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Have times changed so much, or is it we who have failed to preserve the essence of what makes up the times! “IT’S NOT A LIFESTYLE…IT’S A WAY OF LIFE!”
Living by a code and your own rules: Do you? Can you?
So abstract and absurd does this idea that I am now presenting to you seem that I can’t even put my hands around it so as to take firm hold of it. I can’t even see it! Much less hold it. Neither can I connect, nor clue you in to this idea with a clever headline or statement, so as to easily explain what it is I’m trying to relay to you. So only by use of my pen alone and in the very least what I know to be my logic can I really pursue the means by which I shall proceed to define and mold this idea until some semblance of reason is ascertained. Until I reach my goal will my verbigeration then be all the while ambiguous if not distorted through the portal of your reason. As I was saying, though I can not yet see or hold this abstraction none the less it’s there. It’s there like a reoccurring nightmare wherein its contents violently awaken you after revealing their symbolic and frightening meanings to you. Left are you, thence, unable whatsoever to remember anything about the dream once you’re awake. Or as in more than most cases, once it awakens you. As it eludes me, I’ve found that the only way I can wrangle this idea is by circling its border and ever so peripherally peering at its center in order not to fall directly into the vortex this vacuum presents. The problem being with most abstractions like this is that the vertigo that accompanies its lucidity as soon as you grasp hold of it renders you unable to keep clasp of it due its ambiguous possession of it. No! For it is much more the wiser to approach this idea cautiously until you can appreciate the complexities it presents itself with. Only then will you fully comprehend the implications you may find yourself struggling to come to terms with. What is it you ask? How can you then share it if you can’t even show or explain it to me? All fair questions considering that I’m asking you to join me so that we can both build upon this idea together. Being that as it may, you’ll have to please bear with me as I try to turn these scattered images and thoughts into something more intelligible in order for you to get a better idea of what it is I’m trying to get across.
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What I now endeavor to articulate to you, as well as to anybody else who may share our common interest and goal, is strikingly housed somewhere in a gray area of my intellect and conjoined faculties. Often eluding me as often as it confronts me, it therefore makes my effort intractable at times to possess it if not in the least firmly. However, beginning with what many of us regard as an absolute certainty of the unfathomability and un-knowability of where our lives will take us in regards our daily journey in life as well as accompany and parallel our true human experience, the question of who we we’re, who we are, and who we’re going to be thus lends itself to all the endless possibilities, potentialities, and even responsibilities we have to choose from. To complicate matters, I should add that even in spite of how much or to what degree we try to direct our lives course and whither it may lead us, and in further light of its far reaching implications, one should not confuse my effort of articulation with any specific correlation to Creationism, evolution, politics, religion, or any other varying doctrines or philosophies. No, its bearings seem to reside simply, but not in anything further than just a metaphysical or logical position, somewhere much closer than they appear. And that the possibilities of arriving at such a place is no longer being sought, initiated, utilized, or acted upon except by a few people is entirely becoming as obvious as is its apparent loss of location. Instead it seems that we have become so entirely complacent and comfortable in our lives that we have allowed ourselves to be too easily distracted and gratified by as little effort as possible, desired, or inputted. Hence, arriving now at an acculturation of which was induced by such and that we have now subsequently sublimated by our own frustrating attempts to meet a standard, not by which its parameters were at one time set by the people of yore, but by a new order of the day that has replaced that style of living and has taken over our lives. I dare even say by such new sources, for example, as The Media. This in turn has brought with it an ever increasing pressure to conform not only to an empty superficiality devoid of any substance whatsoever but to a mentality of entitlement that by its very nature arrests and thwarts our efforts towards a rich and rewarding self actualization. Perhaps I’m one of those said persons and perhaps I’m not, but to be sure, it’s only an opinion. What’s of greater importance however, far from just limiting ourselves by this lack of action and our seemingly negligent unconcern, is the fact that we have become increasingly unable, or in fact unwilling, to even grasp anymore what the understanding and acumen is of what defines or frames our own personal true essence and experience of the human condition to each of us is and pursue it. Pursue it whole heartedly! No longer able are we simply because of our own inability, denial, rejection, insipience, indolence, unconcern, substitution, or blatant refusal to perceive this anymore. I’d even say to acknowledge this anymore at least. Paving the way instead for the inevitability of an incomplete “oneness” and a total nullity regarding our lives in a world where nullity begets nothing when trying to find meaning and purpose in it. A contradiction in terms, thus, will the outcome be. Misbegotten and so lost have we, our humanity, our culture, and society become that like yourself all we ever hear anymore is “The people and face of America sure has changed…”. “The world for that matter!” or “There was a time when…” Yet we do nothing if not anything. And why is this I ask. Whence such impotence come from I query, when more and more often I hear, “They sure don’t make them like that anymore…” As if “Them,” being those men and women who lived back “in the old days” who wore the contents of their heart and soul on their sleeves and the lines of Hell on their face, were slow and painstakingly handcrafted individuals not being produced anymore. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you’re not. Maybe your uncle, or your best friend’s mom, or your history teacher, or that boss that you hate is one of them, or was one of them. Isn’t that exactly why we love them, or remember them, or hate them! Maybe they stand for everything you’re not, or want to be, or just can’t be. We forget that “they” carved out a great nation once. A nation and country like no where else on this earth where we now live and are afforded all the luxuries we can’t live without. Crafted and made one by one, and one at a time, were these people who seem like anachronisms now in our present times. And there’s nothing more American and real than those miens and patinas that read like old road maps to our past. Have times changed so much, or is it we who have failed to preserve the essence of what makes up the times. Is it not what everybody fails to see or notice anymore? Is it because we just can’t see it, or is it because we don’t want to see it? Maybe it’s just not there to see anymore that’s all! Whether it was back then or now, the difference held for me, you, and many others is, it’s not and wasn’t a lifestyle but a way of life. A way of life they lived by, and lived for, with their own code and rules. Do you live by this code? Can you? This I ask with the most sincere hope of hitting a nerve in every free spirit in the world today. Has this “way of life” now been rejected? Rejected by everyone and everybody that has been involuntarily categorized or confined and bound by today’s convention. Or worse yet, rejected by everybody who has voluntarily categorized or confined themselves under the pretence that “it’s their willing of personal identity and freedom!” Could it be instead, nothing more than a rejection by those 1 % er’s, advertisers, negators, censors, naysayers, politicians, social leaders, and the real powers at the top who wish to limit, arrest, restrict, and contain everything we are and represent in a tiny little perfectly wrapped and ribboned box so as to live and feel the way they say you should? Is that living I ask you! Are we not all intrinsically the same yet innately different and at the same time an aggregation of the same tiny little pieces that make up a whole. Have these people looked upon us as a whole and not at what actually constitutes its totality. These Negators and Co. that I mention are part of the same whole yet are at the same time the distinct little pieces that make the whole ball unable to roll smoothly along the pavement. And these are the same people ironically who consider themselves the exception to the rule. It is they who consider themselves thus not us. Not me! How entirely glorious and free they must feel then to live life in oblivion thinking they’re the rarified few. I should also mention that if you’re rather uncertain as to what I’m referring to, it would be indicative of you’re hubris and specious sciolism to dismiss this by assuming I speak of the “establishment”. Make no mistake! the “establishment” and “anti-establishment” argument have no place here.
Tragically though, in today’s terms many of us also think of ourselves as that exception to the rule as well. 
What’s worse is we liken ourselves to those many people “who aren’t being made anymore”. “These few,” being those who lived and led by example, and who initiated and followed a code of self determinism and of conduct with a self imposed body of rules who did not show to be false their system of values, core beliefs, integrity, ethics, morality, convictions, fortitude, confidence, self reliance, self assuredness, perseverance, ingenuity, optimism, and social accountability. A contribution they alone carried on their shoulders and strictly adhered to. Sharing with the world their mind, heart, blood, and soul. How mistaken we actually are if we think we’re a semblance of those reminiscent few. So much that the way of life that reflects this rule, more and more people are misinterpreting each day thereby distancing all of us further from it each day. If this instrument goes unpracticed each day, who will hear its tones and very notes in order to learn its song I wonder. Who will it be then, who will learn and pass along our songs to the next generation if not us. As if it were this simple, we’re at the same time willing, or allowing ourselves seems more appropriate, to be part of that set of conformity who are told how to and by what standard to live by. Whether messaged to us by Media, Hollywood, Government, Politicians, Lobbyists, Advertisers, Power Hungry Corporate Thieves, or Organized Religion, the apparatus makes no difference anymore. The tools have become the craftsmen’s masters. Another reason, in spite of our longing to be free and like “those” people, is that I wholly believe that we’re uncertain as to the “know how” any more. So much in fact that these messenger boys have so cleverly delegated “those” of us aspirants to be considered as demographically just outside The Politically Correct, The Too Cool for School Circle, or The Fickle Few 1% who aren’t entitled to the same benefits they are, if one such desire, viewing us consequently as the people on the fringes of society whose voice doesn’t count. Imagine if you will what they believe themselves the beneficiaries of. A fortune of common Mediocrity, Material, and Arrested Development these Shepherds of The Herd covet. Though at one time stigmatized and referred to as “The Fringes of Society”, it’s not just the bikers and the junkies who are on the outside anymore. I’m afraid there have been a few adjustments and many more additions to this census. We must now realize, even if some of don’t want to, that “The Fringes” now include every disenfranchised 14 year old kid out there who’s growing up too fast, to their bored soccer moms, to her grocer’s delivery man, and to those undocumented workers who cut dad’s grass. I’m afraid this includes you. It includes me and it just about includes the majority of the people out there in the world today whether we want to believe it or not. Also included in this group besides us are the cops who protect us, the city clerks who stamp our envelopes, and the fast food employees who serve the Corporate Sacrifices. This includes almost everyone today barring the Shepards I mentioned above. Socioeconomic class, proclivities, social stature, ethnic and religious backgrounds, habits, customs, education, and even tax returns bear no influence and exclude no one from this reality. Everyone makes up this demographic! Whether they’re a precocious 23 year old young man who’s just graduating college with Honors, or a 45 year old woman who’s reentering the work force after raising children, or to the retiree who’s trying to make sense of his or her life in Winter. More importantly, this demographic includes every one of us who doesn’t seem to fit or buy into the political or celebrity driven lifestyle that The Media portrays as our idea of identity. To their idea of purpose and meaning in the world today I should say. This I’m assuming if there are still people out there who don’t know The Media is nothing more than a liberal advertising agency, a marketing firm, and lobbying agency. Emphatically, everyone who does not fit or buy into this ideal of vanity driven commercialism, subjugation, media saturation, complaisance, mimicry, and consumption becomes the outcast, the pariah, the anti-socialite, and the disenfranchised. And herein also lay my main concern and problem. Do we know or even so much as think that we are on the outside? Do we know what the apparatuses’ exclusion has done to us. The havoc it has wreaked on our constitutions. On our humanity! Our psyche! Are we so unconsciously unable to pick up or descry this just below the surface? Yes, it has now burrowed itself deep inside our unconscious, psyche, soul, and being. And it’s the reason for our desperate malaise, despondency, un-achievability, unaccountability, depression, un-attainability, and utter lack of identity, competence, and purpose. Sadly, what few of us who actually have the capability to grasp or view is that it lays just between each generational gap that preludes and supersedes each generation. And it’s in between these gaps where it is seeded to ultimately give birth to every new generation’s idealism. And the fact of the matter is, we are stuck between a quickly closing window right now exactly in between one of these generational gaps and we desperately need a new one. People can feel it but can’t articulate it or hold it. Hence my dilemma! Even subjectively, most of us aren’t equipped with the proper tools or understanding to grasp this. Think about it though. Has not everything about our culture and society stagnated to a point of basically organized slavery, inner chaos, and spiritual vacuity? We’re all just blind mice leading or being led by blind mice. And it would be foolish and incogitant for us to dismiss this simply as apathy or greed and vanity. For it trespasses and transcends these bounds beyond measure!
Hence, what has been borne out of this abstraction is the idea behind this embryonic multi-media network which is to decisively re-relate the true grit that is the signature of our humanity. To re-relate, re-discover, re-evaluate, and re-invent if need be who we were, who we are, and who we’re going to be. The understanding of what we as Americans and as real people really stood for let alone what we stand for today. Or do we even know? I’m not naïve by any means. I know that times change and people with it, but I can’t help but feel that we have fundamentally lost the cognizance of who we are, who we were, where we have come from, and what it all stands for and means to us today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a history teacher nor do I ever want to be one, and I’m not here to teach anybody anything for that matter. But I am here to be honest! Honest with myself and with anybody out there that wants to be honest with me too. What I’ve come to realize is that like myself everyone is so afraid to be honest about themselves, about their tastes, prejudices, likes, dislikes, addictions, propensity’s, psychosis, neurasthenia, acedia, tristisia, self medicating wonts and wants, that it’s stifling! I have come to realize that we have replaced our real potentialities with fictionalized and glamorized representations of ourselves on social networking platforms and Scripted Un-Reality T.V. shows. And why have we done this, if I may be so impudent as to ask this question. What are we so afraid of? What are we so desperate not to reveal? Could it be perhaps that we aren’t all that we imagine ourselves to be. That we’re not the same person who reflects his or her own real and true image back to ourselves every time we look at ourselves in the mirror when we’re left all alone? How can we be when were filled with anxiety about how we truly feel and view things because we’ve all been taught to hide our personal feelings in order for others not be able to see the cracks and tears our human frailty really shows. How strange is it then that we view or are viewed upon through a distorted scope of filters while being kept in check by censorship and feelings of inadequacy. Feelings of worthlessness that have left our lives bereft of meaning. Is it any wonder then why our conflicts can’t be resolved or our anxiety can’t be soothed when our faculties have been rewired by our own fear and dishonesty! Rules that censure us to the point of quelling our true nature and instead replacing it with shame, guilt, and doubt!!! What we can and can’t do is decided not by we the people anymore but by whom I ask. Re-relate, re-discover, reconsider I tell you! even if it hurts our over-sensitized little ears and sensibilities. The idea I have thus been trying to iterate is to help propitiate and assuage the listlessness and forlorn hopes of a generation who finds him or herself outside these forced and ridiculously absurd, confining, constraining, suffocating, and binding ideas that the apparatuses’ have yoked us with. Historically, there has always been someone there to lead the preceding generation through and on to the next one. Be it by Rebels, Hippies, Hairbands, or Gangsta Rappers, there has always been someone there for that generation. Where is ours? Come on! Tell me! But if you can’t then let’s at least be truthful about what America is absolutely NOT anymore and what it has become. It is media dominated and saturated, severely critical, selfish, uninformed, unmotivated, vain, suspicious, un-ambitious, hyper-violent, effeminate, dangerous, envious, and addicted. Above all, it stands for everything the kids to their soccer moms to the politicians want to shout but won’t dare whisper. If they can’t, won’t, or don’t dare say it, how can they harness it or wrangle it much less be honest about it!!! Some one needs to just say, “It’s okay! It’s all right for me and for you to think or feel like this. I understand how you feel because I feel the same way.” And the person who needs to say it is you!!! “Easy as pie right? But nobody is doing it.
How? Why you ask? Because everybody has a voice and a story to tell! This idea then that has eluded both you and me for so long I believe is to deliver a NEW TYPE OF UNFILTERED AND UNCENSORED MEDIA NETWORK. A new network for all of us who are searching for their true self, the honesty within ourselves, and the experience of inner oneness and wholeness synthesized with that of the worlds. Or at least our world! It’s the search desiring in all of us for human identity and the understanding of its complex make up and design, as well as harmony, inner peace, or meaning, if you will, in light of and despite the luxury of knowing. A place where there are no rules, restrictions, or limitations. Where there is Continuity within us and with each other. Let us build a new kind of network for whatever purpose you deem necessary. The fact that you use it is reason enough. By all means take the initiative to act on your desires, urges, and potentials where The Media’s, Hollywood’s, Government’s, etcetera’s, constraints and self-gratifying interests won’t frustrate yours. Let us build upon a platform that enables everybody in the world that is likeminded and who doesn’t feel he or she has to whisper or hide anymore to further mans quest for knowledge, and as I have said repeatedly honesty link with one another. A platform for all of us to use to speak our minds, or to get information on “our way of life”, or share as opposed to “look at me as I stand here lonely and exposed with a million pictures of people on my profile but not one of them a friend of mine!” For anybody with courage enough to put themselves out there without a mask, and without privacy restrictions so as to belong to a safe little click where, again, you seek the approval, the safety, of The Herd, this site’s for you. For us! Let’s put articles up that talk about what everybody wants to know and read about that can’t be heard or read anywhere else because no media network out there will risk revealing their true agendas of obscurantism, of misinforming, and “herding” you. I thought that journalists were supposed to relay news to us without bias and devoid of their irrelevant opinions. 
Funny, all I ever see or hear are their agendas being blitzed on us while some interviewee is trying to get a word in edge wise all the while being lectured by the interviewer’s obtruding opinion. Let’s print what they won’t print and talk about what they’re all afraid to talk about. Together let’s deconstruct every idea, conviction, morality, and less than zero ethic. Retrace our steps from the origin of man’s role in society to our here and now modern day society. Let our selves be deluded and deceived no longer. At no other time is this needed so desperately, or is it possible even, with all this technology and information the world were living in now has to offer. I’m no cultural leader but I’ve been looking for inspiration in one and I’ve yet to find him, her, or it. Someone that is fearless enough to talk about the real issues that we face and deal with everyday in our lives as will our up and coming future generations that will come ahead of us. Let’s allow all of our like minded friends out there to share and voice themselves in their own words. Truth spoken by them and not by writers who objectively treat everybody and subject they write about with an air of antagonism, condescension, and superficiality. Let’s allow the chance and possibility for everybody to speak their mind subjectively and from a source of personal experience. We want to be in control of our own lives once again and take back our responsibility of accountability as Americans and as living human beings. Yet keep in mind that another challenge we will also face as our lives and its circumstances change each day is the need for us individually and as a whole to engage our own determination, courage of optimism, attainability, and capability to resolve the dilemmas and problems that we face each and every day amidst our daily life. No longer hindered will we be with your participation in regards to us not having anywhere to go to find such knowledge and awareness so as to be informed enough or educated enough should direction some of us need. A chance for you as well to make a difference in people’s live if you so in fact choose to do so. Nobody’s showing us the “how to” aspect anymore when it comes to subjects and information that we want to really know about. We want to hear real stories about the streets, sex, drugs, ambition, culture, habits, resolutions, politics, life and death. And we want to hear it from credible people who have the street smarts and/or higher levels of consciousness and education that some of us don’t. I want to hear them from you. Envision the educators who can speak freely about what they really aught to be teaching once their muzzles are removed. Once we remove it for them! And whether you know it or not, every one of us is an educator.
But just recognizing our own laziness and incessant demands for instant gratification is half the battle though. We must overcome the idea that we’re somebody that deserves therefore owed. Who says deserving has anything to do with it! “I’m so and so! I deserve it!” “Or I have the right to it because you owe me!!!” Where has this entitlement mentality come from? Where did this notion that we’re “special” come from? How did this idea that we’re to be regarded as a cut above the rest originate. I don’t owe anybody anything except that which I owe myself and the empowerment of man! Rather, I want to hear the heartache in your voice and share in the experience that defines you and makes you a better person. I want to see the patina of defeat and the strength of having overcome those scars your face and soul owns, the look of hardship, and the ethos that’s engrained in your skin. Behind the mask that you wear, I want to see the madness of the mad in you. I want to feel the love of everything in the actions you affect and by the words you sing or scream. I want to see and feel it all! I want to display this on our site rather than the pervasive arrogance and repugnant vanity that have taken over the nation. The world! I no longer want or need celebrities or the media or the government to tell me where Shangri La is anymore or how to get there. Who be they to tell us how we should live, as well as carry that burden, when I live a way of life out of necessity to actualize my will to power, my will to life, and my will to love! As if they had any clue whatsoever! Sadly though, we along with celebrities have lived far too long behind a lie of fantasy and make believe. Behind the absurd idea that everybody has the right to be a celebrity and it has reached noxious levels. And why? Who wants to be a celebrity, who by our own insecure and puerile need for never ending self reassurance and approval, allow them to bombard us with their advertising and inane quotes on interviews that teach little girls at an early age the importance of promiscuity, inadequacy, and self worthlessness by messaging us that the perception of external beauty, the possession of $2000.00 dollar handbags, and the ensnaring of rich men are qualities far worth their purpose in life so as never to work a day in her life again. Everything they and the Media preach goes against everything we once believed in. It stands for everything we’re now against. Does it not? Teenage boys are being taught how to stand in the mirror all day so as to primp and admire their own reflections in the mirror. They’re being messaged to sexually objectify everyone that holds their desire, to getting in touch with their feminine side via a trophy wife, and the idea of being impotent in the face of self reliance and self actualizing. What happened to the journey of becoming a man, a woman, a person for example? What ever happened to owning up and believing that “you don’t have to stand tall but you do have to stand!” And when we speak to people, do you not find it difficult to talk to people these days while they’re looking at the reflection of themselves in the windowpane instead of looking into your eyes as they speak to you because they put more value in superficial beauty than they doe character and humility. Be rest assured that this of which I speak of is not a dogma or a plead to go back to a some pseudo macho orientation our fathers had nor does this mean embracing the gender neutral identity that we see so much of today. Rather, it’s a Continuity, a Necessity of Identity, and an Optimistic Determination as I have already stated, in our will to maintain and surpass all the possibilities and potentialities of yesterday and of today by not learning what went wrong but rather what to do right and how better to affect and obtain where we want to be in our lives. By living today as if it were our last day on this earth without having a safety net or excuse of having the luxury of tomorrow, can we arrive at this and achieve what ever it is we set out to do. By knowing that you can do anything you want in life as long as you know you can do it or be it. 
I say remedy by extirpating. Destroy cliquishness and vanity now, as well as initiate the resolution of the identity crisis we are all suffering from. It’s in our hands and our hands alone. We must not limit ourselves either by any ideologies we turn to instinctively out of fear so as to replace one malady with yet another illness!
Like most people, I too come from a broken home full of dysfunction. So what!!! Get over it!!! I did. Nobody’s wants to hear it! We’re tired of every body crying about what they didn’t have or didn’t get because of the same old story of unfairness and inequality. The reality of it is the world can at times be an isolating, alienating, harsh, and difficult world. However, we all share familiarity with our similarities, and we all want to share our history, struggles, and dreams with everybody else without feeling that were going to be ostracized or burned at the stake for expressing it. I don’t have to condone or oppose something to be right. There is no right and there is no wrong as far as I’m concerned. There’s just life. After all, when it’s all said and done, it’s about living. I’m asking you to be part of this with me because “Though the Scales await all men, failed to be weighed are all they, save those who have come to bare their souls!” With this said, what are you waiting for to happen? What will you do today that is greater than what you did yesterday? Whose life will you impact today if not your very own!
