Chapter 1 Oppression
Illusion
Since we believe that we are inherently sinful, we give corporations more rights than we do. This abuse of language animates disgusting things, and this distorted judgment deprives us of what is truly precious.
The oppressive spirit cultivates a climate of indifference from which precariousness and an increase in self-destructions are born. Our society offers so few alternatives that survival becomes almost more viable than citizenship.
We are more likely to die from tobacco, the road or an astronomical impact than from an air disaster—tobacco and recklessness are often a matter of recklessness. However, statistics point to suicide as the main cause of death.
To take drugs is to commit suicide in a different way. Psychotropic drugs slow down our aspirations and feed dependence: they soothe worries without allowing us to confront their causes, maintaining addiction and isolating us.
According to Scott Peck, our consciousness is a map of the world that we write as we learn and trauma, enriching ourselves with details and subtleties over time. Thus refined, it gradually synchronizes with reality—it is with it that we mark our paths towards our goals.
Our goals—confidence, education, employment, friendship, health—are not geographical, but all require a code of conduct and a half-traced work in our conscience. Having never taken this path, our insight remains incomplete, and unforeseen obstacles will arise.
By boldly moving towards our inspirations, we move towards our goals or towards knowledge that brings new inspiration. Mourning an illusion, by refining our representation of reality, conceals a new motivation. The gaps in our map expose us to unexpected obstacles that shake the will—sometimes the confrontation would be impossible, suicidal, or stupid. But boldness and learning, by limiting our objectives, preserve the essential: hope, from which new aims are born, better enlightened and equipped.
It is not a question of being reckless, but rather of moving towards this desire with vigilance, perseverance and concentration. Any new goal can only be born from fresh realizations.