Day 5 | Life: Masses Aren’t Few. The Few Aren’t Masses.
How do you tell the difference? Between Teachings For The Masses and Teachings For The Few.
Think of the masses as babies, they prefer baby food. Easy to swallow, easy to digest. Think beautiful quotes. The information for the masses is shortened. They make great quote memes. They have to fit a particular amount of characters. Easy to share from platform to platform. Information for the masses is a phrase. You don’t have to think, you just nod your head to it. YOLO. Wild & Free. Die Young. Quotes like: “It can’t be explained, you just have to believe it.”, words like these can inspire, but does not replenish.
Then there are those of us who are determined to dig wells and climb mountains in search of true wisdom. I don’t want baby food, I don’t want knowledge for the masses, I don’t care if adult food would give me dysentery, feed me and I will grow into it. We strive. We strive for a way forward. Why did Gandhi leave his wife and family? Why did Socrates stand still for 24hours without coming out of his thoughts? Did he forget his legs were tired and his stomach hungry? Did he not register his body was cold and his eyes sleepy? Did he not think of what “others would think of him”, Did he not consider he woud be thought crazy? What could be so stimulating to think about that he couldn’t break away from for 24hours? Was it thoughts about women? morals? thoughts about thoughts? Could he not have experienced the same connectedness if he was at home, comfortable rather than outside with no layered clothing? The stories of the true great should inspire, not bore.
Information for the masses is a sentence, sometimes with a great effort to rhyme, for easy remembering. While information for the striving is lengthy. It’s a quote that could be the page of a book. Think of Mr Smith, who 245years ago wrote a 900+ page stream of thoughts, which later became the basis of modern day Economics. One man, dissecting ideas and reasons that would be wiser than the wisdom of men to come for the next two and a half centuries. Yes, I want to read that. Yes, I want to learn that knowledge, better yet I want to be inspired by the discipline to sit down and write 900+ pages. To develop so much wisdom to forecast the next 200 years. Do you know how smart, how much of a genius you have to be to think and forecast the next two years? Not to talk of 20 or 200 years! How come the “masses” are not taught of people like these? Why is it that the “masses” are more interested in “who’s current, what’s trending, who did what last week?” — do you blame those who push the agenda or those who soak up the agenda?
What do you do when someone tells you your attention span is almost non existent? The masses accept and make it their identity. The social sickness of the aged, the jokes of the elderly “I walked into the room and forgot what I went to look for” became a pass time statement of comfort for healthy children in their twenties. That’s not something to be proud of! Come on!
All the neurology books I’ve read conclude on one thing, nothing (in regards to your healthy brain) is constant. One word: Plasticity!
Your brain learns and relearns, continuously, everyday. So instead of accepting the mumbo jumbo “stats weekly” vomitted onto the masses, you stand up for yourself and decide your mind would be strong. Yes, your attention span would be healthy. Yes, you can read a 900+ book, if it’s not comfortable, don’t matter, you can do it and you will do it. Yes, you can grow a healthy mind, Yes, you can choose what good to define yourself by. You can. You can. You freaking can! Do you get me?
Do you understand what being average means? It means the people did what the average person did. So “Don’t be average” is not a prayer, don’t be average means don’t do what the masses do. Don’t feed your mind what they feed theirs. Or be average, up to you.
Here’s a few more examples on differences in teaching to form a deciphering theme:
Masses: Knowledge is Power. (Sounds true enough, but it’s not useful)
Strivers: Knowledge is power to rise or demise. (Now you know not to consume just any type of knowledge. Being ignorant to certain information can actually save your life.)
Masses: Forgive and Forget. (Haha sure. Foolish people forget. You’re most likely to repeat the mistake you forget. Forgive, yes but don’t be foolish.)
Strivers: Acknowledge, Accept and Move on making sure you don’t get gat the same way, a second time.
Masses: Sowers are reapers (Haha, not they’re not. There’s a long journey between sowing and reaping but the masses would be bored with the details — Sowers can be reapers.)
Strivers: Know the price of what you seek.
Masses: “I’d rather cry in a Lamborghini”
Strivers: I would rather not have a reason to cry. What does it profit a man. . ?
You see, what separates one person from the other is the knowledge they feed on. My appeal to you, is to identify (the best you can) what’s being offered to you and feed (or reject) accordingly.
I’m not advocating you completely ignore your feelings. I’m simply stating you, just like me, have a blind spot. That blindspot is called feelings.
Masses: Do what you want. (Self medication expenses quadrupled)
Strivers: It does not matter what you want. Do what you have to do. (You feel left out. While others are having “fun” living mindlessly, well that’s the price but be encouraged for you’re sowing growth seeds, charting and navigating your future. Opportunity cost.)
If we all went by feelings, the world would not function. Innovations and industries would only be fantasies. There would be no such thing as a good parent. You think most parents want to be up in the middle of the night tending to a crying baby? that gets very irritating and old after two nights in a row. But you do it. You know why? Because it’s something you have to have, so you find a way to be alright with it. If people went by feelings, the divorce rates would skyrocket — hold on, the divorce rates did sky rocket, you know why? People are going by feelings! (well now you know). “Wait a second. . .I don’t feel like this is working out. . .”
That you do not want to do something does not mean the something is bad for you. You might not want to forgive an offender, but forgiving them is not bad for you.
That you do not want to do something does not mean it is good for you either. You might not want to smoke, well smoking isn’t good for you.
What you want to do or what you do not want to do — does not matter. Well, not really. Perspective. I know, a bit harsh, I know. I struggle with it too, do you want to be great? well there you go. Know the price of what you want. You think the President does what he wants? Even better, you think the President says what he wants? Come on. What you want is what’s asked of kids. You’re not a kid. Think what do you have to have? Once that’s understood, now you can discuss, now you can negotiate. If you only negotiate from what you want, you’d be left wanting.
What do you have to have? Do you know? Great. Now we can converse.
