Still on the subject of reality, I have already noted that reality is a relative concept, but it is also dynamic. Each person can come to control their reality, to adapt it and to change it. Your reality will alter with your environment and if you change your environment you will change your reality. You can also change your environment by changing your thinking. Most people do not really know why they think the things that they think, they just do. This is because we accept what we have been taught as we grow up and rarely challenge what we have been told by parents, family, teachers etc. The first step in education is the process of unlearning. We must begin to unlearn many of the things we have been taught, and that is a difficult process. Most people hate to be confronted by alternative narratives to those that they deeply believe in. Regular readers will know that I am not religious, but there is a very good precept in the Bible that tells us to 'prove all things and hold fast to that which is good'.
To prove or disprove something you must put it to the test. However, it is essential that you do this as tolerantly as possible and be prepared to accept that you may be wrong. I can assure you, if you find that a long cherished belief is actually false, it can be the most liberating experience imaginable. Trust me! Similarly, if you strengthen a belief by this process, that can be equally liberating. By putting your innermost thoughts and beliefs to the test you are in a win win situation, you cannot lose. Either way you gain, in knowledge, in confidence and in intellectual satisfaction.
It is essential that you read and develop your reading skills. Words portray meanings and develop a sense of perspective. We broaden and deepen our meaning system and our grasp of the world by developing our reading skills. Books are a vital component of understanding the human condition. If you want to make a start at understanding politics and the role of politics and politicians, try reading Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Read the American Declaration of Independence and then read the American Constitution and see where they designate slaves as only constituting three fifths of a human being to understand the genuine relative nature of reality. Ask yourself, how can the man who wrote that it is self-evident that all men are created equal, then justify slavery and the dehumanisation of black people. Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, but he was a human being who was a product of his environment, a rich educated white man of the 18th century. That was his reality.
But be tolerant, because despite being a white man who could not see blacks as his equals, Jefferson gave us many other important insights. George Washington was a slave owner. Similarly, Karl Marx was a genius, never make the mistake of neglecting to read people like Marx because you have been brought up to hate communism, or Jefferson because you abhor slavery. Marx was wrong about many things, but he was right about so much else, why? because like Jefferson and Washington he was a human being and therefore flawed. Reading Marx does not make you a Marxist as if Marxism was some kind of infection, but it will make you wiser and enrich your reality. Similarly with Adam Smith. Go back to the basics, and read the founding fathers of politics, sociology and economics. In the process you will be enriched, enlightened and develop a life-long passion for understanding and knowledge. In the process you will have a rich and meaningful reality and begin to see through the charlatans and gangsters who are in charge of our society today. Paine will show you the type of 'democracy' you live in, and Smith will allow you to see the lie and fraud that is the free market economic system that dominates our lives. If you ever read Marx, Adam Smith, David Hume, Alfred Marshall to name a select few, I can assure you will have done far more than Cameron, Osborne or Miliband ever have. Justice is the interests of the strongest. That was written over 2000 years ago by the Sophist Thrasymachus and it is as valid today as the day he wrote it. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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