Why Are You Still Following the "Tribe" Mentality?
Today we are going to explore something that is missing from most people's lives simply because they are too lazy to do it - and that would be critical thinking. It takes real brain energy to actually come to one’s own conclusions about life and the way that one would best be served in living it.
The problem these days is that most people believe that education is based on how well a person can regurgitate a bunch of meaningless data as compared to coming up with original ways to approach problems - original ways to create a life that is fun and fulfilling and instead of buying into the dogma that is stated throughout the culture in which one lives. Folks who live in this fashion never get beyond ‘tribe’ mentality which is only stage 3 on the Graves Value Scale. When one is in a tribe, one has certain responsibilities which begin at a very young age. There are certain life passages as one grows that are ritualized which all require a certain form of comportment to fit in, because if one is unable to fit in, one is unable to survive, quite literally.
Today, we have other means of 'tribal' behavior most of which come to you in the form of the media outlets you follow, the religious or spiritual beliefs and practices followed, the advertising you allow to determine how you spend your income, government protocols and any other entity that tells you what you need to do to fit their concept of what is expected as in dealing with all the professions especially those that have to do with healthcare and finance.
There are very few original thinkers in any generation, yet, these are the folks that truly moved the culture, the abilities of others forward with their ‘crazy outlandish’ ideas till the first adopters followed the movement, and decades later others finally saw the positive influence of the new ‘idea.”
I have always thought of myself as an innovator because I never fit in with the masses concepts of what is ‘true’ what is ‘real’ what is ‘fact’ because much of what was being poured down my throat as meeting these concepts made little to no sense to my mind and still don’t to this day. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I needed a lot more help to learn that which most find rather easy to learn in learning to talk and fulfilling the requirements for elementary and high school. Maybe it is because I learned from my mom not to necessarily believe what one is told by the so-called experts as in the fact that doctors know next to nothing about mediation where the pharmacist is an expert in that area of knowledge. The doctors get it wrong more often than correct for that reason as well as the faked results based on a conflict of interest in those that are making that which is to be sold and doing the research to 'prove the efficacy of that thing that is to be brought to market. That standardized test meaning nothing when it comes to intelligence as my mother knew I was very intelligent by the conversations we had and the intelligence of my friends who would not be attracted to me if I was a bore not being able to understand their view of the world. Or, the influence of my dad who was very clear that working in a boring job rushing into the city every day for an hour commute each way as most of the businessmen in our community and in his practice were doing. Worse living in the congested noise and filth that cities produce every day. He experienced that having been brought up in Brooklyn from 1923 till he finally got to the suburb of Mount Kisco where he located his dental practice and raised his family in the mid-1950s. He was clear that he didn't want someone else owning his time and therefore his life - he was unwilling to sign up for that sort of existence. Instead, he had dreams of becoming a dentist from the age of 5 in 1928 when it was still a pretty gory field but he saw the beauty in giving people great smiles and loved the idea of bringing together art (crafting of the crowns) and the biological and chemical science that medicine is based on. The idea of creating his own schedule for work and play along with the locality of his business (a 5-minute drive from his home) meant freedom for him. I feel very lucky that I came from parents who understood these truths for what they are being non-conformist in their own ways for their own reasons.
The one thing that I tell every kid that I mentor in some fashion is that there is no one way to live life and that over one’s life things are going to change so roll with it and make sure you are doing that which you love to be doing because it is interesting and fulfilling to you. It really doesn’t matter how difficult it is, because as I see it, one picks their own poison - work a job every day that you are not invested in for someone else, or create your own which certainly has its own ups and downs. Self-employment is the manner in which the world is going with the demise of the large corporations regardless of their overly inflated monetary values due to the governments' need to falsely inflate the numbers - it is a system that is full of misguided and greedy folks that have no respect for the majority of those who falsely believe they can beat a system that is against the majority because the majority don’t understand how to play the system. We have heard from even those who are very intelligent who have been duped by their belief in others ability and shall I say brainwashing by those who state they know better how to invest the money - which in 95% of cases is utterly untrue - because many financial advisors - so self-proclaimed have no investments of their own - so one has to ask the question why one would be following this advice?
Now, I am a person who never fell for the whole 401K garbage once I learned from the insiders what the true cost of having one was - mainly many hidden costs and by the way, the government controls it as it will tell you when you can take your own savings and how much and what the taxes that are required for you to extract your own hard saved money. But, sadly the masses don’t realize that because...well...they never looked for those who were once a part of the system and saw the reality behind the curtains.
The whole concept of retirement goes against the way we humans have been created to live. Retirement was brought in so that the next generation would be able to fill the jobs of the retired - for the sake of keeping the economy going. However, we know that within 6 years those who had meaningful jobs, died - no longer having a purpose to fill, no longer knowing what to do with all the hours that were used for commuting to work and being at work. So, why would anyone truly choose to retire, unless of course, it was just a matter of following the ‘tribe' mentality initiating the false beliefs of what is expected and then fulfilling those particular roles - which for about 70-80% of the population of workers in the western world has brought over commitments financially speaking while they kept up with the Jones's instead of following their own inner guidance to create some real ‘art’ by being ‘artful’ in how they created their lives.
Because, the reality is that owning crap no matter how fancy, how expensive is never going to fulfill a person - it is life’s experiences that create the memories that will with make for a fulfilling life, or a life filled with regret for not having done those things that were always desired and never fulfilled. It was all the time that was never spent with one's loved ones letting them know in words and deeds how much they meant to them. It was all the time spent worrying about crap that was never ‘truly important instead of spending one’s energy on those things that are ‘truly important.’
It is about time people started to ‘awaken’ to the realities versus the falsehoods proclaimed as truths and instead find the real truth - for each individual person - however that takes some deep thinking... maybe we could call that critical thinking and that of course takes some real energy to discern…are you up to it, yet?