Nothing wrong with 2016, just your identity.

I've seen countless people by now declaring that 2016 was a terrible year. 

No, it wasn't. It's just that the trend in the world to belong to more and more rigid identities has become stronger this year than I can remember maybe in my lifetime.

Politically we have chosen our sides in such a strong way that we hardly talk to each other. People who voted in different ways in Brexit or the U.S election are hardly in speaking terms, they cannot understand each other and they don't want to. They all think that the people on the opposite side are basically child eating monsters. The same thing can be told all around the world including Finland between people who want to take in more immigrants and people who want to reduce it or people who think that Russia is the source of all evil in the world and Putin is the Satan himself and people who don't want Finland to lose it's neutrality and become part of the global power struggle (those people are called "Trolls" by the way). There is also a very strong fanaticism running the mock on the left about political correctness and identity politics where the goal has been to categorise people by their victimhood status and make every issue in the world to revolve around gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity that has managed to turn the political and scientific scene into a place where any inconvenient discovery, opinion or even a simple objective inquiry can cause an outrage and get people fired. All of this is the works of the ego trying to belong into world views that explain everything and don't leave any room for discovery and our western culture is turning more and more into a one that rather caters for all the different identities than to open space for new ideas in order for nobody to feel their identities threatened while being blind to the fact that identities cannot be protected because they are false to begin with. We have somehow lost the touch with something that within us sees everyone and everything as not separate or opposite to us but complimentary and valuable, something that can add something to our perspective. The mass consciousness wants everyone to be categorised and it's effort is to lose individuality and freedom of thinking and make world safe by making everyone fit into definitions and believe in their little prisons, shouting out "Look at my sexual orientation! Look at my skin colour! I'm this and nobody can question what I declare about myself". We have built such strong ideologies that the world might seem just a horrifying, scary place when suddenly it doesn't function according to our expectations and ideologies. Instead of questioning their own ideologies and identities people are now rioting and panicking because the world isn't what they thought it ought to be and casting blame on whoever happens to be on the other side.

Everything has polarised to such an extent that our identities as part of those ideological movements don't have any room to step back and look at ourselves critically and our agendas become so holy that the means justify the ends. We are ready to distort reality and cherry pick whatever facts support our identity. We live in a world that is vastly complex and so interconnected that our brains are simply not made to comprehend it in this age of infinite information so we try to find a way to escape our insecurity and feeling of helplessness into different camps from where we have a simple enemy who is to blame for all the wrong in the world and we don't need to talk to such a person if we have already pre-determined their agendas and motivations. We address our idea of the person who we have demonised instead of actually trying to find any common ground.

All of this is the works of identity and reality starts where identity ends. In fact only beyond identity there is reality because our identity works a medium between us and reality and it offers us a very narrow and emotionally charged view.

Beyond identity nobody is a victim, nobody is a perpetrator, nobody's experience is more valid or important than anyone else's, nobody is even special, opinions are not so important and nothing determines you ultimately and living life through identity is a constant battle because the world is not ultimately going to cater to your identity. Reality is eventually gonna come crashing into your house of cards. You will always feel insecure in you identity and you will make more and more enemies and find more cause to feel upset. It is like a hot potato you will keep holding onto and shouting "who is burning my hands?!" with no intention of letting go of the potato.

There was intrinsically nothing wrong in the year 2016. If it was a shitty year it's because your identity said so and you suffered from your identity feeling threatened, not because of what happened.

I feel that sometimes we as a collective psyche have to go through a little shaking and things intensifying and it's self inflicted because strong identities are bound to bring conflicts. It brings us ultimately to such extremes and turbulences that we will have to learn what is the root cause of all this misery. I can tell you, it's identity.
We have no chance for making external peace if we keep on protecting that which creates our inner unrest, which manifest around us as polarisation, misunderstanding and violence. It's a good wake-up call for many people to take a look outside of this battle for power over the survival of our identities and recognise that when you change your reference point from identity to presence and neutrality even the wild year of 2016 looks like a play of energy. The acceptance that comes with that realisation is the hope and the chance for some actual change.

All the data from poverty and health to the amount of wars shows us that 2016 was actually a pretty good year and it takes different kind of eyes to start to see the beauty again in the world after intense collective focus on the negative but it starts with individual honesty. You can make your world beautiful or ugly.

Ps. Don't follow news

Thank you 2016 and welcome 2017.

The biggest obstructors of happiness and freedom: Victimhood and Entitlement

I've been following the tendencies of humanity and recently I've grown more worried about certain tendencies that have manifested in an almost panicky levels of political correctness and intellectual fascism amongst seemingly educated and intelligent people. It's a kind of brainwashing where we have gotten so deep into a giving an unbelievable amount of reverence to narratives of victimhood. Basically we live in a time where victimhood has become a currency, the more devastating victim status you have the more attention you can withdraw from this federal reserve of collective guilt.

As we know a little child is really dependant on parents attention and affection because biologically speaking that attention correlates with survival. So we learn already as children that attention is a kind of currency to ensure survival. Money and any other actual exchange comes later on in life. We tend to learn to use whatever means to have attention and we get addicted to it.

If we come back to the present day we can see why we might be drawn to try to extract some sympathy from people around us because there is still this underlying feeling of value from it and there seems to be a huge market for this kind of pathological behaviour in the society at the moment.

I find it troublesome with all these different groups who in the name of equality and justice seek to attract people in and start feeding their identities with all the different stories of they are victims and how they are being cheated out of their rights by whatever evil conspiracy they believe in, whether it's patriarchy, the illuminati, the white people, the zionists, the bankers, political elite or whoever their "enemy" is. Many of these movements, I'm sure, have been started with a genuine intention of making the world a little more friendly and even playing field but now what we have been seeing over few last years is that the amount of victim narratives has increased exponentially and people have divided more and more into different camps all crying for more attention for their given (or chosen) identities.

The thing about buying into victimhood is that you always need a perpetrator and right there you have created a very rigid and narrow view of whoever happens to be your perpetrator. You have also basically married your perpetrator because now they have something you need (your freedom) but because you have also created a very rigid and narrow identity of yourself you are unable to receive whatever you need to heal because that would mean the end of your identity as a victim. You don't really want the situation to end. You need your perpetrator and you attract them as well. You will find evidence of wrongdoing and oppression in people who might not even know they are playing your game. You will give all of your power away and then cry for attention and sympathy and it will almost feel like love or care but it's not. You see, when you are a victim you are a burden to people around you. They will give their attention to you maybe because they feel some collective guilt, they feel bad for you and they think that maybe in some way it is their fault that you are in such misery. They will also feel a certain grudge towards you because you have forced them to give you attention and sympathy, you are feeding on their energy and sucking people dry. You are not providing anything into the world but you are actually spreading your misery.

But to tell the truth there is no need for any of this misery, it's not even real and this attention that a victim is seeking is actually just their own acknowledgement and self love they have been missing and looking from the outside.

Another topic I wanted to talk about is entitlement because it's very much related to victimhood.

When someone comes to you to tell you that you are a victim in the society for your skin colour, religion, political views, gender, sexual orientation or whatever they will want to talk to you about rights. Rights are an interesting thing because it sounds so good to be fighting for your rights or especially someone else's rights because that makes you extra righteous, right? But to be blunt I would say that idea of rights can become a kind of cancer. It can become very poisonous for your freedom to fight for your rights.

I know it sound very contradictory but let me explain:

When you buy into the victim narrative and you start fighting for your rights you have narrowed yourself into such a tiny box that there is no space for actual freedom there. You have defined yourself into oblivion. You have reduced yourself almost into a caricature, a mere small bundle of thoughts and ideas and they are all built around what you are missing and lacking. You feel incomplete. You have a very clear sense what your characteristics are that make you a victim and you are angry at the world for your suffering that derives from the way you have limited your existence. When you limit yourself into that kind of small space you will start shouting after your rights because you have given all the power away. You keep on holding onto your identity by claiming that you should have your rights, people should respect your rights. You and your rights have almost become synonymous, it's almost the same thing. It's where you have put your attention and it has created misery because your identity is synonymous with lack.

In our western culture we seem to have deeply immersed ourselves into supporting anyone claiming victimhood and demanding rights even to a point that we police the people who ask for credentials for acknowledging these claims or question the behaviours of certain people who have have been determined victims. We don't even always need anyone to declare themselves as victims, we are very willing to do it for them and then claim the position of defender of the weak, thus promoting our own righteousness. We seem to be so afraid to deny anyone of their victimhood that we would rather not take the risk so we just let anyone create any narrative and we blindly accept it so we don't seem intolerant or close minded. This kind of culture is not empowering anyone and it's supporting laziness of spirit and infantilizing people.

We need people who are masters of their own minds and hearts, not victims who need to be taken care of an fought for because they just are not capable of taking care of themselves. We need more people who don't care about what their skin colour or inherited culture, religion or other circumstances are because they are far too busy fulfilling their passions and living their full potential. We need intelligent people who have gone beyond their little human mind and psychological games and don't see the world in terms of divisions and personal stories. They just do what they need to do because that's what they are here to do.

If one is truly happy and living in the core of their being do you think they would give a flying fuck what pronoun someone uses to address them, what the illuminati is up to or if someone has fucking mansplained them? No, a master will never care about such things. World needs more real grown ups who are full of creativity and vision, those are the people who will change the world, not some activists being angry about truly trivial things and chasing wild conspiracies and teaching people how fucked and oppressed they are and telling others to check their privileges and feel guilty.