Have you ever noticed how you're allowed to have opinions about anything, as long as it's not something important? You can argue about which Lord of the Rings movie is the best, or what sports team should win and why, and everyone plays along and has fun. But the second you start to talk about anything of actual real importance, many people suddenly clam up and shy away. Why?

Because we've been conditioned that we need to have a certain emotional tone at all times when conversing with other humans. Notice how it is never okay in our society for you to be openly angry about something? Even if you are 100% correct and should be angry? Calmness is seen as paired with rationality, which ignores that passion can be rational sometimes. In our society, passion is generally discouraged unless you are profiting someone else. So you are allowed to have passion for your consumerism and for your job. But never for how bad the Fed is, or how we should end all these illegal wars the US keeps starting for profit. You mention those, and 95% of people will instantly be looking to change the subject out of discomfort. If you are overly passionate about these things, it pushes people away very fast. So the only good approach is to be "light" about it, and just mention it in passing or as part of a joke and then move on.

You must always pretend to be calm, even if you are not and have no reason to be, or else you are seen as a "paranoid looney" who is "off his rocker" and "needs to calm down" and "could be a threat" so on and so forth. People love to think they're better and more logical than someone who is being emotional, especially if American government/corporate propaganda backs them up on their talking points.

So to maintain this required facade of non-anger, people avoid reading and conversing about topics that make them angry, so they better fit in to society. Work gives them enough stress. They want to have friends and succeed in this human world and so on, so they play by society's rules. So they slowly close their mind off to anything controversial to their in-group. They deaden themselves to the ugly realities of the world, day after day. They see everyone around them doing it too, they see the consequences play out for people who got angry for a bit and said something they "shouldn't have". They decide it's the right choice, that being dead inside is what you're "supposed to do" and don't even consider alternatives, especially because those alternatives are very uncomfortable. Once you get to about 30 or 40, you're basically locked in to this mindset forever unless a big life event happens to change your mind.

This is why so many Americans are just quiet about all the terrible shit that is happening. They are just keeping their heads down, trying to succeed. Not only financially, but socially too, which demands this calmness, which demands generally avoiding angry topics and not thinking too deeply about them (or else you might get worked up, someone might see/hear you, and that might hurt your social standing or your income).

On top of it all, the genuinely important topics are so over-laden with emotion by the media to make conversing about them very difficult. For example, the Zionist sway over the US government is pretty important. But even the word "zionist" is so emotionally charged, people guffaw at the mere mention of the word even though they don't know what it means. Even worse, conspiracy forums are filled with hyperbolic garbage like flat earth which they pay to upvote to the top, to discredit the sub and make everyone here look insane. That way people are afraid to come back here after seeing how it looks, and their minds remain closed. They may think it's all just "conspiracy garbage" and throw out the baby with the bathwater.

The discourse about truly important topics is so polarized (by design or not) that it's often difficult to talk to your fellow human beings about it in a regular conversation. It only comes out at 3am after a lot of drinks, because we are all terrified of looking bad in each other's eyes, even though we mostly agree with each other! This is the trick played on us, that makes us each our own emotional island. We're scared that everyone is like the media tells us they are, dangerous and judgmental, so we each silently bear this burden of truth in our own minds. Few have the courage to overcome this fear and speak out in real life (or even online) and even fewer can do it in a way that conforms to the social norms of "calmness". George Carlin did it with humor , and that's why he is worshiped. The emotional packaging of ideas means a lot in our society, maybe more than the ideas themselves. Having our priories so backwards, placing our emotions first and the truth of reality second, will be our downfall. People are literally out of touch with reality, and no one ever "touches" them to bring them back in because generally speaking we're all so scared and offended of each other that we can't connect in a real emotional way anymore. We're each in our own bubbles of denial. So we create our own little echo chambers and cross our fingers that things will work out, which was basically the American mantra starting in the 1970s and beyond. That "eyes wide shut" mentality worked for a few decades, but time is running out for being in denial.

This is the application of divide and conquer, expressed at its fullest. Emotions are much easier to manipulate than ideas and thoughts. Companies figured this out in the 50s and advertisements became about manipulating emotions instead of giving you facts about the product. We as Americans need to increase our IQ, but more importantly we need to increase our EQ and stop falling for the constant emotional manipulation coming from the media. And not only do we need to do it, we need to help others do it. It's time we awaken to our control structures, as a society, and be openly conversational about what is happening instead of hiding in the shadows because we're afraid. Only by learning how the control structures work can we learn to overcome them. And only by overcoming the programmed fear can we begin conversations about these things. This attitude needs to become part of our culture before we can really fix anything else. It's the foundation upon which everything else rests. I can't imagine anything more important than this.

My worry is that everyone has their head so far in the sand that the only thing that will change the path we're on is a catastrophe that suddenly brings reality in to the limelight. If people really tried spreading the word as much as possible we might be able to wake up before the next catastrophe, but seeing as Reality got hung to cheers at the end of that recent South Park episode and how accurate that feels, I don't know how much hope I really have.

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However, it's not all or nothing. A war may be coming further down the road, but the intensity of the war may be able to be mitigated for people who don't deserve to be entangled in it. It's a matter of degree. Perhaps one bombing campaign gets cancelled after public outcry about a particular issue. Maybe caused by a small handful of people daring enough to speak out and make a bit of a fuss. Perhaps the war doesn't last as long because people are wiser about what causes it and are more able to remove the causes, because they were better informed prior to the war.

But in the end, I have come to realize, there are going to be bloodthirsty human beings who want to kill each other. And as long as that is true, there will be wars. I don't really mind if bloodthirsty psychos go kill each other in some remote country, but so many other people get caught up in the fray or tricked in to participating that it becomes a devastating situation.

I kind of look at it like this, war is the new natural selection since humans have essentially conquered nature. Now our culture does the job. If you join a war, you lose. It's a human garbage disposal of sorts, and everyone knows it on some level. Our culture is not our friend, our culture is an intelligence test, and the more you fail the closer you get pushed in to supporting and fighting wars.

What really sucks is the civilians who had nothing to do with it, people who often make up the majority of deaths in wars. These deaths are on all the hands of the people who chose to participate in the war machine. Even if someone were just packaging the bolts sold to bomb companies. People love to pretend they don't have any involvement in the deaths of other people in other countries, when they are quite clearly participating. This is often a result of compartmentalization, they don't tell the bolt guy who the bolts are going to or what product they are used in, and the guy never tries to find out. Do this a million times over and that's how you make a million bombs with only a very few involved truly realizing it. They don't think blood is on their hands, but it is. Ignorance is bliss, eh?

But it's important to also remember this culture towards war is not merely a mirage created by the "elite". People want war, and that's a big reason why it happens. If no one wanted war, it wouldn't happen. If everyone refused to participate, it would never even start. Let the warmongers carry their own rifles. Instead they trick poor people in to doing it for them, by guaranteeing to pay for college, which was made so expensive and necessary in the first place by the actions of those same people. If no one flew the drones, if no one made the bombs, if no one joined the military, wars wouldn't start.

Anyway, just remember, being honest with one person about one thing can start a wildfire effect that could end up waking up tons of people. Why not try? You scared?