Conform or Be Cast Out

Opinions are Provided...The Future Pre-decided

I love music so much.

Over the weekend, I was on a Rush kick.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, doing a lot of blue-collar grunt work jobs, the one common theme was the ever-present classic rock station blaring in the background. As a child of the 80s and 90s, classic rock meant music from the 60s, 70s, and early 80s.

For a long time, I’ve sought different music while appreciating my classic rock education. I can only hear AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long” or Lynyrd Skynyrd “Sweet Home Alabama” so many times before getting bored and looking elsewhere.

It’s not that I’m not fans of these songs or musicians. It’s just that there’s SO much more out there, and I want to explore as much as I can.

However, over the weekend, my friend put a YouTube-generated classic rock playlist on, and the music I’d heard a thousand times sounded new again for some reason, so I went with it.

You know how when you look at a picture at a stadium quickly, at first all you see are a mass of faceless people? But if you stop and really look, really zoom in, you start to see the frozen images of the guy jumping up, spilling beer on his girlfriend? Or the woman pulling her hair, gasping in dismay or astonishment?

I love THIS guy

Like this image, a Rush song that I’ve heard at least 500 times stuck out to me in a brand new way.

Subdivisions

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

Subdivisions —
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions —
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights…

Subdivisions —
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions —
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

Aside: I don’t know of another video that better captures or encapsulates my memories of the early 80s.

After years of hearing this in the background as just another song, it finally jumped out at me, like seeing that one guy in the stands frozen in time after looking a little closer.

It’s almost like there are hints and clues in the universe that are destined to appear at an appointed time, and my time for this one was just before getting in the shower. I put it on repeat, nearly drained my hot water tank, and found myself lost in thought and contemplation over the lyrics.

Crazymakers

Books and writing, like music, also have the ability to be hidden until the proper time. Currently, I’m reading a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. (There’s a free PDF available if you’re interested in reading this.)

The reading this morning was discussing Crazymakers - people in your life who are controlling, sabotaging, overbearing, and disruptive. Like the Rush song, this part leapt off the page:

The crazymaking dynamic is grounded in power, and so any group of people can function as an energy system to be exploited and drained. Crazymakers can be found in almost any setting, in almost any art form. Fame may help to create them, but since they feed on power, any power source will do.

As I showered, the music and these crazymaker words chased themselves around and around inside my head. Like working on a Rubik’s cube, my mind and spirit found themselves solving a puzzle, formulating an urgent observation.

I started thinking about cities and subdivisions and the ruling class; social media; followers; boxes; labels; and a whole host of other things. Like the sides and individual boxes on the Rubik’s cube, they shifted and lined up into this post.

For decades, centuries, the ruling class has been working feverishly to organize, control, and dominate society according to their desires.

They are the ultimate crazymakers and control freaks.

Ruling Over You In God's Name

The only thing that drives these people is power, and the only way to gain power is through control. Land, resources, people, thoughts…it’s all necessary for them to capture and control in their quest for total domination of the world and everything in it.

To control something, especially as complicated as humankind, there needs to be order. While it might look like our world is in chaos - and it is - it’s a controlled chaos.

Detached and subdivided in the Mass Production Zone…

Those of us “in the mass production zone” - everyone NOT in the ruling class - need to be divided and subdivided.

It might seem like a contradiction at first glance. I just said the crazymakers need order to control humankind. Yet everywhere we look, it seems we see chaos. In the streets. On social media. In government. In the financial markets. Chaos, confusion, turmoil. How and why is there so much chaos, much of which seems to have been artificially created or intentionally fomented? Another part of The Artist’s Way explains:

I am thinking now of a destructive matriarch of my acquaintance. The titular head of a large and talented clan, she has devoted her extensive energies to destroying the creativity of her children…

The daughter struggling to finish a belated college degree finds herself saddled with a sudden drama the night before her final exam. The son with a critical job interview is gifted with a visitation just when he needs to focus the most. “Do you know what the neighbors are saying about you?” the crazymaker will often ask. (And the beleaguered student mother will hear a horrific round of gossip that leaves her battered, facing her exam week beset by feelings of “What’s the use?”) “Do you realize you’re ruining your own marriage with this possible new job?” (And the son’s hopeful career move is ashes before it begins.)

Whether they appear as your overbearing mother, your manic boss, your needy friend, or your stubborn spouse, the crazymakers in your life share certain destructive patterns that make them poisonous for any sustained creative work.

The crazymakers know that if we aren’t living in constant chaos and turmoil, a free and enlightened general population will do amazing things. If we have the freedom to create, invent, philosophize, worship, and pursue happiness, we will find common ground. We will feel power and passion and purpose, and that’s toxic to the crazymaker’s plans and ideology. It’s the kryptonite. It threatens everything they are working like fiends to accomplish. Individual and societal freedom means they lose control, and by losing control, they lose their power.

They will pursue and preserve their power at ANY cost.

What’s needed are the fences. The subdivisions. The mass production zones. The chaos.

The Myth of Borders and the Reality of Fences

If they can continue to build fences and keep the mass production zones fighting against each other, they themselves are free to build and create their future. While our energy and focus is on the culture wars and the burden of debt and the isms and a million other things, they erect their towers and gates. They create their rules and gather into their storehouses.

The MORE division, the better.

They craft physical subdivisions, where the cycles of poverty, oppression, and violence are now a feature and function, not a bug. Self-sustaining. When the occasional course-correction is needed, they shed light on police brutality or gun violence or inequality. The explosion of the new subdivisions that inevitably follows further entrenches and reinforces the fences, and for the moment, they’ve regained control and order through our own willingness to escalate the chaos and division.

They craft psychological and mental subdivisions. Fear, security, materialism, greed, anger, envy, hate, weariness, loneliness, isolation, and the dehumanization of the “other” by any means necessary. When course correction is needed, they introduce a new kind of hate speech, hate group, enemy, ism, or cause to either destroy or rally around.

Conform or be cast out. Be cool or be cast out.

Stepping out of line with the current thing has consequences that these crazymakers ruthlessly enforce. Law enforcement - whether armed with physical weapons or verbal ones - will spring into action quickly to put dissenters back in line. Or destroy them.

Understanding The Woke Movement

As I wrote in the article above, the current Woke movement is an army that’s been cultivated to do just this culturally. How many instances of voices being cancelled, de-platformed, ostracized, and banned have we witnessed in the last several years?

Your leaders better be in line with the plans we have, or things will be very bad for you. YOU better be in line with the plans we have, or things will be very bad for you. Conform or be cast out. Be cool or be cast out.

When we see certain leaders of the world continually propped up and enabled, seemingly without any retribution, it’s because they’re either complicit or useful idiots that understand what it means to be in line with the crazymakers.

They’re the cool kids or the tag-alongs at the cool kids table at the cool kids school, doing anything and everything they can to stay in the cool kids club. They’ve been promised their little slice of power and security and have been given instructions on where and when to grow and manage the subdivisions in the mass production zones. When they cease to play along or dance exactly how they’re supposed to, they’ll be destroyed. It’s what the crazymakers do. That’s how their game is played.

And YOU? Woke mob, meet you.

Dreamers and Misfits

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

This reality leaves me, and probably you, with a quandary. I’m not in the crazymakers club, nor do I want to be. I’m not a corrupt psychopath megalomaniac demagogue, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t either.

I’m also not content to live in the subdivision, in the mass production zone, as a bot. Which leaves me as a dreamer and misfit. That’s dangerous territory, because the crazymakers desire all loose ends to be tied up. No animals outside the barnyard. No strays. Strays need to be gathered, subjugated, or destroyed. Otherwise the rest of the herd might get some bad ideas and possibly follow suit, and that just can’t be.

So what do we do?

I’ve written about some action steps in the past, but I believe it’s essential to count the costs in our own lives, as individuals. What are we prepared to do? How much do we value freedom? Where does our security and purpose come from? Who are we answering to?

What can we do to continually prepare our minds, bodies, and hearts for the reality that at some point, being outside the herd, resisting the overwhelming pressure to become automaton, will carry a cost?

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Second, we need to continue to find each other. Possibly the greatest tool of an enemy is to create a sense of isolation. Historically, the siege has been one of the most effective tools of war. Our world today is constantly isolating us. This is one of the most effective tools of the Woke, of cancel culture. Isolate. Divide. Destroy. Teach the lesson to the masses. Bring the hammer down and create an unmistakable example to the rest, lest anyone else step out of line. You will either go scrambling for the cover of what’s safe and convenient, which is their goal, or you will suffer. Knowing you’re not alone, even if you’re on the outside, is vital. There is strength in numbers.

Third, stay educated and seek understanding. Knowing what we’re up against and the forces at work is paramount. Ignorance is NOT bliss. It’s subjugation and slavery. Understanding and knowledge might be frightening and intimidating. Yet, at least for me, being a bot is much more frightening, because it means I’ve willingly given up my soul and my individual sovereignty to a cold machine that wants me numb or dead. While I’m alive, I want my days to be filled with possibility and with self-determination. I want to LIVE, not just exist.

Last, do something. We’re no doubt in the minority. There are a lot of powerful crazymakers. There are a lot of bots. But there are a lot of people who still yearn to breathe free air and live as free men and women who crave self-determination and individual liberty. Find the weak and vulnerable spot in the machine, in the crazymaker’s plans, in your own life, and expose it. Write. Sing. Create. Illuminate. Raise your hand and point to the breach. Be the leader that your world is waiting for.

It’s uncomfortable, yes. Even as I write this, I wonder what nefarious forces are documenting and cataloging this and how it will be used against me in the future. What are the possible repercussions will affect myself and family in the future? I can’t say and don’t want to imagine.

However, that’s the life for those who desire to live outside the mass production zone. That’s part of the cost. I’m not into Subdivision life, and I’m not with the crazymakers. If I’m cast out, so be it.

Disclaimer: Let me be 100% clear. Peaceful, lawful, and ethical resistance to the world and its systems must be pursued at all cost. I never condone, encourage, wish to perpetuate or participate in violent aggression in any form. Everything and anything in this post is intended to be a suggestion towards NON-violent resistance. Resist with you minds and hearts, and let your actions be peaceful.