Distraction of the mass
One may find a lot of examples supporting the thesis that things got more, better, safer, and healthier. However, not being aware of globally increasing wealth inequality, existing heightening levels of hunger, and record numbers of refugees in some areas of the world, as well as peaking prescriptions of antidepressants in many societies, signifies that local perceptions might lack accurate information and understanding. What is affordable within reach, is unavailable at another place. What is acceptable for some, is intolerable for others. And what means poverty in this place, passes for luxury elsewhere. While becoming more environmentally conscious here, more pollution happens there. The growing world population and economy continue to exploit the planet’s resources faster than these can be renewed. Nature gets polluted with garbage whose decomposition takes centuries and irreparably contaminates with spurious poison the earthly and universal flow of energy for the generations to come.
We today see the first generations in developed countries who are, in terms of longevity, facing decreasing life durations. The life expectancy of a fifty-year-old in a low-income country, which is the majority of the world population, remained the same as it was thirty years ago. In the last forty-five years, suicide rates have increased by sixty percent worldwide, which indicates a desperate mental climate even in countries of relative wealth. The desire to die usually comes from unfulfilled desires for life. Most individuals would decide to live if the necessary psychological support factors such as meaningfulness, purposefulness, and spiritual growth through awareness-intelligent living would seem achievable.
Despite global communication technology, people are still kept uninformed, just by different means. While in prior days information was just not available, today its sheer volume and tendentially one-sided curation are leading to distraction.
Herbert A. Simon, an influential American social scientist, stated in 1982 so aptly that “A wealth of information, creates a poverty of attention.” This is indeed utterly dangerous because by devouring our attention, distractive practices are hindering the flow of consciousness to our awareness; as a result, we get deprived of inspiration.
It is critical not to confuse emotion with inspiration. Inspiration comes through awareness, which, besides consciousness, is brought to life by thinking. We need to become aware to avoid emotional bias.
Often, advertisement, media, and politics are attempting to shortcut our reasoning awareness by directly addressing emotions. The generation of emotions within you, however, you hopefully cherish as your own business, don’t you?! It is utterly important to retain alertness not to let emotions dictate our thoughts, but instead of creating them out of aware thinking. That’s where we can hold the remote control to feel the way we want.
In a constant fight for people’s attention, monopolist digital platforms channel information and keep us through addictive mechanisms engaged with very narrowly and non-transparently preselected views of personalized subsets of society and the media landscape. Western civilization blows its own horn regarding offering individuals the freedom of choice. However, this is farther away from reality than we would ever accept; if we were aware! When being offered options, the list of available alternatives, be it in a financial plan, in an assortment of products, in educational pathways, or career options, we are always only given a pre-selected set of choices that are elaborated by the respective business to optimize their profit.
Any possible choice is, of course, always designed in the main interest of the offering side. Many people wonder why the rich get richer, why the ones with great networks get even better connected, and why the seemingly lucky get luckier, while they themselves always come off second best.
Awareness Intelligence will help us in inquiring what choices we are not offered, which options are just for distraction purposes, what possibilities are untold, and what benefits are scoped out or not inclusive of our and humanities broader rights.
Artificial intelligence is, as we are made believe, deemed to have potential that is even superior to human intelligence. This can, however, only be the case from a mechanistic information processing point of view. Algorithms in the form of cryptic programs are determining a significant and increasing portion of our computing and electronic communication activities. People can’t know or don’t have the time to evaluate the trustfulness of the logic and information packed into closed systems. The information age is trying to explain the universe in mathematical, respectively data analytical terms out of black boxes. The human mental universe, however, is fundamentally different from the physical world of bits and bytes.
Consciousness is not about information, it is about inspiration.
Consciousness doesn’t come from a form; it comes from the life-animating spirit. And, awareness is not about a uniformly ticking computer clock. Instead it is about how humans make sense of their relations and time.
Today, the ones who have the gold, make the rules. Money is spent where there is the highest likelihood for maximized return on investments. Not surprisingly, wealth concentration is increasing, all at the cost of more equitability and participation among the population. Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital,” for example, is providing impressive evidence for that increasing concern. Privileges are protected through the formation of elite dynasties, academia, and business circles that do little tolerate outsiders. These elites have all the means required to pull the strings not only in economy but also in politics and public affairs. Opening up power structures and empowering the mass to claim their fair share would be a shot in the own foot, they think. It is, therefore, not surprising that awareness-based self-efficacy is not a broader educational priority. Keeping people’s awareness poor means less bothersome discourse and need for fair information.
Reduced awareness takes care of itself. People mistakenly believe to be knowledgeable and in control, which leads them even to justify and support the very systems that disadvantage them most.
To have a birds-eye view on the wholeness of the world can be intimidating; too much is it a threat to poles of powers everywhere. Shame is imposed on those who full of awareness don’t belong, and confidence strengthened as thanks to those who ignorantly take a side.
Awareness of and about humanity as a whole is taken intentionally out of educational and journalistic scope. Instead, local scare stories, celebrity cult, group thinking, and stereotyping are promoted. Herd-thinking is confining the cubicles in the stables of the thought-farms owned by the one percent who own ninety-nine percent of global resources. In these closed mindset farms, people’s ignorance gets exploited. The domesticated herd of human livestock is fed and paid well enough to not revolt. Everything gets automated, and the thought-farming industry leaders stay mostly out of sight. Almost all of the financial means of this world are invested in businesses that help the money multiply itself. So, the breeding goes on and ever more extensive and efficient platforms are created for the keeping of human farm animals.
I currently hear a lot that there would be a global awakening to the better and everything will be fine, but I can only observe the same in places. Reassuring people in their comfort and not ruining their appetite is not only essential to keep the economy rolling, but it is another awareness-limiting and critical-thinking blocking tactic. The message is also that the global elite would take care of it for you, so you don’t need to do anything on our own anyway. Lowering people’s expectation of the necessity to act and play down their ability to have a possible future impact whatsoever is a proven strategy to discourage from engagement, so people will mostly settle to savor the present. Fostering such carelessness is favorable to propel current consumption in place of investments into everybody’s future.
A whole-person and holistically cooperative humanitarian view that would be broadly discussed publicly as a matter of social priority is missing. Rather mass education continues to teach perspectives confined to organizational boundaries and at best extended to further stakeholders as relevant for profit and required for compliance reasons. Education’s general scope is to train managers who can successfully compete against others, and the goal to encourage leaders to stand up for all humanity has, in many cases, degenerated to an inconsequential after-thought.
Widespread fragmented awareness seems to be an accepted human mental constraint; along the lines of when something is out of sight, it also gets out of mind. To close one or even both eyes, however, is not all-natural human though; it is un-naturally awareness-unintelligent. Nothing goes ever completely out of consciousness. Then, when consciousness is suppressed to not surface into the process of thinking, the soul is restricted from being free. Limited awareness is a mental self-handicap with disastrous repercussions. Our energy suffers the more the flow of consciousness and the development of awareness is hindered. Human potential, care, and wellbeing get impaired.
If one grows more aware, the radius of care grows with it. As the reach of care widens, so does the feeling of being not alone, of being connected to the collective soul in full awareness, alive, and fully human.
