Time to stop hoping things will improve, and to start preparing for the future shock

Basically, as a species, we blew it.

Our selfishness and greed, pride and prejudice, and cult of personality-hero worship has brought us to a moment in time where life has become a rat-race for daily survival. Everything is backwards and upside down -- it's all screwed up. Not since feudal England has there been such acceptance of servitude toward the powers that be.

The Cost of Living | It takes roughly half a year's wages to pay taxes, and the other half to pay the rent or mortgage, insurance, car loan, food and the basic human survival needs. Everything else is charged or borrowed on future earnings. This effectively renders us slaves to the government who claims ultimate ownership of all the country's land.

Most of us pay for our homes three times over: once in the form of principal (the purchase price); twice (or more) in interest; and thrice through taxes.

And if you think that sounds bad, more than half the people in the U.S. earn less than $24,000 per year. Of course, thanks to credit cards and home-equity loans, most people don't even realize how poor they are until they lose their job or get sick -- then they can't afford their payments and they end up out on the street, or worse.

Robber Barrons | This country has been pillaged by the politicians, bankers and globalized corporations. We're a nation of slaves -- stuffing our faces with fast-food, chirping on cell phones, and driving around like chimps in over-priced go-carts. And the sad thing is, we've allowed this to happen.

Think about all this for a moment... All of the fruit of your labors goes to support the lifestyles of politcians and corporate 'barrons.' You are not truly free to do anything. Your whole life is spent in servitude; but you've been brainwashed to believe that the few waking hours of the week that you don't have to work are some kind of reward. There's something seriously wrong with our society when the major motivation in life is to work to make enough money just to survive.

Life has become surreal | Over the past decade, there has been a transmutation from the previous socio-economic natural existence to a virtual-reality world of disconnect.

We work, eat, sleep and breed drones to do the same. An entire generation of taking not giving, watching, not participating -- we're lost in a passive existence of self-gratification and diversion--ruled by the media and politicians and fueled by manufactured want.

People are going through the motions of life, using diversions to avoid confrontation with reality. The corporations, politicians and media encourage, reward and feed on this behavior to maintain their wealth, power and property. Meanwhile, the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening. The very things that the power-elite claim to be doing (or will do if elected) have already become so out of reach for their slave society, that even the dream of achieving them has become fantasy. In short, the world has changed and nobody knows it.

Reasonable, normal, nice, ordinary people aren't greedy, and they don't want war; they just want to be free to pursue happiness with as little government interference as possible. True freedom is not won, or gained at gunpoint, or by the death of innocent foreigners. Differences over religious beliefs and forms of governance can only be resolved by talking it over. If you have to kill someone to win an argument, what does that say about you and your beliefs?

Unfortunately, in a consumerism society where big business and government gobble up the mom and pop stores, tax the poor and reward the rich. They exploit us and maintain their control by constantly convincing us they are legitimate and necessary; when in reality, they know that the more educated and technologically advanced we become, the less need we have for their ruling class of do-nothings.

Unless millions of people express their dissatisfaction with the status quo, we'll all be waving goodbye in our lifetimes to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

More to come...