The "powers that be" program you to be selfish and then use your selfishness to divide and conquer you.

(Click "powers that be..." at left for more detail.)

It is our nature to live in villages, but we are perverted by the "Invisible Fist" of the economic and political systems. For a half million years, village life has been the optimal strategy for humans winning at the game of life. So why do practically none of us live in villages? It is because huge piles of money can be captured by using propoganda to establish the idea that successful mating requires the ownership of residential property, and then restricting the supply of such property. Wo of this writer's children, as a teenager, asked, "Don't all of the competing advertising messages cancel each other out?" No. There is a bias built in to the system, because only some kinds of messages can be profitably promoted. Not much money can be captured by using propoganda to promote the idea of living simply and frugally and focusing on being good parents and spouses. To be profitable, a message must be tied somehow to making a purchase or a donation. The result is that we are all awash in propoganda that promotes an idiotic, materialistic, high consumption, environmentally toxic way of life that is very far from Pareto Optimal.

It is this selfishness that enables our enslavement by keeping us powerless and controlled. The way of life in today's urban jungle does not exist because it serves the interests of The People. It exists because it serves the interests of evil coalitions which create and maintain the jungle and actively prevent good coalitions (villages) from forming. The result is that you are like a vine to be plucked for grapes, or a head of cattle to be slaughtered.

You are being played in an economic game that you are not even aware of. You are merely a pawn on some rich man's chessboard, a "useful idiot" whose thoughts and actions are controlled by people who are not your friends. Yet, like the cattle in a slaughter pen, you comprehend nothing, so you do nothing. Practically all of you will live your entire lives without ever comprehending that you are slaves.

Within today's urban jungle, you must re-awaken to the realization that forming a village is the strategy for winning at the game of life. Resolving to live unselfishly will innoculate you against all of the toxic propoganda that leads you astray. It will also enable you, by forming villages, to create a way of life for yourselves that enables you to survive and prosper in village coalitions within the chaos and predation of the urban jungle. This is not a novel, untested idea. It has been the success strategy for humans for a half million years.