“Now, to balance the scale, I'd like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences.
'Cause that's all you ever hear about in this country. It's our differences.
That's all the media and the politicians are ever talking about--the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another.
That's the way the ruling class operates in any society. They try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, can run off with all the fucking money!” ― George Carlin.
The comedic quote above, though it may sound all too familiar, it actually dates back to the year 1992.
The funny part is that twenty five years ago means nothing when it comes to how long this divide and conquer game has been going on.
This may very well be the oldest trick on the book. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was dated before books were even invented.
You know, carved in stone between dinosaurs and minotaurs.
Don’t Play the Bad Game
The concept of this game is very simple, you get people to fight between one another (despite the fact that both parties may share the same ultimate goal) and while everyone is busy pointing fingers at each other, you rob them blind and slip away.
A prime example of that is the 2008 recession. Which many refer to as the biggest robbery in human history, where the banks were doing the robbing.
When the state took taxpayers’ money to bail the big banks, there was very little doubt that economic system on place was no other than Fascism, the merger of state and corporate power.
However, instead of pointing at the problems and aiming to solve them, many people (especially the political talking heads) started immediately blaming the other camp for the economic troubles.
On the left they blamed Capitalism, and on the right the blame was assigned to Socialism.
Now, I don’t need to spoil this for you because you know what happens next: They ran with all the freakin’ money while everyone was busy pointing fingers.
Meanwhile fascism kept growing and the merger between state and corporate power started to reach questionable extremes.
All of the sudden, you would see private prisons paying lobbyists to get the government to come up with all sorts of new excuses to put people behind bars.
Or in slick political terms, to bring new clientele to the largest real estate developpement the world has ever seen, the prison industrial complex. Where 86% of the “guests” are jailed for victimless crimes.
Keep the Capitalists and the Socialists Fighting While Fascism Screws Them All
Pictures like the one above became wildly popular after the crisis, and for good reason. It is truly mind-blowing.
Now, both sides agreed that this was a very serious issue, yet none of them managed to recognize what caused it. Instead they all kept pointing the finger at each other.
Luckily for everybody, that map right there is becoming more and more irrelevant as the days pass. As young consumers are moving away from the mega-brands that previously had market monopoly.
Competition allowed for better and cheaper products to come to the market and many of them are making a name for themselves already.
You see Harry’s or The Dollar’s Club taking on mega household names like Gillette. Coca Cola went from being the most popular drink a few decades ago, to being probably the one of the most inconspicuous brands out there. Often reffered to as a sugar drink.
Even the clothing retail market is receiving a huge blow as more and more people are gravitating towards newer brands that above all, do not run child labor sweatshops in poor countries like Bangladesh.
Now I know, everywhere you look you hear “Millenials are anti-capitalists” or “millenials are predominantly socialists”.
Well, I’m not one for labels - and I'm certainly not a partisan of any kind - but those ‘socialists’ millennials seem to play a pretty good part in this new economy, not only do they vote with their dollars in a more decentralized fashion, but they regularly crowdfund all kinds of new cool projects to get them running from the ground up and have them compete with the big brands that earlier held state monopoly.
So maybe we shouldn’t pay much attention to the hate merchants out there, and perhaps we should think twice before antagonizing the new generation and brush them off as a hippie-lefties that are driving us to a Venezuelan train crash. In the end, everyone wants the same thing.
To build a better world.
We live in an exciting new world that keeps changing by the minute, if we want this blockchain to grow we need everyone. Fact of the matter, millennials helped tremendously in the fast adoption of Uber, the growth of Amazon and many other trends.
Everything points out that they will play a major role in accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrencies and smart contracts as well.
Everyday when you wake up you have a choice. Either to look forward to all the new exciting developments that aims to change the world for the better.
Or to revolve to falling for the same lame tribal game of Divide and Conquer... For the millionth time and counting.
Personally, I just chose to turn the TV off and forget about labels. Life is too short to spend it pointing fingers.