The Basics of Being Alive Now

There's no way around it - being alive now requires a lot of thought.

In this era, blocking out the rest of the world and living just to keep ourselves happy is much more difficult. There's so much more impacting our daily survival, evermore information lodging itself in our brains and socially, given how arrogant humankind can be in regard to how much some people like to be seen to know what they're talking about, many of us think we should project that we're really on top of things; or at least feel the pressure to do so.

But refreshingly, if you're paying attention to the right places we're now seeing the emergence all over the world of a newer mentality where people are happier to represent a much more 'I don't know' attitude towards life, because ultimately, what do we really know? We're just doing the best we can to learn about the world with the information we have, which is a refreshing process when we're left to do it in freedom. "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." - Albert Einstein

So we don't know what will actually happen in regard to the future or how good it will be but we can try out good ideas and react to the results. What is a good idea? The answer to that varies between people but clearly, looking at history we can see that some ideas don't go away, they grow and become reality. The rational consensus today is not to reintroduce throwing Christians to the lions or to reinstate the Atlantic Slave Trade. Bad ideas die.

But in the midst of us not knowing anything, in an incomprehensibly mysterious existence, we obviously still have to make decisions. The decisions we make are extracted from selfish to universal desires and vary from personality to personality. What's important isn't that we stop being ourselves in relation to what we like and enjoy but that we choose wisely and decide how much we're going to include in our decisions. How big do you want to think and how big do you have to think? That's two separate questions that force us to acknowledge the importance of working in harmony with our environment - our global environment - or suffer the consequences. Our current levels of uncertainty about environmental issues, that range all the way up to the survival of the human race, is demanding of us that we have to summon up an extra level of energy to think about the big picture. Ignoring the big picture is denying the best for you or your children. Thinking about the big picture has been swept under the rug for too long and now is the time that people are mobilizing to make the elephant-in-the-room issues in the world THE mainstream global conversation, like it always should have been.

We have to lead ourselves. The importance of self-leading is the key to solving our real problems before those problems potentially destroy our lives and happiness. And if that self-leading leads any of us to understand the need to globally co-operate simply to provide ourselves with a civilized distribution of the resources we need to live and if it's not hard to imagine the potential to liberate our wants and have them granted on a scale we've never seen before, the mind starts to tingle at possibility of really wanting to be here and to be alive and reclaiming and maximizing everything that's good about life. Downbeat statements about the state of society being 'just the way that it is' don't wash any more, we're becoming too intelligent for our problems.

We all know something's wrong and can visualize a more co-operative society but too many people think we don't have the ability to arrange it. We do. If we wait around for other people to make things better we'll multiply the chances of nothing happening but if we simply stand up, say what we want (we're allowed to openly say what we want out of life) and join other people then there's where the good news is; when self-leaders get together with other self-leaders for a common cause incredible things happen, at a speed that's impossible to quantify. If you want to make the world a safe and sustainable place then how much easier it is if millions of people are working with you on the same job?

Here in the UK we're being sold the idea of a Big Society. OK, let's really create one. At some point it's obvious that we're going to leave restrictive ways of living in the past, the same way we've continually done throughout history but at a faster and more satisfying pace. Whatever our collective problems are now is definitely a very interesting time to be alive and we have to have a say in the outcome of our future if we want to be... happy. If that seems blocked by the idea of various shadowy and powerful control groups, governmental or otherwise, remember that any of those attempts are taking place in the framework of an old, outdated mindset that doesn't bear enough relation to reality and isn't sustainable. I've taken a lot of understanding from listening to John Perkins talk about his experience as a former economic hit-man for the US government and especially the part where in his experience of dealing firsthand with people in the corporatocracy that control our world he says he's never met an evil CEO. His assessment is that they don't generally like maximizing profit at the cost of human well-being but they do it because they've been taught that's what you're supposed to do and that they're very aware of how fragile their network is. Education is a lifelong process and new thinking supersedes old thinking. We can take the cue from these thoughts to understand there truly is no us and them, it's too much of an arbitrary concept to make sense. The solution we're looking for will be whichever one benefits everyone's quality of life from the poorest to the richest.

So if you like what you see in this movement's ideas, which I support because it's the first thing I've found that offers universal benefits without invading any of anyone's personal beliefs, then join your local chapter or if there isn't one in your area already, start one. Technically it only takes one person, preferably more; get at least a Facebook page or a website if you can, get promotional material out in your area to capture the interest and the curiosity of the people living there and meet up with people to discuss ways of just presenting this information to people. There's no need to convince anyone of anything, if the concept of resource-based economics holds weight then we'll be continuously more attracted towards it; the way these concepts have virally rocketed around the world in just a few years show how contagious these ideas area. In just two years over 1100 chapters have set themselves up all across the world to spread this message, even reaching as far as Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia; Palestinians are going to Zeitgeist Israel's meetings; so imagine what we can do with every new year that presents itself. The key is to keep each other focused on what truly matters, to use our spare time to learn what we need and to help each other fill in the gaps in each other's knowledge. We're in an age where information is everywhere. People involved with Zeitgeist Cardiff will tell you how much setting up a chapter has improved our city, in terms of activism and socializing. It's interesting, it adds a higher quality of interaction to the area and I can say everything I've done for it, for no money, has been the most rewarding and satisfying activity out of anything I do. To do things with the intention of benefiting everyone makes you feel like you're living at your highest potential; you feel mature.

I never fail to be touched by the simple desires and actions of people sincerely wanting the world to be a better place. It's such a basic human yearning that never goes away, so it's time to face it head on and really make it happen.

So if The Zeitgeist Movement is a good idea and best of all it wants to disband itself as it becomes irrelevant as the healthy values are embedded in our culture, if it's logically the best idea in all of our history and you're alive to be a part of it then just remember that good ideas are bulletproof and even though we've heard it countless times - but because the feeling never goes away - then let's move together and organize to make the world much better than anything we've ever known.