Help Yourself

This is the recommended first port-of-call for new readers.

Conquering cognitive dissonance can be an unpleasant, psyche-changing, relationship-wrecking, career-ending experience, depending on how far from reality an individual has become, and thus how far the elastic must snap back.  Underestimate it at your peril.

Many people first experience 'the dark night of the soul' after straying into uncensored information, causing them to abruptly question some of their most fundamental attitudes, norms, and beliefs held since childhood.  Similar to the end of a long-term personal relationship, a bereavement, or some other sudden (and usually negative) turn of events,  humans experience a 'five stages of grief' process that begins with shock, disbelief, and denial, and then gets worse. These feelings accompany the questioning and inevitable deconstruction of everything that an individual thought they knew to be true about human life on Earth, but was actually false, incomplete, or irrelevant.  For example, almost every human on Earth knows what money is, but almost nobody knows where it comes from.  Many still believe that money is printed by governments, despite the fact that this lucrative responsibility was usurped from all European governments by bankers as far back as the 1800s (they also got the USA in 1913 and Canada in 1934).  Equally, most people in the USA, Canada, and Australia actually believe their public water supply is safe to drink.  And it is, as long as cancer, self-imposed stupidity, and long-term brain damage are the objectives of the person drinking it.

If you're experiencing cognitive dissonance for the first time right now, then go here.

So how can someone bullet-proof themselves before embarking on a journey that will put them and their constitution to the ultimate test? In short, by knowing oneself and one's self-worth. But that sense of self-worth must be impermeable. It cannot be reliant on such 20th century constructs as "income", "job title", or other consumerist tendencies such as accumulating 'stuff' whether that stuff is money, or anything else.  Unfortunately, career success in a psychopathic system that does little more than relentlessly convert Earth's finite resources into landfill for profit (via a consumer) is likely the antithesis of worthiness. As Krishnamurti said: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

One has to be intimately familiar with one's own strengths and weaknesses in order to understand how best one can function, and to help understand what role can be played in evolution whether of the self, or of the species.  One must imagine humankind has already evolved beyond money, materialism, and aspirational psychopathy, and then try to imagine the role in society they might play.

But, first things first...