The war for our minds (#1018)

This is about value and what price we pay for our own ability to define who we are. Some would say that there are only a few choices we can make to define who we are. Yet others say that who we are can be anything imaginable that has the potential to be true. I prefer more options instead of less. I can usually tell when someone is restricting my options by their use of fear as a guideline. None of us has any right or knowledge to dictate what this existence means and how we should be within it, except that we harm no one nor ourselves. Now, reality is that if you do not think a certain way you will be shunned or slighted in ways that inhibit some perceived benefit. I know this as I have almost cut off all avenues to feel welcome in circles that are constrained by ideology and it's restrictive practices. yet I am a free man who has access to information and knowledge that I can objectively scrutinize without being bounded by rules, dogma or convention. I am a truly free human being in that I am not pigeon-holed, denied of possibilities. There is a concerted effort and it has been going on for ages to control what we think and what we do. We are set upon by forces that wish us to be in groups of various kinds so that we are easily swayed by logic that seems to perpetuate a flow toward pre-conceived notions. Thinking outside the box is not what is promoted rather thinking inside the box is. I am often surprised that I am able to disassociate from the group or crowd and still feel an exhilaration toward community and our common benefit. For me the world will always be the great adventure that my abilities will allow me to explore. I am not stuck in the paradigm of the offerings, that the powers that be package to us, in order to control my natural instincts, rather I am a free agent ready to survey the landscape for all of it's possibilities.