Future First

"We are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP."

--Paul Hawken 

In order to address emerging problems and thrive in our rapidly changing world, Canada needs a government that will trade the vestiges of the past for the ideas of tomorrow; abandon its “this-or-that” attitude in favour of balanced solutions; collaborate with its citizens; encourage public participation; and strengthen its weakest links.

The solution to yesterday's problems cannot solve the problems of tomorrow. It should be no surprise that the political parties of yesterday are helpless to address the issues weighing on the minds of Canadians and people around the world. Climate change, income inequality, political and corporate corruption, and the rise of extremist ideologies form a threat, not to any single person, commercial entity, or political party, nor even to a single nation, but to all humans.

For the past 200 years we have operated within the confines of a socio-economic system forged in the Industrial Age. Such systems are inherently rigid, hierarchical, and secretive. They discourage public participation and encourage the fragmentation and compartmentalization of information. The left hand never knows what the right hand is doing, allowing for rampant corruption.

“What is the alternative?” you may ask. “Free market capitalism and representative democracy may not be perfect but they are better than everything else we tried in the past.”

No one will argue that our current paradigm is superior to the ones created by feudalism, despotism, fascism, and communism. Does this mean we should accept our flawed system as it is because "it's the best one around?"

At one point in time, the Model T was the best automobile around. Based on the above logic, we should all be driving Model T's right now.

Why aren't we?

Because we are constantly learning new things and applying them to our industries and everyday lives. We're constantly innovating and developing new technologies. Everything in the world, from automobiles to computers, is in a state of perpetual improvement.

Except our government.

Our government has regressed. It has become less efficient, less accountable, and less functional. It has lost sight of its purpose--representing the people--and has become a selfish organism concerned with one thing only: self-preservation. Rather than invest in the future, our government--and many other governments across the world--is borrowing from our future in order to finance its selfish endeavours in the present.

It's time to put the future first.

Our detractors will accuse us of oversimplifying issues. They will call into question our ability to lead and cite our lack of experience as proof. They will say that the people cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves.

Yet who could be better at representing the people than the people themselves? We've put our trust in career politicians and look where it has landed us! What started as a noble idea—a political system that gives voice to the masses—has devolved into a corrupt oligarchy bent on preserving its power and wealth at all cost.

Elected officials no longer work for the people: they work for industries, corporations, special interest groups, and above all else, themselves. They do not make informed decisions based on facts: they make decisions based on belief systems and subjective ideologies.

The time has come for us to rise up and form a government that works for all people, not just a select few. Together we can restore Canada's reputation on the international stage as a forward-thinking, socially conscious, and economically robust nation.

We can lead by example. We can show the world that a country can preserve the environment and stimulate its economy; that the people, when working together toward a common purpose, can do a better job than career politicians; that socialism and capitalism can and should co-exist; that lifting the poor and downtrodden out of misery does not require taxing the rich; that transparency is always better than secrecy; and that evidence always trumps ideology when making decisions that concern the masses.

We can embody these ideals as a people and a nation. We can use them to build something remarkable, admirable, functional, and valuable: the world's first  truly Innovative State. We can spread these ideals outward to our neighbours and watch as the world rearranges itself from a place of violence and conflict to a place of peace and cooperation.

I know it sounds Utopian but we're already halfway there.

We have entered the Information Age. Some institutions are fighting hard to keep us trapped in the past but together we form an irresistible force. If we move as a collective those institutions will be powerless to stop us.

As Napoleon Hill said, "Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds."

True, there are obstacles barring our path, but so what? Our ancestors overcame larger obstacles with less. We are fortunate to be alive in this age of technological wonder. We can start a revolution without leaving our homes and take power without shedding a single drop of blood. We are part of the first generation of humans capable of liberating themselves from oppression.

We need only act.

And if you feel that the obstacles before us are insurmountable, that we're better off just settling for what we have, remember these words from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius:

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Let's take the obstacles barring our path and transform them into advantages. Let's leverage those advantages and achieve victory.

Together we can change this country--and the world--for the better. Together we can drag the rest of our society into a world of plentitude, peace, and freedom.

#togetherwecan

Delusion of Consciousness

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. 

--Albert Einstein

You're not your ancestors.

You're not your culture.

You're not your beliefs.

You're not your government, country, or flag.

You're not the labels forced upon you by society.

You're not even an individual. You see yourself as distinct, as whole, as singular, as separate from your fellow humans and your environment, but this is a delusion of your consciousness.

This delusion robs you of your humanity. It distorts your perspective. It tricks you into seeing an enemy in the face of your brother. It causes you to identify with falsehoods and trivial matters. 

Stop attaching yourself to things that aren't you. Stop perpetuating the sins of your fathers. Wake up and do better than your predecessors.

Evolve.

We all come from the same source. Whether you believe that source is Adam, the first man, or a single-cell prokaryote that came to life 3.5 billion years ago, it makes no difference: you agree that we are all related. Look around you at the war, genocide, poverty, famine, and pollution.

Why is our family so dysfunctional?

All humans know love and fear, joy and suffering, hope and despair. Recognize yourself in the face of your so-called enemy. See that they are, on the most basic level, no different from you. They yearn to live, loath to suffer, and pursue happiness.

Beneath your religious beliefs, ethnic identity, cultural conditioning, judgments, biases, and petty grudges, aren't you the exact same? If you loath to suffer, how can you justify making others suffer? If you yearn to live, how can you justify taking the life of another?

So long as a corrupt few succeed in convincing you that we're all different, that we can't get along, and that our well-being and survival depends on the suffering and death of others, we will never know peace. In Ephesians 6:12, Paul writes:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places].

Greed and ignorance are the powers against which we wrestle.

Greed is a sickness that corrupts men to their very core. It is an insatiable hunger for power that overrides all other desires and decencies. Ignorance, on the other hand, allows the greedy to spread their lies, thereby facilitating their actions. Do you not question why governments are always cutting funds to public education, the one thing that could improve the lives of the masses?

The corrupt spread lies to muddle your identity. Any time you identify as a patriot, God-fearing Christian, libertarian, or anything else that isn't truly you, you are being mislead. False labels are like double-agents; they infiltrate your psyche, sabotage your personality, and create turmoil within. The real you cannot thrive in such a chaotic environment.

As the psalmist wrote, "Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it." Not for God and the reward of heaven but for yourself, here and now, and for your brothers and sisters across the world.

Everything is made up of the same universal coding, 1's and 0's stacked in a dizzying array of configurations. We see differences by virtue of imperfect sense-organs. We feel solid matter where there is empty space. We see colour where light strikes pigment and rebounds into our eyes. We smell and taste particles with the little receptors in our noses and mouths. We touch surfaces and judge them smooth or rough, yet these are merely signals from nerve to mind.

All is illusion. Nothing is as it seems.

What you call reality is only your imperfect and subjective interpretation of the Truth, which is this: the universe manifests itself through matter and energy, but through humans it also experiences itself.

As Alan Watts wrote:

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

Come together now. Stop killing one another over superficial and illusory differences. The words "Israelite" and "Palestinian" are symbols attached to vague meaning. We need not be subject to words and labels. We need not recognize imaginary lines drawn by dead men. We need not resort to violence and conflict to resolve our quarrels.

We can work together instead of against each other.

There can be no peace in the world until we find peace within ourselves, and this is impossible to do so long as we believe the lie of individuality. Awaken the light inside yourself and dispel the delusion of your consciousness.

Dissolve your ego. There is no "you," only the collective of which you are a part.

/rant over

Metaphor

Have you ever had a genuine spiritual experience?

No, I don't mean speaking in tongues or hearing a deity's voice in your head--that's called being crazy. What I mean is coming face to face with something profound, mysterious, or unimaginably beautiful and experiencing a moment of peace and wordless understanding.

The feeling eludes definition. Trying to grasp it with your mind simply disperses it back into the ether, leaving behind an imperfect memory. If you tried, you might describe it with words like "awe," "reverence," "wonder," or "zen."

People often experience such moments while deeply pondering biblical scripture. The words, chosen and arranged carefully by people who were well-versed in the language of the spirit, allow the reader to slip through the doors of symbolism and into the deeper meaning hidden within.

That's the core of every spiritual experience: cutting through falsehood, illusion, and symbolism to glimpse the guiding principle that governs and underlies all things.

For a brief moment, you break through the barrier and reconnect, if only briefly, to the source.

Religion is not the only door through which one may experience revelation. One may find it by meditating, stumbling upon a scene of natural beauty, reading an eloquent line of poetry, or contemplating ideas related to the guiding principle.

For me, there is no better way to incur a genuine spiritual experience than by studying the vastness, majesty, and complexity of the universe, and realizing how blessed we are to experience it for this brief moment of awareness.

It's no coincidence that our ancestors felt drawn to the night sky, that the dancing lights and their movements became the first human myths, and that those myths turned into religions. Even back then we sensed that we were a part of something greater than ourselves.

Just how great is that "something?"

Forget the universe for a moment and think only of our Milky Way galaxy, which measures 120,000 light years in diameter. It contains between 100 and 400 billions stars held together in a whirling spiral by the immense gravitational pull of the super-massive black hole at its center. Oh, and it's hurtling through space toward the Andromeda galaxy at 110 kilometers per second. Even at this velocity, the collision won't occur for another 4 billion years or so.

Delve down to the subatomic and here too you will find a micro-cosmos filled with mind blowing factoids. Particles pop in and out of existence and all matter is composed almost entirely of empty space. Want a real spiritual experience? Learn about string theory.

It should come as no surprise that many great scientists and philosophers have come to regard the universe itself as a divine being of sorts. By using reason, thinkers throughout history have been able to scratch and peel away reality's thin veneer, revealing the Truth beneath.

Far from being at odds with spirituality, science actually complements it.

If a greater understanding of space, evolution, nature, biology, and the human mind fills you with awe, reverence, and/or wonder, then you may be a pantheist. And you're in very good company, too. Some of the greatest thinkers in human history were also pantheists.

What is Pantheism?

Pantheism is the fusing together of science and spirituality. It is the recognition of something great, mysterious, and holy in the inner-workings of the cosmos. 

Don't let the "theism" at the end of the word fool you: pantheism isn't a religion. There's no doctrine, church, or holy book. Pantheists don't worship Yahweh or take the Bible as literal truth.

The star-studded firmament is the pantheist's Sistine Chapel; the secluded wood is her temple; science is her scripture.

Who is her God? Let's ask our good friend Seneca:

If ever you have come upon a grove that is full of ancient trees which have grown to an unusual height, shutting out a view of the sky by a veil of pleached and intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest, the seclusion of the spot, and your marvel at the thick unbroken shade in the midst of the open spaces, will prove to you the presence of a deity.

Nature--and by extension, the universe--is the pantheistic God.

Which begs the question: what if God was always meant to be a metaphor for the universe? What if our ancestors were trying to verbalize what they saw above and felt within? It may not be apparent at first, but God and the universe have a lot in common.

God is without maker; the universe appears to be the same.

God is everywhere at all times; so is the universe.

God is an intelligent designer; so is the universe. Evolution is the universe's unseen hands: with them, it took three elements--hydrogen, helium, and a pinch of lithium--and made all the marvels you see around you.

In Romans 8:11, the apostle Paul writes: "The Spirit of God lives in you." In 1 Corinthians 3:16, he writes: "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" 2 Timothy 1:14: "Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." And so on.

Seneca, who influenced the early Christian movement, wrote the following: "God is near you, he is with you, he is within you."

What about the universe? According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, rock star astrophysicist and host of the TV show Cosmos:

We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us. 

God is a stickler for rules. So is the universe! And whereas God's rules are often nonsensical or arbitrary, the universe's rules are measurable, testable, and constant. Gravity, the speed of light, evolution, thermodynamics, and a slew of other laws govern matter at every level, from the subatomic to the cosmological.

God speaks through divine revelation; the universe speaks through mathematics.

God loves to play favorites. Jews, Muslims, and Christians--not to mention the countless sects fragmenting each of these groups--all claim to be the chosen people of God.

The universe plays favorites, too. It has selected humanity to inherit its most valuable gift--a piece of its own ruling faculty, which the ancients called the Logos. How do we know this? Look around you. No other animal on earth has the ability to reason, to theorize, to test, to create, to unravel complex problems, and to transform its environment. No other animal has discovered a way to decipher the universe's secret language.

Make no mistake: we are not special in the universe's eyes. It did not knowingly choose us to receive its gift. Circumstance made us beneficiaries; we are free to use our inheritance for good or for ill, and in doing so we decide our own fate.

***

So when a pantheist refers to God, he isn't talking about the Abrahamic God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims; he refers to the pantheistic God of Lucius Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and many others.

Let's be real: he's a closet pantheist.

The pantheistic God won't intervene in our affairs. It won't bring us salvation or damnation. It gave us a powerful tool and set us loose. It is entirely up to us to learn how to use this tool and put it to good use. If enough people can do this, we may one day bring everlasting peace to earth without the aid of an imaginary sky-father.

/rant over

Mantra

Whenever you feel anxious, worried, inadequate, helpless, or overwhelmed, let this be your mantra: to make the best out of every situation and do the best you can with what you're given.

Repeat your mantra. Let it be your prayer, your incantation, your spell of protection.

Nothing else matters. Everything else is superfluous. Here's why.

The things in your life can be divided into three categories: the stuff that's completely outside of your control, the stuff that's partially in your control, and the stuff that's entirely in your control.

If an asteroid slams into the earth right now, for example, that's out of your control. Likewise, if a tornado comes screaming through your neighborhood, or if an earthquake brings your house down on your head, or if the global economy crashes, you can't do anything to stop it.

99.999999% of the universe is unknown and the .000001% we know about is mostly random chaos. Don't waste energy worrying about what might happen, or what has already happened. Instead, recite your line: do your best with what you're given.

People around the world experience natural disaster, war, poverty, and disease on a daily basis. How do they deal with such hardships? They mourn. They endure. They pick up the pieces. They march through horror, oppression, and atrocity. But more importantly, they persevere.

They do their best with what the universe has given them, even when what they've been given sucks. Some people get dealt a terrible hand right off the start. Others never get to play their cards because some warlord comes in and butchers their entire family or a tsunami sweeps everyone they knew into the sea.

Did these people worry beforehand? Would it matter if they did? No. What matters is that bad stuff went down and they dealt with the situation as best they could.

Now some things can be harnessed but not fully controlled. They can be tamed, sometimes briefly, sometimes barely, and be made to work for you. These things are fleeting and fickle. They are never completely secure in your grasp, so if you start to depend on them for a sense of self or happiness, you're definitely going to be bummed out sooner or later.

If you apply for a job, for example, you can partially control the outcome. Your appearance, mannerisms, and words can all contribute to your getting the gig. You have control over those things.

The person interviewing you, on the other hand, is a wildcard. You cannot predict with any real accuracy how they will perceive you. Certainly dressing the part and being prepared are good ways to stack the deck in your favor, but what if you remind your future boss of someone they despise? What if you make an offhand comment that somehow offends them? What if they don't like your cultural background, belief system, way of speaking, tone of voice, or any other number of things you can't anticipate?

The key in these types of situations is to identify the things you control and focus all your energy into them. Everything else is merely a distraction that will throw you off the only mission that counts: using the tools at your disposal to deal with each situation as it comes, without trepidation, dread, anger, or bitterness.

So what do you control, anyway? 

The thoughts in your head, the words that come out of your mouth, and the actions you take; those are the only things you have full control over.

That's it. Everything else is either only partially in your control or completely outside of it.

By focusing your energy into the things you can control, you do what everyone else is doing--the best they can--only better. We all cope with tragedy, misfortune, illness, and irritations, only most of us do it poorly and on a subconscious level. We let our conscious mind get bogged down with useless thoughts ("I wish this person were alive again;" "I wish the pain would go away;" "why does this always happen to me?") when we should be putting it to work on the one thing that matters: the present moment.

Overcoming whatever challenge is in front of you. Making the best out of a bad situation. Learning from past mistakes and moving forward without emotional luggage.

Doing the best with what you're given means taking the hand you were dealt--your biological, cultural, and personal identity, all of which was formed without your consent--and honing it to a fine edge. It means constantly working at being the best possible you there is, weeding out flaws, irrational beliefs, judgments, and biases, while fortifying your best qualities.

You may not be able to control much, but by controlling what you can--yourself--you're doing the next best thing. You're inoculating yourself against the external world. No matter what happens, whether death, disaster, misfortune, failure, betrayal, or loss, you know that you have done everything in your power to prepare for and deal with it optimally.


You'll still grieve. You'll still know moments of frustration, anger, and spite. But you will have a tight leash on such emotions. You will be able to dismiss them back into the basement at a moment's notice.

And suddenly, your sense of self-worth and happiness will cease to depend on external conditions. You will learn to do as Seneca said, to praise the quality within yourself, the quality "which cannot be given or snatched away, that which is peculiar" to you and you alone.

Each one of us is riding the same wave--the present moment--as it rushes forward; behind this wave is the past and before it, the future. Only the present moment is yours and it will sweep you along helplessly unless you learn to ride it. If you master yourself you will become like a surfer, carving a path along the wave's edge and taking it where you wish.

Remember your mantra. Make the best out of every situation; do the best with what you're given. Focus on the things within your grasp and watch as the universe bends to your will.

/rant over

Lost Souls (Letters from the Past II)

When I was 21, I thought the only way to establish my identity as an adult was to move away. In order to make a name for myself and carve out a place in the real world, I thought I had to go work in a foreign country or cut my teeth in the Big City.

Call it wanderlust, a misguided sense of adventure, or just foolish youth.

Luckily I came to my senses before buying a plane ticket. I was still living at home at the time; my mom cooked all my meals and still did my laundry. Hell, she even made my bed.

Who was I kidding? I could never make it on my own in a distant land and I knew it.

The urge to strike out on your own and make a fresh start is most common. It's the remnant of a long-lost rite of passage. It symbolizes your break from parental custody, your first attempt to stand on your own.

I've known many people who, in their youth, went far and wide across provinces, countries, and continents. Some had very good reasons: they pursued job offers, rejoined loved ones, or answered the call to adventure. Others, like myself, sought some missing piece in their lives. Restless and incomplete, they travelled to resolve internal conflicts they could barely understand.

They thought to escape hardship or find happiness, that elusive prize at the top of everyone's wish-list.

Oh ye restless wanderers!

You probably know what I'm going to say next but I'll say it again: happiness isn't out there; it's inside each and everyone of us, and until we find it there, treasures will turn to ash in our hands.

Seneca the Younger, the Stoic philosopher who doubled as emperor Nero's tutor and adviser in the first century CE, shared a similar view. In a letter to his globe-trotting friend Lucilius, Seneca wrote the following:

Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene, you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.

If you've fallen for this trick of the mind before, don't feel bad: Seneca's letter is proof that people have been chasing happiness ineffectually for centuries. Seneca's tongue-lashing is only beginning though. He goes on:

Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels. 

Traveling won't make you happy because you always take the source of your unhappiness with you: yourself.

What pleasure is there in seeing new lands? In surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee alongside yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

Until you get your mind right and find happiness within yourself, you wont find any pleasure in exotic destinations or world-famous landmarks. In fact, Seneca believes that such travels will only aggravate you further:

You wander hither and yon to rid yourself of the burden that rests upon you, though it becomes more troublesome by reason of your restlessness, just as in a ship the cargo when stationary makes no trouble, but when it shifts to this side and that, it causes the vessel to heel more quickly in the direction where it has settled.

If, on the other hand, you learn to know and love yourself, live in accordance to nature, and fulfil your purpose in this world,

all change of scene will become pleasant; though you may be driven to the uttermost ends of the earth, in whatever corner of a savage land you find yourself, that place, however forbidding, will be to you a hospitable abode. 

Once you achieve internal happiness, you find joy in every place. You learn to see the beauty that surrounds you. Your gripes fade or vanish altogether. Quarrels cease to plague your mind. Troublesome emotions appear with decreasing frequency until the mind becomes perfectly still.

As it is, however, you are not journeying; you are drifting and being driven, only exchanging one place for another, although that which you seek--to live well--is found everywhere.

And then, to summarize, Seneca drops this gem:

The person you are matters more than the place to which you go.

I believe it was Too $hort, the prolific Oakland rapper, who said "It ain't where you from/it's how you do it where you at." How remarkably Stoic of him!

Lastly, Seneca beckons us to

Live in this belief: "I am not born for any one corner of the universe; this whole world is my country."

The carrot at the end of your stick doesn't have to be a distant shore. It can be a bigger house, a younger wife, a better job, whatever. The principle laid out by Seneca applies in all of these situations. Before seeking happiness externally, assess your own internal condition.

How can you experience joy if your heart is joyless? How can you love another if you don't love yourself?

After setting yourself straight, you will find yourself suddenly surrounded by blessings.

"Where did they come from?" you will ask. They were crowding around you this whole time; you simply lacked the ability to see and appreciate them.

/rant over

Mind Hack

I am an enthusiastic Darwinian, but I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene. 

- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

Memes are to the mind what genes are to the body.

While genes are molecular units of hereditary information, memes are, to paraphrase Terrence McKenna, the smallest unit of information forming a coherent idea.

Both must find hosts in order to survive, replicate, and evolve. Both are transmitted from person to person and both are subject to mutations.

Genes are the blueprints that shape the biology of our planet, from the smallest microbes to the largest dinosaurs and everything in between. Memes, on the other hand, shape the way we think and interact with each other. They are cultural and psychological DNA, the building blocks of society, technology, and belief.

Right about now you might be asking yourself, "If memes are so important, why doesn't anyone talk about them? Where are all the meme theorists? Why aren't they educating the public?"

People readily accept the existence of genes, and rightfully so; because they can be physically detected, classified, and studied, scientists have a very good understanding of the role they play in the formation and evolution of life.

Memes are immaterial. They cannot be detected by our dull senses. We can't put a meme under a microscope and say "There it is!" As a result, memetics is a neglected and oft misunderstood field of study.

The only way to study memes is to study their effect on the material world, and here we have a plethora of evidence. Memes are only invisible while they float around the memesphere. As soon as one finds its way into your mind, it becomes manifest, showing itself in a variety of ways.

Take the spear meme, for instance. The idea of a long stick with a pointy rock secured at its end was ephemeral and completely useless until our ancestor homo heidelbergensis brought the idea to life.

This is how a meme secures a spot in your mind and ensures its long-term survival. It convinces you that it will render a valuable service.

The spear meme's service is indisputable.

Spears have been humankind's go-to instrument of war and hunting for the better part of 300,000 years. Only recently has this indispensable tool been replaced by more advanced weaponry and despite this demotion, the spear maintains a hold on the public imagination. Spears are everywhere: in video games, movies, books, and TV shows.

No meme provides its service for free though; each one demands something in exchange. In addition to reserving space in your mind, some memes demand changes to your behaviour. Think of this as a downpayment of sorts: "do this, say this, and think this way, and in return I will (eventually) give you [insert reward here].

A diet plan is a great example of this kind of meme. It promises that if you (don't) eat (drink) [less/more] [calories/carbs/fat] [leafy greens/raw foods/vegetables/protein] you will get [leaner/thinner/healthier/yoked]. Notice how it works? You don't get to be yoked until you've been doing all the other stuff for an extended period of time. The diet meme requires a downpayment of discipline and faith in exchange for its potential gift.

With diets, you can gauge the results for yourself. You can track the weight you've lost or the sizes you've dropped. You know whether the meme is making good on its promise or not.

This isn't the case with all memes. Some demand a substantial downpayment and promise distant rewards that can't be measured or even detected. Some memes--let's call them con artists--survive by virtue of deception. They dupe unsuspecting hosts into believing that they will get something so amazing and valuable, it defies detection.

During the course of its evolution, the con artist has devised clever ways to exploit your most basic emotions and urges. It taps into your insecurities and feeds your ego, bypassing whatever defences you have. It's a Trojan Horse; once inside your mind, it unloads harmful and contradictory ideas that pollute your thoughts.

Love those who hate you, the con artist urges, and in the same breath: hate those who are different from you! If allowed to flourish, such memes will do great damage to your rational mind.

How should you go about defending yourself against such memes?

First, know thyself. You can't defend a fortress if you don't know its layout. Map out your inner citadel. Learn who you really are--your likes, dislikes, biases, skills, flaws, weaknesses, beliefs, and habits. Explore the myriad ways in which your mind and senses can and frequently will deceive you. Figure out how your conscious and subconscious mind interact together and how your past experiences affect your perception.

Second, master your emotions. Not all of them, mind you: just the toxic ones like hate, anger, jealousy, bitterness, self-pity, and despair. These do nothing but cloud your judgment and hinder your ability to overcome whatever obstacle has caused them to appear in the first place.

Lastly, call into question your most cherished and long-held beliefs. Examine the ideas you take for granted, the ones that knock around your mind on a regular basis. Sever your emotional connection to these memes and scrutinize them objectively.

Remember that every idea, opinion, fashion trend, technological advancement, and belief-system is just a selfish meme looking to survive. Some have valuable rewards to offer, many do not, and a select few do more harm than good.

It is your duty to appraise ideas, take them apart, examine their components, and ascertain how they work.

Only after you have done these things should you be prepared to let a meme into your inner citadel.

/rant over