Consider the following for a moment. If you can’t see the correct image or get the whole story of who you are in front of the mirror, how can you explain why people believe what is patently untrue, no matter how much evidence to the contrary proves them wrong? If people see the world in their own image and likeness, then we are in trouble. The world was never a great place to begin with, when people thought they knew who they were, but now things have grown much worse. We live in a time where we are awash in books, magazines, movies and TV commercials that tell us we do not know who we are. If we do not know who we are, then we cannot define the outer parameters of ourselves in order to understand the world around us, or even know where that world begins.
Many mantras, messages, and memes encourage you to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am somebody. The implication is, if you say, I am somebody often enough that you will indeed believe You are somebody. What a joke! Let’s reveal the truth behind today’s mantras, messages and memes: If you have to tell yourself in the mirror that you are somebody, then you are truly nobody. Instead of being a fully-fledged, mature and thinking human being, you are nothing, a tabula rasa waiting for villains like Simon Legree to raise welts on your thin skin with a whip.
Villains want you to believe their story and will do everything to appear credible. They lie, cheat, steal, intimidate, maim and kill; they will do anything to make money. The villain has a not-so-secret desire to hurt you instead of to help you. They will do anything to empty your mind from thought. They own TV and radio stations, entire networks, satellite dishes, syndicated newspapers, sports teams, and they also publish books that were written for an audience just like you. Villains know that you need to have a clean ending, where all of the messy details are sewn-up, and the mystery is solved. They don’t want you to understand the nature of paradox—that two different truths, often contradictory truths, can coexist in the same world and in the same mind. The world is black. The world is white. And that will never mean that the world is grey. But it does not mean that the world cannot be grey.
The world is flat. The world is round. The villain wants you to believe the world is only flat, when it’s not. The world is flat when you’re driving on Interstate-80 in Wyoming, but the world is also round when you look at a globe. In truth, the world as seen from the sun is spherical, an oblate spheroid, but that does not negate the truth of the flat earth of Wyoming or the shape of the globe at your local elementary school.
Understanding paradox is not the same as having inane propaganda that masquerades as entertainment jammed down your throat. The world is flat; the world is round, is not the same as saying the world is an Oreo. (By the way, Oreos have evolved beyond the traditional cookie black on the outside, filled inside with sugary white crème, and now come in merry new flavors, including Carrot Cake, Caramel Coconut flavored crème and Peanut Butter Pie. The dribble about cookies might seem trivial, but there is truth to be told. The mantras, messages, and memes that encourage you to look at yourself in the mirror to say, I am somebody, are sprung from the same well that gave rise to Simon Legree and the hold he has over you.
Villains tell you who the real bad guys and good guys are in every story. They don’t want you to think, not for a minute. Thinking will make you anticipate all of the twists and turns in the mystery and ruin the surprise ending! You have no reason to think for yourself. You have no reason to think at all. It is too hard to think! Villains clearly state who is black and who is white, and they will change it up when it suits them. They will make black seem white and white seem black. They do this to keep you off balance and that is easy to do when you are strongly encouraged by mantras, messages, and memes to look in the mirror every morning to tell yourself: I am somebody.
Writing around the same historical time frame as Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose “ – “the more things change, the more they stay the same,” which is true, but so is a statement attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, “At best the only constant is change, and that changes everything.”