Chris, my brother, there is no need to apologize. We are all learning on this journey, and we will keep learning until we die!
I was incredibly touched by your comments because you clearly “get” what I’m passionate about: “unplugging” from our fake reality. It’s as if we’re all trapped in a real-life Matrix, of sorts. Like Cypher, we know the steak we’re eating isn’t real; but we want to eat it, anyway — because ignorance (or rather, pretending,) is bliss. Our fake reality pits us against one another by focusing on the many “obvious” things that separate us (race, sex, religion, political preference), when we should be working together and focusing on the many things we have in common. And right now, whether we’re black, white, gay, straight, Christian or Muslim, Democrat or Republican, we all have something very important in common: a veiled oligarchy is quietly overtaking our country and enslaving us. And for the record, the slave analogy has nothing to do with my ancestry; you, as a white man, are being enslaved, as well. 99.99% of humanity has a common interest now, but we’re being divided and distracted from seeing this. It’s a strategy as old as time, itself: divide and conquer.
I think you’re right that King believed we couldn’t achieve racial equality until we first achieved economic equality. And the reason that blacks have suffered for so long — and continue to suffer, in spite of voting for the “right” people to lead their communities — is because the economic inequalities that King warned of continue to persist. And they’re growing and expanding beyond the black community. This is the elephant in the room that we need to call attention to, and doing so has become my passion in my life.
Your response gave me such hope, Chris, because I believe that we have the power to turn all of this around. We only need a critical mass of out-of-the-box thinkers to make this happen. Don’t forget that the American Revolution was launched with the support of not more than 10% of colonists. Of course, fate, luck, and a good dose of divine intervention were likely also at play, but as I look around me now, I believe that far more than 10% of Americans are on the cusp of awakening to our fake reality.
I have just completed a book, Get Unplugged, which tackles this subject and guides readers along my journey — from Princeton, to Harvard, to working as an executive in the entertainment industry in L.A. for 20 years, and then retreating to Montana when I could no longer make sense of any of it. I wrote the book to help guide others who may find themselves on the same path and are trying to make sense of why the world “feels” so crazy, and find themselves wondering why everything just keeps getting worse.
The bottom line is this, Chris: we can’t come up with “real” solutions to the “real” problems we face when we’re living in a “fake” reality. There is so much about the world we live in that has been hidden from us by illusions that we play along with. But the most deeply-hidden truth concerns the money we use every day. Most people think that money is simply a means of exchange, and that it’s unfair that some people have more of it than others. But the truth goes much deeper: our money is being used to control us, and the way our money is created guarantees that 99.99% of the planet will eventually be enslaved to a very few. This, my friend, is the key to all of the suffering we see around us today, and no politician will ever admit it.
My book is a quasi-memoir, of sorts: I walk readers through each of these illusions, based on my personal experience and research, in order to help them “unplug.” The illusion of division, which I touched upon in my MLK article, is the first one I tackle, but there are several others.
In any event, thank you again for the time and thought you put into your response. It means so much to me to know that what I write has affected even one person, on any level. I don’t get the opportunity to write as much on Medium as I would like because I’m spending so much time trying to find a publisher, but I am definitely going to try to do it on a more regular basis going forward.
Peace.
