Cultural Avoidance

 Can't really justify telling myself beautiful lies anymore and frankly y'all shouldn't be either. Canada has already passed a crucial point and is fast approaching a militant/police state. The argument that "it's not as bad here as it is in other places" is null and void. Should we wait until it IS that bad, then, before we react?

The funny thing about countries that transition into totalitarian or fascist states is that the residents never notice anything. At least not those who fit the status quo. The signs are there, but enough distractions are installed to provide everyone with beautiful lies should they decide against coming to terms with their reality.

Behind those distractions, however, is the truth of the matter. Truth is not mainstream because, in the case of an industrial corporatist extraction colony like Canada, people don't want to know that they're supported by an ongoing cultural genocide. They don't want to know that the police brutality that we like to pretend is just across the border, a symptom of a corrupt nation like America, is actually happening at our very doorsteps. They don't want you to point out the rights that they've had taken from them because that would mean acknowledging that they've been duped by the supposedly benevolent government that they have trusted their whole lives.

So instead they go out and walk their dogs, smiling shallow smiles at their neighbors and never daring to ask how they really are for fear that the frightened abyss hiding behind their eyes might rear its ugly head and shatter their world view. Instead they watch the news and gleefully shape their reality according to the scripts penned by corporate media giants. They gasp and cry at videos of far-off tragedies in a desperate attempt to shut out the sound of the dying culture in their own back yard.

Meanwhile, government thugs employed to keep the peace roam the streets to make sure that pedestrians all conform to the same code of behavior. The police bust themselves giving fines to musicians and artists trying to make a living while young men with needles hanging out of their arms lay dying in alleyways mere feet away and organized gangs orchestrate the kidnapping and removal of indigenous women and children.

But these truths are mere background noise, drowned out by the beautiful lies that the television has to scream louder and louder as the days go past. The haunting song of children buried at residential schools threatens to overwhelm the mellow rhythm of suburban, white collar life. Chainsaws bite into the country's last surviving ancient forests, streams that once supplied life to entire populations start to sputter and die.

The rhythm of your footsteps is the only music that can carry you away from the truth as you jam your headphones into your ears and crank up the volume on anything, anything at all just to muffle the relentless rapping on my door as the truth knocks, and knocks, and knocks.

It shall not be let in, not now and not once you've sold all your sovereign rights in an effort to keep it at bay. Forced medication to pacify wandering thoughts that threaten to expose a curious mind to other possibilities. Mandatory exposure to brainwashing nonsense with ads that prey on your subconscious mind if ever you wish to snuggle up and watch a show with your love. Misdirection keeps your attention deflected so well that even when your neighbors and coworkers are getting pepper sprayed by the police for choosing to sit by the wrong tree, all you see is a passing headline that says, "vulnerable peace officer subdues a dangerous criminal in self-defense."

The sweet sound of your denial being validated is a symphony to your ears. Another day has passed you by without so much as a glimpse of things the way they really are. A broad smile sits on your face as you lay down to face your dreams for the night, thinking of how lucky you are to live in a world where everything is so perfect, so neat, so orderly, so secure, never wondering how the natural wonder and spontaneity of life itself could be suppressed so completely by a concrete city block. How the flawless expanse of nature has been decapitated so thoroughly so that this grey scab made of highrises and smoky streets could take their rightful place upon her grave.

Why look backwards to primitive times? this is progress. The world really does spin around you if you follow the same story as the rest of the sheep. The shepherd has become the politician and the peasant has grown despondent. the world outside might seem to progress but the soul of humanity stagnates within. One dare not look within, to gaze upon the withering light, that once brilliant spirit that now trudges through trenches and fog. The landscape of your heart grows barren in the absence of truth and the only reason there still seems to be anything growing there at all is because of the junk that you scarf down with your senses. Sensual poison fertilizes the bed where you once sowed ideas , instead now there only grows monochrome glimpses of the world that is truly our birthright.

Come out of the cave, the light is not so bad. It might seem to burn at first but that's only the flame of truth dispelling the illusions that you have painted over reality. Beyond that you will find a world dancing with colour and joy, a world that is equally as beautiful as the truth that you refuse to acknowledge. For each day spent in a colorless world there will be a yeae spent flying through vivid dreamscapes that flow forth from the very fuel of your imagination.