One of the greatest mental hurdles that I find in withdrawing consent is doing so in isolation. A clip from the motion picture ‘The Matrix’ comes to mind, where the protagonist, Neo, is offered a Red Pill and a Blue Pill by Morpheus, the mentor and oracle. Should he choose the Red Pill, his eyes will be opened and he can never go back to living complacently in ignorance again. And oftentimes that is what this feels like, being Red Pilled. The Red Pill has nothing to do with American politics but is merely a metaphor for an awakening. But the frustration in all of this is that affecting change alone can be daunting or seemingly impossible. Seeing injustice, you are tasked with helping others to choose for themselves to awaken and thus take steps to affect change. In isolation, the power to affect change feels blunted and moot. Voltaire so eloquently put, inspiring this post “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” And that is one of the truest statements in my own personal journey.
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” – Voltaire
I am a digital marketer by trade. I help businesses to connect with customers in a digital world. Unfortunately, that digital world is primarily run by partisan social engineers who have very powerful and popular tools that they’ve built, that allow them to control the public square of information. The 2020 United States Presidential Election seems a culmination of their work to weaponize their tools, to fully control allowable thought. Social Media platforms were able to completely shut out any dissent to their chosen candidate, even censoring and suppressing the account of the President of the United States with impunity. In discourse, we refer to this as controlling the Overton Window or publicly allowable thought. This becomes a conversation of revering our chains when we consider that all of these systems are voluntary and not compulsory. The populace chooses to continue to utilize these systems, despite the oppressive nature of them. They offer a bit of connectivity and convenience, and the revenue dollars that a user’s eyeballs generate is harnessed to lobby against the user’s own self-interest. And because there exist many free alternatives to these platforms, the situation becomes a monopoly of choice and not one of compulsion.
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Rudyard Kipling
If you are feeling isolated in thought and simultaneously surrounded by those revering their bondage, know that you’re not alone or unique. Famous author Rudyard Kipling once wrote “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” So we can see that this struggle is neither novel nor unique. If you’re seemingly surrounded by a public case of Stockholm Syndrome and actively looking for alternative corners in the public square, consider one of the following social platforms to meet like-minded individuals without trading your soul:
* The presence of these platforms is neither an endorsement or a guarantee of the selected platforms. They are presented here merely as a starting point for exploring new corners of the public square.
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