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The Big Lie

Most of us live in a culture that is constantly bombarding us with the message that “normal” life is happy, wealthy and long. We are being lead to believe that everyone else out there has enough money to pay their bills, has children that are doing great, has a love life that is fulfilling and is getting all of their emotional and sexual needs met regularly. We are being led to believe that following the rules will make all of this happen for you. We are being formed by our advertising culture to believe that even though death does finally come we slip out painlessly and quietly surrounded by adoring family and then into whatever afterlife you imagine is even better than this one.

This big lie is often not spoken explicitly, or we would rationally reject it, it is whispered to the elephant beneath in a place and time that is more secure, more affluent, more comfortable than any larger society in human history. We are told that this happy, wealthy, long life is “normal” and that is it ours if we just follow the rules and be good, compliant, passion seeking girls and boys.

Of course not all of us grow up in such a place or live in such a place.

Some of us grew up in places that were hard, and so we are skeptical that this imagined, advertised life really is as “normal” or expected as it seems to be on TV.

Paterson New Jersey 1973

Dominican Republic 1990s

The Strange Consequence of the Lie Continue reading →