mass mentality ~ the disconnection of our ancestrial families

Way back in the olden days, the golden days where there was more harmony among villages, tribes… we supported one another in our immediate and then ancestral lives.

The Native Americans live by the ideal of “Seven Generations” … living today, acting through today, as if you were building the future generations with what was being done in the present moment. They were! This type of “forward thinking” was preservation in action, doing or not doing in the present moment with the constant mindfulness of the impact each and every action has…. the beauty and abundance of live on the Great Mother Earth. Not what every action can or will do… assumed or presumed… but plane and simply HAS, as proven down through the ancestral generations! Exactly like the proverbial drop into the pond, rings and rings rippling out until the energy of the intensity of the gravitational pull on the mass of that drop of water is dispelled, radiating out, far past our human ability to see. The power of now…. carpe diem, no time like the present……

In the early settlements of the “villages” of New York, San Francisco and scads of founding cities all across the United States, people of certain ethnicities tended to collect together, establishing neighborhoods, where even though they were all on the “new frontier” of a new land, a new country, a new life and a new start, they could feel a sense of security in the cohesive familiarity of those from the same “tribe”, “the old country”, the old neighborhood, village, back home. There was comfort in that familiarity as they all stood on the frontier of the unknown that loomed vastly before them in this new land. There was comfort in the reliability of the old man in the apartment next door who owned the butcher shop down on the corner where you bought your meats each day fresh as could be. There was comfort in that community and how even though it did not resemble tribal villages of old, they were the “new and improved” versions of the old ways, with the added caveat of the bright, fresh, newborn promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a free land attached. There was comfort in the fact that we were all in this together. Some would survive, some would not… but at the very least, they had the courage to give it a go, take a chance, and risk it all to venture out into that very unknown, to embrace the opportunity to really make something of oneself, and the self satisfaction that came along with it. That ingenuity, that courage, that faith and relentlessness in that very pursuit would not only challenge each and everyone to their limit, but would eventually reward them for their very courage of conviction, to venture out, but to stay connected to the tribe, home. To go exploring, but to not forget from where you have come, because where you have come from, is exactly what has shaped who you are now… those very experiences become our tools of life in the ‘”belt” that we wear to life’s daily “battles”. To have roots, and wings…. the two greatest things a parent, a tribe can give a child…. as we attempt to appease our own hearts as parents when the time comes to push the “little birdies” out of the nest. In a community, this is buffered by the knowledge and dependence upon the familiarity of the community’s people to be around and about, eyes keeping watch over one another… someone always around to help if there is a need. These are the very things that keep us connected to our humanity, and ultimately the stewardship of Our Great Mother Earth.

As the populations of success soared, we began the slow uphill climb into not only prosperity, but also mass mentality. We had to find ways of being able to address the masses in all ways… and as we did this very thing with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, we more rapidly than ever before, began the “de-humanization” of people, then animals, then plants, and then the very ground we walk upon by building cement cities that further disenfranchised us for the nourishment of the very Earth beneath our feet. Big Brother had arrived, long before 1984 and we did not see any of it as it slowly developed over three, four generations, long past when anyone could remember, because we had forgotten how to tell stories and keep the ancestral generations alive. American became the “melting pot” alright, far past the coined meaning of the mixing of many ethnicities and cultures all in one place at one time. Unfortunately, that “melting pot” also became the means by which the ethnicities have become diluted, “watered down” versions of the strength, courage and wisdom long built and worked into the various proud world cultures over many, many generations despite differences in race, creed or color.

Venturing out became easier and faster with the invention of the automobile, airplanes and trains and we could go farther and faster away from our homes, our families and friends, and ourselves, than ever before to further the fracturing of our ancestral beginnings, the “stories that keep us belonging”… as little aboriginal “half-cast”, creamy Nullah says in the recent film “Australia” . He is right. The ancestral traditions and the stories of the events surrounding those traditions kept secure an individual’s sense of self and belonging somewhere, somehow, some time, to someone. And that is what makes us….. us, because we each are the made of the sum total of the ways and means of the past generations and what they did to preserve the future generations…. or not, like what has occurred in the past 100 years. To our grave detriment, ultimately pushing us to the very brink of extinction through the sightless, thoughtless perpetuation of the “pursuit of money” and the loss of the very meaning of life through belonging in that very pursuit. It becomes obvious very quickly that this way of being degenerates the true harmonious quality of life when our focus shifts to the immediate verses the long, long term…. seven generations out.

The families of the Mafia, have demonstrated an attempt to do both… mixing family tradition with enterprise…. too bad the profitable “enterprises” are corrupt and twisted, and unfortunately costing life, limb and the pursuit of happiness and belonging for many… especially the “no bodies” at the very bottom of the hierarchical heap. We would do well to take example from indigenous tribes who have lived long throughout thousands of generations, evolving gently upward into a symbiotic existence with all other life surrounding them…. in harmony, simplicity and mindfulness of one another and others right to life at all times.

As Wal-Marts spring up everywhere, and Starbucks races to become the biggest coffee conglomerate of all time, simultaneously addicting us to their particular brand of “speed”… we maintain the mass mentality… and you are consciously or unconsciously relegated to just a number in line waiting for that extra special “Doppio, Grande, Macchiato Freddo low-fat, mocha with a extra shot of espresso Latte” because you are in a hurry and have to get to that very important (because everything is more important than what is really important) meeting that will ultimately prove whether or not you are a man, or a woman with a man’s “balls” to do the job as cut-throat as possible, edging out the competitor at all cost, all the while jacked up out of your brain because you just slammed that “Doppio, Grande, Macchiato Freddo low-fat mocha with a double shot of espresso Latte”… and I don’t know about you…. but I am now exhausted. And totally dejected, depressed, dehumanized and devalued as a person, let alone a human being with some shred of love and caring within my heart. I won’t go near a Starbucks, or Peets, or any other coffee addiction site for that very reason. Could we get any more impersonal, rushed, jacked-up and dehumanizingly retarded as we main-line our third, or fourth cup of liquid speed for the day…. believing all the while that this somehow will give us the energy, the stamina, the rush that will ultimately substitute for a good meal full of the alternative, vitamins, rather than cause us to crash as our body rebounds from the upward rush, down into a exhausted slump within hours…. hence, another cup of coffee seems to be in order! To add insult to injury… we are making these “entrepreneurs” at the top, fat cats, while the coffee pickers in the south of whatever country barely make a dollar or two for the efforts to keep your supply of liquid speed abundant. Go ahead, you enjoy your coffee while the pickers try to scrape together enough to provide an impoverished existence for their families, their villages. But you don’t have time to see all that right now…. you just need that cup of coffee… in order to go present your campaign that will further dehumanize people through mass sales, in a mass mentality world. No matter, you will have your dinner on the table tonight and getting “yours” after all, is really what it is all about, isn’t it? Isn’t that what exploring the “new frontier”, venturing out from the tribe, is all about? We only forgot one thing…. to return home… to our roots… the very things that our familial traditions keep us fed with… keep us belonging. But no mind…. we’ll get around to that tomorrow, maybe… if that meeting goes alright and all pretentiousness is quelled and you can go to sleep with a false sense that everything in your “little world” is ok… at least for another day. Tomorrow, you’ll go out to battle again… and if there is enough time afterwards, maybe you can get by to see mom and dad, or take your little five year old daughter to the park to swing in the waning summer afternoon light. But no… it is looking like there just isn’t going to be enough time for that today.

Mass mentality equals dehumanization! We are ALL in the middle of it, and still we do not see just how very much it is impacting and influencing us all in very negative, disconnecting, disenfranchising ways. Open your eyes…. Get another shot of coffee if that is what it will take!