Endings
In search of Happy Endings
By Anthony Gongora
How do we find the end? More specifically the end of systemic dysfunctions? Dysfunctions, which manifest in every form of oppression. When we look at racism, poverty, gender inequality, LGBTQ discrimination, corporate greed, political corruption, cradle to prison pipeline, global warming, white supremacy, hunger, the decimation of the rain forest, addiction, false information, testing regimens in early education, which only measures the excellence of people who are good test-takers, or the huge debt incurred pursuing higher education, religious dogma, and war we can measure oppression.
Each of the above systemic forms of oppression was started by men which means that they can all be ended. But how? How do we end societal structures that no longer serve humanity in terms of becoming our best possible example of what human life can be? How do we find and create endings?
Looking at life as an example for endings there is a clear cycle of - birth to death. Every single living entity on this earth, irrelevant of the span-of-time, lives then dies. And so too, everything that humans make, we can unmake. Nothing is permanent. Nothing.
If something appears as fixed and unalterable, question it, and remember that a human-made the illusion of its permanence, which thankfully can be undone.
A symptom of systemic dysfunction is choosing consciously or unconsciously to forget. For me, forgetting comes from sheer exhaustion. I’m guessing that this could be true for others too. Being active and present to fight the good fight requires a lot of energy, which after working 60 - 80 hours a week is hard to come by. By the way, nobody that I know works the mythical 40 hours a week.
American culture has reduced the human experience to work, eat, sleep, and consume. We are being worked to death physically and psychologically. This is not accidental. Being forced to stay in a nearly constant state of mental and physical fatigue builds a society that is numb. A passive society makes it possible for the people in power to keep power. The gatekeepers - the ultra-rich, create and cultivate a culture that demands that people work constantly. The few people at the top live for life. While everybody else works for life.
I'd like to share my life as a worker as an example. As an Artist/Educator and someone who was raised in poverty and within the welfare system, I have always lived in what I have labeled as “survival mode,” which means living from paycheck to paycheck with nothing extra. No savings and no emergency funds or family monies or inheritance. I have, from the age of 10 years old, always had multiple jobs at once. As a child, I sorted returned soda bottles at the convenience store and I also worked on an Ice cream truck. I was paid with products, not money. When I shared my candy rewards with my mom, she said, “next time get milk or bread”. I did.
As an adult with a terminal degree, and as a full-time professor, to make ends meet, I had to supplement my income teaching adjunct at another university. I worked constantly. Though I have done everything prescribed by our society to get ahead, and I have done it well, I still have not achieved financial security. At 54, I still live hand to mouth in survival mode. Something is broken and it is not me.
The myth that if you work really hard you will get ahead is not true. The myth is kept alive because if the workers don’t go to work the ultra-rich can’t stay rich. Myths that cause dysfunction need to end.
Do you ever wonder why the accumulation of wealth is the dominant measure of “success” and why are we all encourage to pursue that singular end?
My thinking goes like this, if we make money, a lot or a little, we tend to spend what we have to buy the newest object, which we believe will make our lives better. To reinforce this nearly every surface that we glance at is selling us something. Through savvy marketing - pretty pictures, alluring words, and now algorithms that convince us that we have to have the object of our affection, we spend our money. We spend our hard-earned cash to get the things that we don’t necessarily need.
Why?
Because we have been manipulated.
In the end, we are left cash-poor all the while making the rich richer - it is that simple. In our minds, the thought of making more and more money is a constant tick.
Do you ever wonder who placed that tick in your mind?
The kooky part is that we make the money and then we give it right back. We temporarily feel successful and fulfilled because we own the object. However, now that our cash is gone we have to do more work to get more money to buy things that we don’t necessarily need. Truth be told at the end of the day, having been overworked, and underpaid most are too exhausted to deeply question anything. And if we find ourselves questioning our present state of being we quickly defend our status, answering ourselves back with, “I’m doing fine, I have a roof over my head and food on my table.”
FYI, African slaves had the same provided by their enslavers. I’m just saying.
Advertisers are paid a lot of money to get us to spend our cash and their work works.
Is that power?
What is power?
Artist, Lauren Hill killed it when she penned the lyrics “If you can get the money you can get the power.” Truth. But, who has the power, truthfully, our politicians and government leader? No. It is the ultra-rich who uses extreme wealth to influence and manipulate politicians to move and act in ways that favor their potential to accumulation more wealth. Excessive wealth is Power. Ultra Rich’s point of access to power is in the wallets and purses of our politicians and government leaders. Why else do you think the super-rich give huge sums of money to specific politicians as they run for office.
Believe me, it’s not out of the generosity of their hearts. It is to be able to pull the strings of their puppets and to wield their power. Otherwise, they’d give equally to each party.
This practice of giving is called being a donor, which seems to make it okay.
It is not.
Whenever an ultra-rich person gives a donation to a politician in order to tip the scales in their favor, specifically to accumulate more wealth, corruption is happening.
Why does and should this matter to every American?
Because, if the ultra-rich are manipulating our elected officials to represent their causes then nobody is there to represent the rest of us. I’d like this to end. I’d like the corruption of our politicians to end. I want my elected officials to represent all Americans not just the Ultra-Rich.
Do you ever wonder why the collective cultural and possible global mantra, for all, starting from childhood is, “get a job?” Remember, as a child, being asked over and over again, “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
Are you making the connections?
If not, here is how it goes. From day one we are being programmed to be workers.
Look at the trajectory of life that we all prescribe to, first-day care, then preschool, elementary school, high school, then pay a lot of money to learn a trade or go to college - start your adult life in major debt. Get a job. Make money. Spend everything to fulfill your dreams (does this ever happen?). Teach your children to do the same. Die. The End.
All of the above my friends is systemic cooperate greed realized through our bodies, our labor, our spending/consuming. We are the fuel that keeps corporate greed running. Whether we intend to be or not we are complicit. What makes us complicit is that we do not collectively make it end.
Cooperate greed is a byproduct of Capitalism, which we know is the pursuit of constant growth, which we know is an impossible reality to continue to strive towards.
And why would we want to?
What “growth” means - really means is the accumulation of more wealth for the already ultra-rich.
You can not have a constant growth of anything forever especially when all of life is contained on one planet and that planet is not limitless in its resources. There is x amount of atmosphere, x amount of landmasses, and x amount of sea. There are fluctuations but for the most part, what we have is what we got. We have to learn to see the earth not as limitless in its potential to serve our desire for more-more-more. But rather as a miraculous grouping of ecological systems that balance off of one another. The balancing mechanisms may not be invisible to our eyes but they are there non the less. When we level mountaintops for coal, or clear-cut forests, or pollute the seas with plastic, or cause catastrophic oil leaks - we the humane race are tipping the balance.
COVID-19 is a perfect example, somehow, somewhere the balance tipped and something stable became unstable. More than likely the destabilization was caused by man.
If we do not change our mindless and greedy treatment of this planet it is not the planet that will suffer it will be us. The Earth does not need humans to survive. Humans need the Earth to survive. If we continue to unconsciously pollute and deplete the earth's natural resources we will end. The earth will still be here but we will not.
Governments are, in part, formed to help manage the complexities of life here on Earth. Our current government's mismanagement of COVID-19 is the perfect example and evidence of a government that is not doing its job. In a time when our elected government leaders should be focused on protecting all life, they instead choose to keep the cash flowing to the rich.
This is how it's going down:
First, the economy crashed. And, in only three months. Due to shelter in place orders from the top. The ultra-rich stopped making their vast amounts of money. For them, that was not acceptable. The economy had to be reopened. Our top government leaders, specifically the one at the tip-top, who also happens to be one of the ultra-rich, then passed the buck, laying the responsibility and discission making upon local governments.
Mind You, all of this is being done while trying to navigate the deep and murky waters of an unprecedented GLOBAL Pandemic.
local governments are now tasked with the dilemma of prioritizing life or money. And it is not money for me and you. It is money for the ultra-rich. Workers are putting their life at risk, but it is ok according to our current leaders because our life is less important than their continued accumulation of wealth. The wealth that they use to hold power. If you are not in the 1% club your life is disposable. This is where our present-day democracy has arrived - Money versus Life.
All of which, by the way, is a horrific loop back to our beginnings. Starting with the genocide of America's First People and then the enslavement of Africans. So in a tragic way we are back to where we started. The sacrifice of life for the profit of the white man.
I don’t know about you but I would like to END this version of reality.
Remember as a child questioning everything? It is from that state of mind that a new form of society can be born. There are other ways of being and it is up to us to create them.
Pause here and think about this - a Pandemic stoped a huge portion of the “working” world. People were able to step off the hamster wheel of life. Many had the time and space to relax. We could do this because we were not being worked to death. Then within that same time frame, a single action, the brutal murder of George Floyd, by a police officer - ignited a collective global reaction.
The Black Lives Matter movement awoke the globe. Let this sink in, because of the pandemic, most people were out of work and because of this, we all had the internal space and time to process and question the status quo. We can at any time and in any place begin to compose endings. And, orchestrate new beginnings. We do this by constantly questioning and adjusting and updating our understanding of reality. Present-day reality is not fixed. Nothing is permanent. Just think, inside the brains of some amazing beautiful humans is the design for change. Change that supports all life - all life meaning the planet and its oceans, nature, wildlife, and humans alike.
Don’t be fooled by those that say change takes time. Change can happen instantly. Think of 911 and Hiroshima. Change does not have to take hundreds of years to fulfill itself. Change can happen instantly. Sadly, these two examples are violent ones. However, on the other end of the spectrum, there is non-violence. Change through non-violence can happen quickly too.
Systemic Racism, Capitalism, corporate greed, and all the above-mentioned inequalities, which perpetuate oppression can be changed for the betterment of all of humanity and the planet.
How?
By holding our elected officials accountable.
By being sure that democracy is working for all people, not just the minority - the ultra-rich.
As a gentle reminder to all, Democracy is defined as government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. “Supreme power is vested in the people,” say that again to your self ten-time and see if it feels like the democracy that you are living in now or ever. This is why it is so very important to be informed and to vote. When you vote you are exercising your supreme power.
Democracy only works when every citizen participates.
Another reason why our democracy is challenged is that we have not stood in the truth of our inception and then worked rigorously to make right the wrongs that we have done, we remain trapped within a 240 - something-year-old self-deception loop. Stuck repeating ourselves over and over and over again. Which we will continue to do until we make our wrongs right, which is a holistic way to end things that need to end.
As we think about endings can we please add war to the list of things that desperately need to end?
The United States of America was formed out of a War and we have perpetuated war ever since. We claim to be making peace but war can never bring about peace. Never not ever. Because war is peace’s opposite and the two exist as a polarity. It’s like asking night and day to flip flop. They can’t.
As long as we perpetuate the illusions that war makes peace, reality can not be altered. If we want to live on this planet in harmony as a peaceful nation we have to discover new ways to solve war-like issues without going to war. Come on people, honestly, at this stage of the game why is anybody still at war. Nobody wins everybody loses.
Whose bodies are sacrificed in war?
I’ll give you a hint it is not the rich.
Believe it or not our brains hold alternative ways to solve global crises.
How about using our minds to solve war generating problems rather than spending billions of dollars to perpetuate senseless death and the illusion of being peacemakers.
Food for thought - our government spends billions of dollars teaching people in our military to kill.
Funny. But not, we charge college students hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn a profession that serves the betterment of humanity.
If you want to be a medical doctor (save lives) it cost about three hundred thousand dollars.
Let this sink in. Really sink in.
Human life should not be disposable especially when it comes to financing someones’ helicopter or yacht purchase, their fourth home, tenth car. Do you get it? We stay at war because it is a billion-dollar industry that lines the pockets of the ultra-rich.
How do we end such a long split tong tale?
By being inquisitive again. Re-Awaken your child-like mind and ask why. And then ask why again until some depth of understanding is ignited and your curiosity guides you to new and different realizations. The place where your knowledge exists within your being derived from a place of deep contemplation and consideration, which is the opposite of being told what to believe. The full comprehension of any given idea not only expands your mind it opens your heart. And nobody can do this for you. We are each one of us responsible for expanding and opening our minds.
While we are at it can we stop teaching our children a one-sided history? The history we presently teach needs to be updated. History needs to be holistic and inclusive, including the ugly shameful parts. We can only repair what we know. It’s the bad parts that keep us stuck and spinning. Repeating. In the vacuum caused by a one-sided history, nonsensical conspiracy theories rise to fill in the void.
Why do Conspiracy theories easily replace reality or trump history?
Because following and attaching to conspiracy theories entertain. One gets to weave their own possible outcomes, which is far more fun than dealing with a past wrought with anguish and suffering.
No work is required to be entertained. To be entertained is to have something done too and for you, one has to simply receive entertainment.
To untangle and make transparent a history that has erased the history of others who coexist within that same history is hard work. And, with so much time stretched out between the tale-telling, forgetting feels easier than remembering. One might hear their internal voice say “I’m not responsible for what others did so long ago.”
When one attaches their thoughts to the phrase, “I’m not responsible…,” a profound intellectual disconnect occurs. The potential of participating in making what is wrong - right, ends. By disassociating one takes the passenger seat on a motorcycle side-car zipping along the stream of interconnectedness. It is irrelevant if one chooses to tag along, rather than jump in the mud, because life is going to do what life does, with or without us.
All of life - everything on this planet is connected. We do not choose to participate in interconnectedness - or not. The planet Earth, by its nature, connects every element of existence. It is that simple. Interconnectedness happens with or without our participation.
Remember nothing is fixed or permanent all of like is in flux.
COVID 19 and The Black Lives Matter movement might be the forces needed to realize the beginning of the end of oppression. And if not, at the very least, we are witnessing, participating, and hopefully learning what creating endings looks like.
Inevitably. Everything on this earth man-made or otherwise does eventually end.
Let’s make endings by our design and not leave it up to chance.