Turn It Off

About two years ago, like a lot of people, I became obsessed with politics and culture war, feminists and sjw-ism, the election, men’s rights issues, and all that.

I discovered Infowars, Breitbart, Drudge, Rebel Media, and all the various pundits like Lauren Southern, Paul Joseph Watson, RooshV and the manosphere, Milo Yiannopoulos, Louder with Crowder…and on, and on, and on. (All kkk nazis white supremacist extreme right wing Hitlers.)

These shows were just so entertaining! Dramatic! Insightful!

It seemed the more pundits I discovered, the more there were. These guys had balls to share these bitter-sweet truths. Onto the politcal teat, I was hooked. 

Every morning upon first light, I’d flip open my laptop to watch politics. My entire social media world was a finely tuned humor and truth, outrage and terror dispenser unit.

Blue haired feminists showing their boobs to stop rape, anarchists wearing balaclavas beating Trump fans to stop fascism, regular people having their lives destroyed for saying that gender is not a social construct.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? With the world? I thought. And I just couldn’t stop watching. Why are these people so angry? Oppressed? Most of them live in Canada, Sweden, England, the US…the most liberal, tolerant, wealthy, safe and equal societies in the world. But they’re completely miserable. brainwashed!

Or am I?

It never ends. The drama. The drama makes me angry…righteous even, in my intellectual superiority. Because I know the truth! But when I closed the laptop, outside of a few heated conversations with my liberal friends, the politics did not affect my life…at all.

I just read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. In this 1500 page tome, nearly the entire world is swept into war, and the people within, with their own desires; for love, power and influence, fame, glory, peace, ride the wave without the slightest ability to change the outcome—that is, outside of their own present experience.

This is the way of the world: Ideas are born, they spread, form into movements, actions, and eventually end. Individual will during a war, is futile. But Tolstoy doesn’t lament over this truth anymore than a monk lamets a forest fire, or an earthquake. Instead Tolstoy focuses on the experience of the individual. The individual who is part of the whole. Connected to everything, yet in control of nothing.

Men in particular (I know this from vast coaching experience) have such an ingrained desire for control. They want the universe to work according to linear rules. They want to control their emotions, their thoughts, and outside of themselves, their culture…and even the laws of nature (science.)

Anyone with a cellphone can access limitless information; but this can be more of a devastation than a blessing for the curious, restless, information addicted mind. I’ve always been an information addict.

Info addiction can lead to depression, paranoia, anger and despair. Maybe even hate. All of which I’ve experienced during my trip down the political rabbit hole. The truth…it’s not about red or blue pills, conservative or liberal, meninist of feminist, communist or capitalist. It’s about looking out your window and asking: “How is my community doing? How are my friends and family doing? How am I doing?” It’s just bloody impossible to win all the battles in the world, and trying to learn about all of the injustices can drive a guy mad.

For those of you nodding your head in agreement, I recommend this: unplug for a few weeks. No politics, no Youtube, no newspapers, no blogs, no pundits.

Release yourself from the need to understand everything. Let go of your need to control everything.

Sometimes I feel like that guy from the Matrix who sells out his friends so that the agents will put him back in with a blue pill program. He would rather be ignorant and happy than living in a world at war with machines. I couldn’t kill my friends in the name of happiness, but for now I’d rather not know about what American politicians are eating for lunch, or that North Korea is threatening to blow us all up. (They won’t). 

This one idea I’ve adapted from Alan Watts has helped me immensely: I am everything, and everything is me. I am the tree, the feminist, the politician, the warlord, the chocolate bar, the video game. Not a soul, trapped in a meat sack, separate from everything else. I am everything, and everything is me. I’m here to experience life, good and bad, learn from it and move on.

The whole experience, this life, is an amusement park, a cosmic comedy, and everything is exactly as it should be.

Should a great earthquake, war, disease, or random calamity decimate my society…when that happens, I’ll deal with it. But forever staring into a machine, arguing with other egos about who’s right or wrong, what’s truth or fiction….is futile and pointless.

The day warlords enter my village, rape my women, steal my pigs…then I’ll go to war. But in an age of Internet propaganda, lies and deceit…it’s just impossible to know the truth. It’s all a great play, a story we write, but aren’t paid for. 

Remember, even in The Matrix, Neo still ends up a puppet.

There is no redpill, only The Matrix.

So for now, I’m on a media diet.

I’m turning it off.

For now.

I’m already more at peace, and happier for it.