Are You Still In Bed? Part 1

“We, as a new generation of thinkers, inventors, and reinventors able to traverse a global world without fear or prejudice for the Other, and in the service of our commons, will be uniquely capable of and responsible for forging a new path for total global coexistence.” – The Unists

Waking up. Ugggggggggghhhhhhhhhh.

Waking up can be a disappointment in and of itself. If you are unsatisfied with your life, or your current place in it, you can slowly come to dread the start of each day. You may find yourself filling each empty moment with a constant barrage of media and other stimulus. Anything to avoid reflection on the state of the world or how you are connected to or disconnected from it…

There are a lot of ways in which this uncharacteristic (by which I mean not the direct result of longterm, genetic, hereditary conditions) yet seemingly inescapable feeling of anxiety, dread, or depression can manifest itself. I’m sure that anyone who hashad to sell hours, months, or years of their life to a boss or company which cared nothing for them as a person, knows these feelings quite well. Eventually, even those with a job they do enjoy will still be able to identify with the feelings of purposelessness and instability inherent to a world that seems to be moving on without them.

What causes these anxieties? These spirals of depression? These overwhelming senses of despair or fear which seem to effortlessly immobilize us? People will often reassure you that “we all have bad days,” but is our emotional and psychological well-being truly at the random mercy of our calendar? Is “a case of the Mondays” now an acceptable and accepted rut in the weekly progression of our lives?

Is it because of our diet? Our level of exercise? Something in the water? Something Not in the water? While those categories of problems are surely not helping, it is helpful to view them more or less as symptoms of and responses to a grander trend at work in our social experiences. We are going to have to look at things on a much larger scale than this. Even the tipsters at LifeHacker.com recommend dealing with the problem of “getting out of bed in the morning“ by examining the larger, root causes of our discontentment.

As supporters of Unism, we assert that the causes for these inevitable discontentments are best understood by utilizing one of our fundamental concepts used to personally free oneself from the fog of ideological hegemony. We call it:

“Thinking Outside of the Warehouse”

We are often encouraged to “think outside of the box” in our society, as our modern world appears to thrive on innovation and creative thinking. But does it? …and do we? Even “creative” solutions must operate within parameters of what the proverbial box was originally intended to hold – when “thinking outside the box” on an issue such as freeway traffic, you are all the more constrained by the idea of working within the current transportation infrastructure. It takes for certain the established history and broad trajectory these ideas are comprised of. Instead of rethinking mass or individual transport entirely, we often default to the most convenient solutions: revealing what we truly view as possible and impossible in our world.

The best example to showcase these invisible walls which our ideologies construct around the concepts of what is possible and impossible is the specter of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. While derided by many as a program which was specifically technically flawed, it tellingly reveals more of a perceptional, ideological incompatibility (American capitalism with European socialist medicine) than an incompatibility of population size, technicality, or implementation. There was a concerted resistance to the very concept of social medicine, which is why Obamacare truly polarized the nation – essentially at the axis of those with healthcare or the prospect thereof (fear-mongered  by for-profit medical industry lobbyists and campaigns), against those without, and the liberals who champion their cause.

This is not inherently revelatory or negative, but meant to illustrate how even when one is conceivably thinking “outside of the box,” ideological constraints will dictate the true parameters for creating change in our societies.

This is why there must be an emphasis on seeing beyond the limitations we assume constrain us – and recognizing that there is nothing stopping us from completely reimagining and redesigning the entire structures and purposes of our world.

When one steps back from behind the veil of our dominant ideologies (variant in each community, but generally/most recognizably ideals such as consumption valued over conservation, efficiency over individuality, punctuality over functionality, even occupational duty/success valued over legal or social norms), one is afforded the chance to truly determine what values and viewpoints inform their moral universe. While the major tide of society (sway though it does) may value amassing money and celebrity over happiness and developing inclusive, interdependent communities, this should not limit our propensity to pursue such goals ourselves. By setting such an example, we can embody and develop a world which does not emphasize the victimization of ourselves or others over the strength in numbers which has so far eluded us on a global scale. Yet the goal of Unism is nothing less than this.

We, as a new generation of thinkers, inventors, and reinventors able to traverse a global world without fear or prejudice for the Other, and in the service of our commons, will be uniquely capable of and responsible for forging a new path for total global coexistence. We are excited to usher in a new era, free from the failing of our left-right political spectrum. But that all starts by getting out of bed.

Part Two on the way!

@TheUnists