Truth matters. There are two illusions we all need to get rid of – Democracy and Freedom of Choice. We are fed and bred on these things and we are told that we have them. The reality is far from it.

Case in point. I am a freelancer and one of the companies that contracted me is supposed to provide lunch for the crew. I tried their food for months and decided that it was crap. The meat is overcooked because it wasn’t fresh to start with. The oil they use is very low grade. So I decided to be a part time vegetarian and only eat the veggie half of what they offer. Well that was a bad idea. Their salads are remixed with day-old greens. Their fruit salad was from a can and partially fermenting.

Yes, I know, if I was careful I probably wouldn’t have gotten sick. But I trusted that they wouldn’t put anything unsafe on the table and I was wrong. I got sick in the stomach, twice.

So the next time the company contracted me I knew better. I decided to opt out of the lunch and just get my own and stay within the allowance so they can reimburse me. I asked people how to do this and got the accountants involved. I filled in all the paperwork and kept my receipts. I even had to go back to one restaurant and have them reprinted because the accountant didn’t like the receipt I got the first time.

Two weeks after I left that project they tell me my lunch receipts weren’t approved because I didn’t get prior permission.

Now Wait a Minute!!! I thought Food, Water and the Pursuit of Happiness was an inalienable human right. Not something I have to get prior permissions for. I asked no less than six people on the project team and followed everything they told me to do and in the end they tell me I did not cross my t’s and dot my i’s? Something tells me they are just making up the rules as they go. If six people on their own team didn’t know, clearly, they didn’t want people to be informed.

Do we live in a democracy? Do we really? Think about all the rules you have to follow from the moment you wake up till you go to bed at night. You pay the bus fare to go to work. Who decided how much to charge? Your bus travels down a street. Who decided the route it takes? You sit in your office. Who decides how long you work? You collect your paycheque. Who decided that it was fair? Who decides the tax rate? or where it goes? Military or Catholic schools? You follow company procedures. Who decided that is the best procedures? Best for whom? I can bet all the money in Switzerland that you were not involved in 90% of the decisions you face in your daily lives.

Now you walk down the hall and witness a female college being harassed by a group of male colleges. She laughs it off because she has to. She wants her paycheque. The question is: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

99% of us are Silent Sufferers of Reality (SSR). We don’t like the status quo but we tolerate it because we “think” we have to. What we don’t realize is that “Someone Somewhere” created this reality for us. And they are banking on the fact that WE, as a whole do not know or care about the truth. What is the truth? The truth is “Reality is Bendable”.

Before you get all up in arms about me plagiarizing the movie “Matrix” let me tell you that the movie is based closely on the concept of Chinese Buddhism. I am Chinese, so you can accuse me of plagiarizing everything else except Chinese Buddhism.

Imagine you are on a thousand tonne cruise ship. The course is set due south. Presently one tiny fish thinks the ship should go west so it starts to push on the port side of the ship. Is the tiny two ounce fish going to change the course of the thousand tonne ship? Your logic says no, but science says yes. If the fish pushes long enough, say extended to infinite time, the captain of the ship will have to adjust rudder in order to stay on course. Imagine that, a tiny fish forcing a cruise ship to adjust its course.

Bullocks! You say. That fish is never going to push till infinity. It has to find food and go to the washroom etc. What if I tell you they little fish is joined by other little fish? What if there are hundreds of thousands of them? What if some of the fish are bigger? What if whales and sharks join in? What if generations up on generations of fish are helping with the cause? I am not pitching another Disney movie with an annoying theme song. My point is: “Reality is Bendable”. It’s not fantasy. It’s science.

Back to the sexual harassment scenario. If you decide to defend your female college and stand up to the crowd you may get ostracized, ridiculed, passed over for promotions and worse case scenario, laid off. People will call you stupid, impractical, not-a-teamplayer, loser. However, there is one thing they cannot call you — a SSR, Silent Sufferer of Reality. You are a little fish who didn’t like what you see and raised a fin about it. The good news is, if you let the rest of us know, we will raise our little fins with you. We WILL force the captain to change his course.

I am not asking you to be a shit-disturber all the time. I am not asking you to always be the squeaky wheel. I am asking you to care. Care about one thing. Whether it is food safety, gender inequality, the environment, animal rights, gay rights, your neighbourhood, education system… anything that needs someone to stand up on a soap box and yell “No More!” Do it, tell the rest of us about it and we will support you.

You know that famous quote from Martin Niemoller: “First they came for the socialist, I did not speak up because I was not a socialist…” The point is, there are five billion of us on Earth. If each one of us can care about an issue we can pretty much guarantee every important issue is covered. If we can answer each other’s call to arms then we become part of a Superorganism. Super Intelligent, Super Connected and Super Active in real time. The system cannot divide and conquer us anymore.

Our modern society may look like a democracy on the surface but it is not. Our lives are dictated by rules without consent. The selected few make them to serve themselves, and because they have their hands on the gold bars we listen and we tolerate.

Totalitarianism disguised as a democracy, that is where we live at the present time. This is not THE reality. This is only one of a million possible realities. Each one of us have the power to mold our reality into something worth living for, worth dying for. We can shape our world into something worthy of our precious children.

What is the one issue you will stand up for? Leave your comments below and let us help you.

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Published by ZEN WANG

Nuclear Project Engineer turned Filmmaker. View all posts by ZEN WANG