible
and ubiquitous force of nature.
When we invoke the GUT, we undermine all of that.
The moment we speak or even think the word They or its equivalent in explaining
our predicaments to ourselves or each other, we have washed away the faces
and general-ized the source of our unease in such a way as to create the
appearance of personal powerlessness. By failing or refusing to identify
and hold accountable the specific individuals or groups responsible for
the personal and global challenges we face, we at once surrender our ability
to understand the actual scope of the issues before us – which nearly always,
once generalized, appear vastly larger, more powerful and futile to resist
than, in their specifics, any situation could ever actually be – and relinquish
all responsibility for taking action on our own behalf, or for the benefit
of others. If They can’t lose, and consequently we can’t win, why
even try?
This is a critical distinction: Beyond the scope of genuine
and easily recognized forces of nature (disease, weather, earthquakes,
random accidents, etc.), no challenge to the health, happiness, freedom
or integrity of any human being, on the smallest or largest scale, anywhere
on Earth, is ever the result of actions taken by faceless, ubiquitous godlike
entities or forces, such as are implied by our common belief in the Great
Ubiquitous They. Individual human beings, sometimes working in groups
and/or exercising the formal authority granted by governmental, corporate,
religious, social or other positions of power, carry out specific actions
and pursue concrete agendas we can identify, understand and respond to
by weighing the options available to us, making appropriate choices, and,
if we decide it is in our best interest to do so, initiating counter-measures
of our own. When we invoke the GUT, we agree, instead, to go along
with the pretense. We willingly trade power for paralysis.
Specific sources of attack become unidentif-iable, motives and connections
blur into meaninglessness, and true choice disappears as we are left, at
the very best, to feebly select between equally-repugnant forced pseudo-options
(by way of example, Presidential elections in the American two-party political
system come immediately to mind – when was the last time most Americans
really wanted to be led by either one of the officially-proffered candidates,
as opposed to merely casting their vote for the one who appeared to represent
the “lesser of two evils?”).
What we accomplish when we invoke the GUT is far less
the relinquishment of our personal power to choose than it is our exercise
of that power to willfully choose personal powerlessness. When faced,
on both the personal and the planetary scales, with frustrations, difficulties
and challenges we know must logically result in one way or another from
the bad behavior of specific other human beings – even if they are distant
or “hidden” individuals, like legislators, corporate executives, academics
locked away in their ivory towers, spies or criminals, etc. – why do we
so frequently, and with so little apparent regard for our own best interests,
leap to reframe our circumstances in terms that limit or altogether disable
our ability to effectively respond?
Sigmund Freud insightfully observed that human beings
are creatures which, beyond all the excuses and rationalizations we routinely
throw up to camouflage our true motives, even from ourselves, make most
of our decisions based on a simple principle of pursuing pleasure while
seeking to avoid pain. Our feelings of powerlessness before the irresistible
influence of the Great Ubiquitous They can be a source of tremendous pain
for a lot of people, especially for those Stage Two seekers who have awakened
sufficiently to understand that the collective dream is not going well,
and who express a sincere desire to transform themselves and their world.
Having developed at least a partial awareness of the root issues underlying
their personal and our shared planetary discord, and being fully capable
of taking the next step of identifying specific culprits, including their
own counterproductive habits, and taking focused actions aimed at initiating
positive change, they deliberately choose overwhelm and suffering instead,
claiming world-weary powerlessness before the movement of the GUT’s almighty
god-like hand, and absolving themselves of all responsibility for the dream’s
ultimate outcome. “I’m just one person,” they sigh. But if
Freud was right, no one would do that. No one would surrender the
hope of future pleasure, freedom and personal power to be gained by taking
charge, throwing off oppression, and creating a world better tailored to
our liking in exchange for the certainty of present-moment frustration
and pain, and the imposition of potentially long-term, often crushing limitations
to our pursuit of future happiness.
Yet, that's exactly what we do, time and time again.
Why? Could it be that the pain generated when we choose powerlessness
is made acceptable by the veiled presence of some compensating, and disproportionately
greater pleasure? What could possibly be so appealing?
Three contenders come immediately to mind:
The pleasure of sleep. Few would deny that physical sleep in our beds at night is a deeply pleasurable experience. After a long day fulfilling life's sometimes grueling demands, our bodies and minds grow weary, and we begin to crave the comfort of our blankets and pillows, our soft, enveloping mattresses. We long to sink like stones into the deep and comforting, responsibility-free waters of our dreams. Surrendering to the GUT frees us equally, in waking life, from responsibility for playing any active role in shaping the events that impact our, and everybody else's, lives. If, like the mysterious unconscious forces that script our nighttime dreams, They control the events of waking reality, we are under no pressure in the face of personal or global events to do anything more than “go with the flow…” With the GUT in charge, we remain at all times free to sleep peace-fully and enjoy the dream.
The pleasure of guilt-free complicity. We often enjoy pointing out what's wrong with the world, but balk to find our pointing fingers waggling before our own faces in the mirror. The threat of global warming scares and angers us – but not so much that we'll stop driving our own gasoline-powered vehicles, heating our homes in the winter, or relying on the pre-fabricated products of petroleum-driven industry in order to slow its pace. We decry the impact on the world's poor of aggressive global "Americanization" – but not enough to jeopardize our good jobs with American companies, our personal fortunes invested in American stocks, or the success of our privately owned American businesses or foreign corpor-ations that do business with American companies in order to effect change. We teach our children the importance of racial and social diversity, but cultivate friendships only with people who look, think, and act like ourselves. But if They control energy policy and won’t let us get off oil, and They are plowing ahead with “Americanized” corporate globalism no matter what anybody says or does about it, and They choose not to live around here, so we really have no choice about who we socialize with, etc., then there’s really nothing we can do about any of it, anyway, so there’s no point being too extreme… Invoking the GUT frees us to remain personally invested in the very things we know to be sources of suffering in our personal and collective lives. What the GUT sets in motion can’t be challenged or changed, so why try? And who can blame us for taking advantage of opportunities to benefit from conditions that can’t be changed? In a self-deceptive end-run around the whole concept of personal accountability, we shift responsibility for the “way things are” to the Great Ubiquitous They, simultaneously protecting the status quo, in which we are heavily invested, and eschewing all liability for, and appropriate guilt over, our personal complicity in the world’s suffering – because, after all, we are “… just one person” with no power to change anything, any-way…
The pleasure of extended childhood. When we were young, our parents played a ubiquitous role in our lives that is extraordinarily reminiscent of our adult relationship with the GUT. They set the rules by which we were required to live. They made most of our choices, determining where we could or could not ride our bicycles, approving or vetoing our friendships, enrolling us in Boy or Girl Scouts, signing us up for piano lessons, meting out and taking away allowance money based on our compliance with their commands, etc. Psycholog-ists define maturity as development of the capacity to make our own choices and direct our own lives – but a lot of people never become comfortable wielding that level of responsibility. Far beyond the chronological age at which parental de-pendence is appropriate, many strive to maintain the “golden cocoon” of childhood innocence, in which they remained perpetually cared for and existentially blameless in exchange for wielding little or no power, by attributing their adult travails to the workings of “ubiquitous outside forces,” and relying on obvious parental projections to impose black and white rules for traversing adulthood’s confusing twists and turns – domineering spouses, imagined Mother or Father deities that, in temperament, strikingly resemble idealized flesh and blood human parents, government programs that regulate behavior and pay benefits to those who meet specified guidelines, cult leaders willing to bear responsibility for every aspect of a follower’s life in exchange for blind obedience, etc. Surrender to the GUT allows many people to remain responsibility-and-authority-free children for the whole of their lives – and if you enjoyed your childhood and/or find adult responsibility burdensome, that can be a very appealing bargain.
One theme all of the bullet points above have in common
is the avoidance of personal responsibility, and encouraging such avoidance
does appear to be a primary function of our belief in the Great Ubiquitous
They. Belief in the GUT also allows us to maintain peaceful psychic
slumber in the face of endless daily reminders that things are not as they
seem, and that more is possible for us as individuals and as a species
than our present under-standing of reality even begins to hint at.
To the extent that challenges and difficulties can function as "alarms"
awakening us to the dream-like quality of our meme-possessed waking lives,
reflexive surrender to the GUT enables us to swat such disturbances away
as we would a screaming clock in the darkness. Invocation of the
GUT is a prime memetic "banishing spell" by which Stage One peaceful sleepers
are empowered to indefinitely ward off the fitful throes of Stage Two awakening.
Is that your goal? Who's in charge here?
_________________________________
KEY QUESTION EXERCISE #5
Accountability Mapping
There’s a story about a man who goes back-stage at a circus,
where he sees an 8,000 pound elephant secured to a post using a single
inch-thick piece of rope looped around the animal’s ankle. “Are you
out of your mind?” he chides the elephant trainer. “That elephant
could snap that rope with one kick!” The elephant trainer nods his
head. “She doesn’t know that, though,” he replies. “When she
was a baby, that rope was strong enough to hold her, and she got used to
it. Now, when she feels it tugging on her ankle, she doesn’t even
try to escape!”
Discovering and snapping all of the “ropes” of limitation
with which we have allowed ourselves to become bound can be a life-long
undertaking, so don’t set a time limit on this exercise. Work instead
toward establishing a permanent habit of acknowledging feelings of powerlessness
– instantly, in the moment such frustrations arise – as signs of mystification
by belief in some version of the Great Ubiquitous They. Remember
that the GUT is a predatory memeplex capable of disguising itself behind
a wide variety of facades. But however dissimilar and apparently-unique
our invoked Theys may seem on the surface, manifestations of the GUT can
be universally identified by their deep, signature effect on our minds
and behavior – like the elephant in the story above, our first, well-trained
response to the tug of apparent limitation is surrender. Of course
we are help-less. There’s nothing we can do… And so we fail
to try. We accept predation and containment by chords our feeblest
kick could easily dislodge.
From now on, the moment feelings of powerlessness, limitation
or overwhelm assault you, do the following:
Walk away. Change your scenery. Remove yourself physically from the environment in which your sense of powerlessness arose, including the company of all people involved in the situation. Reject out of hand any pressure, applied by others or by yourself, to make snap decisions. Where you go is irrelevant, so long as it is in no way connected to the issue at hand, and no one but you that is in any way related to the situation or its outcome is present.
Draw an Accountability Map. In your notebook, work out, as specifically as possible, the exact details of the situation before you. What actions have been taken? What individuals, by name, took those actions? Who may have asked or ordered them to act (which is, itself, a secondary action you want to record and assign a name to)? Whenever a They crops up, in any form, break it down. Ask Who? What? When? Where? How? until you have drawn a thorough “map” of the situation before you that is 100% They-free. If research is required, such as finding the names of specific legislators or corporate executives, for example, do it now. Very often, honest questioning will reveal at even the very first or second levels of accountability mapping that the chief actor behind our “powerless-against-the-GUT” dramas is us – sometimes as a consequence of our own actions, other times as a result of inaction when action was called for, etc. This is important self-knowledge. When accountability mapping reveals your own complicity in your dilemma, write it down. Name the action or inaction you contributed to the situation, and write your name next to it. Keep working and reworking your accountability map until all mystification has been dispelled, and the chain of choice-action-choice that brought your present situation into being is clearly visible.
Brainstorm. By now you should have one, two, three or more unambiguous actions that were taken by specific people mapped out before you. Brainstorm each in turn, identifying as many potential counter-actions as you can think of in ten minutes. Use a clock or timer to make sure that when your ten minutes are over, you stop. As with all brainstorming, at this stage in the process, all ideas are good ideas – don’t judge or censor your possibilities in any way. The sky’s the limit. What might you do if there were no limitations whatsoever on your freedom, strength, courage, resources, etc.? Think as fast and freely as you can, and write everything down. When you have finished brainstorming the first action, allot the second its own 10 minutes, and so on until all actions have been addressed.
Assess. Bring your critical faculties to bear on the possible counter-actions you have brainstormed. You are already way beyond They or any sense of powerlessness – did you notice? Now you can honestly assess the real-world value of each possible action in turn, in preparation for choosing your most appropriate response to a situation over which you have already taken charge, and upon which you now impose your own frames of reference and relevance, rather than having the limits of possibility/impossibility dictated to you. Along your way to this point, much will already have become crystal clear. Where you are personally liable and what you can do to right your wrongs and ensure that the future will not bring a repetition of the past, should be abundantly clear. Where counter-actions on your part stand to further complicate the situation, rather than alleviating it, should now be equally apparent. Where counter-action is necessary or at least appears likely to be beneficial, you have a neat list of specific measures you can act upon, as opposed to the vague cloud of fear, ambiguity and victimization with which you began. For each mapped action you decide it is in your best interest to respond to, select at least two brainstormed potential counter-actions for serious consideration, and rework them into clear action statements, beginning with a forceful, “I will…,” followed by the action. Don’t use any “soft” words like “if,” “maybe” or “might.” Think of your action statements as magical incantations, counter-spells to the GUT’s sleep-inducing curse. Your magic must be stronger, so don’t water it down!
Choose to choose. With your written action state-ments before you, take a moment to consciously acknowledge that, whatever response to your dilemma you now choose to act upon, even if your choice is to take no action, you are, in fact, making a choice. Your deeply considered, carefully-planned response is an act of personal will that no one on your accountability map, no person or cir-cumstance on Earth, and no “ubiquitous force” anywhere in the universe ever had the power to wrest from you. Many events occur in the course of a lifetime over which we have little or no control – but our response to those events is always ours to choose. In spite of memetic assertions to the contrary, our power to choose is granted by no institution or entity outside ourselves. Our authority to consciously craft our willful response to life events – as well as our complete personal responsibility for every consequence of our response – is intrinsic to human consciousness, and is every bit as present in a prisoner of war camp as it is in our comfortable homes, as available at our peaks of emotional upheaval as it is at our moments of greatest relaxed mental clarity, and as necessary to exercise in the face our weakest cravings for outside direction and comfort as it is when unchallenging circumstances make bold action easy and relatively risk-free. By consciously choosing to choose, by willfully centering ourselves in awareness of our ultimate freedom to reject memetic scripts and act outside the illusory bonds of limitation and lack memes impose on our dreaming minds, we fundamentally reorient ourselves – not only in relation to the personal dilemma that once left us feeling powerless, but to dream-reality in general. Having successfully utilized our accountability map, brainstorming and assessment skills to analyze and take charge of our external situation, we now shift our internal focus from a position of victimization, of being helplessly acted upon, to one of willful actor within the dream. We may still be asleep, but now we are dreaming lucidly. Awake within the dream, what happens next can never be wholly determined by any power outside ourselves. By choosing to choose, we willingly don our role as conscious creators of reality, and accept all the personal responsibility and power that role prescribes.
Choose. Select the action statement or statements you will carry out in response to your dilemma.
Act. Take the action. Accept responsibility for the consequences of your choice, both expected and unintended. As new dilemmas arise, either in response to your actions or as new, unconnected events, don’t waste time feeling powerless or overwhelmed. Immediately walk away, and begin working your way through the process again.
If this method of consciously analyzing and taking control
of your life, event by event, seems unduly complex or difficult, realize
that the technique you are currently using to navigate life – and you are
using a technique, whether you’re aware of it or not, very likely the first
method you ever learned or worked out for yourself as a child, however
ineffective – is almost certainly considerably more complex than the accountability
mapping exercise outlined above. You’re just used to it. You’ve
been following your present problem-solving process for a long time.
You’re good at it. It no longer appears to take any effort at all.
But if your reflexive response to life events leads even occasionally to
overwhelm, surrender to the GUT, and a sense of personal powerlessness,
you can retrain your mind. With practice, accountability mapping,
brain-storming, choosing to choose, etc. can become as internalized, reflexive
and comfortable as the habitual, and generally far-less-effective stance
toward life you devised or learned in childhood. The resulting positive
changes in your experience of yourself and your world will astound you.
In Key Question Community groups, partner members into
sub-groups of two to four people who agree to help each other work through
the accountability mapping process on a daily basis, until it becomes habit
for all concerned. Sub-groups can provide designated safe havens
for “walking away,” remind each other to challenge unproductive mental
habits, critique the honesty of specific accountability maps (who is being
intentionally or unconsciously left off the map? Has the member honestly
assessed his or her own participation in the problem?), share ideas for
brainstorming, help assess the likely consequences of proposed actions,
etc.
When local, national or global-scale events call for
empowered mass response, the larger Key Question Community group can perform
the accountability mapping exercise together, and cooperate to select and
carry out appropriate group actions. Slightly modified, the accountability
mapping exercise is also a great vehicle for addressing issues that arise
between members or factions within large Key Question Community groups.
In these circumstances, do not walk away from one another; instead, agree
to complete the other stages of the exercise together, with the mutual
goal of taking positive action to resolve difficulties in a way that benefits
everyone, and which serves the larger goal of individual and group awakening.