“They” Don’t Care About You and Me
Mindfulness empowers you and me to care and make real change in the world.
Big business. Government. Religion. Each of these entities, separately and combined, are the “they” of the world around you and me. Each uses money, fear, faux-power, influence, and the bully pulpit to sway you and me to their ideals, buy their products, elect their officials, accept their morality, and the like.
This is both subtle and blatant. Big business tends to be blatant, utilizing advertising to play on your fears, sell sex, and convince you and me that our lives are lacking without the product or service they’re selling. Government is both, creating false narratives around “us” versus “them”, pitting liberals against conservatives while picking the pockets of both in a variety of blatant and subtle ways. Religion tends to be more subtle, implying the displeasure of the Almighty and suffering in an afterlife that may or may not exist. Sin against the almighty and there will be consequences.
Then you get manipulated into arguments, fights, and wars over which religious entity, government, and/or business has it right.
There is, however, one inescapable truth about all of these entities. The “they” that they are. It’s this: “They” don’t care about you and me.
The proof that “they” don’t care about you and me is obvious
When you look at each entity individually, it’s clear where they stand, and that they care about themselves, but not you and me as anything but a means to their ends.
Business
Big business is the easiest to prove. Profit margins and making money for the leadership and executives of the business, as well as the shareholder investors, is the primary goal. This has become bloated beyond reason in so many ways.
People no longer recognize that profit is money made above and beyond any and all operating costs. Any widget has a cost in materials, labor, advertising, and so on. Say the widget thus costs $10 to make. They sell it for $20. Every widget sold makes double its cost. That’s profit.
Businesses and individual billionaires tell you and me, loudly, how much of an imposition it is to pay taxes on their profit, hire sufficient skilled workers at living wages, and the like. Never mind that doing these things means rather than a profit – above and beyond all costs – in the tens of billions would only be in the billions. So? You’re still plenty wealthy and lacking nothing. It’s utterly ridiculous when you look closely at their bullshit.
Government
Government is easy to recognize. The lies are incredibly blatant. The one side tells you that the other side is going to let the “other” – whether that “other” is a Jew, Muslim, homosexual, transgender, black, or other not-white male – take all you have. They disrespect your way of life and will take everything away that you’ve ever strived to build for yourself.
Meanwhile, they’re taxing you and me heavily while lining their pockets and expanding their false, artificial, so-called power.
Do oil companies that make billions of dollars in profit need subsidies? Of course not. Would you and I benefit from the national minimum wage being increased and having universal health care? Duh. Which of these does the government give attention to?
Religion
Religion presents a supposed path of morality and spirituality. That is until it shows intolerance for “the other”. When one set of beliefs is used to bully and override anyone else’s, their true colors are shown. They care only about the overarching idea, not individual people.
Look closely at every prophet such as Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammad. They had the exact same message – be kind and compassionate to one another. That message was not followed by “or else you’ll be converted, subjugated, and/or destroyed.” Yet religion has done its damnedest to work itself into politics and business to control as much as it can.
It’s very evident how “they” care not at all for you and me. Hell, you and I hardly ping their radar. Yet people look to them – business, government, and religion – for validation, respect, support, and even a sense of purpose.
What if that can be found within you and me?
You and me and mindfulness
Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – is only partially about the externals of the world. Its core is the internals of you and me as individuals.
“They” don’t and can’t know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, your approach, or what you will or won’t do. They guess at it all the time, and they do everything in their power to direct you and me. However, when all is said and done, “they” can’t and don’t know you and me. At all.
The only person who can know you is you. Genuinely, truly, deeply. I can’t know you any more than you allow me to, and even then, I’m not in your head, heart, and soul. “They” are constantly attempting to sell you and me on them having our best interests at heart. Do they? No. “They” don’t care about you and me.
Why does this matter? Because when you and I stop attempting to please and appease these faceless, uncaring entities, you and I can turn the focus toward what we can impact within and without.
“They” love the false narrative of selfishness. Making self-care a selfish act is utterly disempowering. Worse, it tends to be unprofitable. “They” care far more about how much they can make off of you and me than anything else. The machines of disempowerment “they” employ are many and distressing.
Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – empowers you and me. When you and I are empowered, we can see how “they” matter very little in the end.
A thinking and feeling revolution
The only way you and I can do anything to create real change in the world is by starting with ourselves. You can be mindful, practice self-care, and start by focusing on being healthier physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That begins with your thoughts and your feelings. It’s an inside job.
From there, you become empowered. Your empowerment via thoughts and feelings can be shown to the people you care about. Helping them think and feel more, starting with themselves, empowers them, too.
Recognizing and acknowledging that “they” don’t care about you and me is huge. With that recognition, you and I can turn the focus away from these faceless, uncaring entities and practice caring for ourselves first.
It’s easy. Start by giving yourself more kindness, compassion, and empathy. It’s not about what “they” want, it’s about what you need. There’s nobody who doesn’t desire kindness, compassion, and empathy.
Once you give it more to yourself, you can give kindness, compassion, and empathy more to others. It’s a grass-roots narrative that “they” strive to cut you and me off from. Recognizing, acknowledging, and then working from there empowers. When you and I are empowered, “they” lose the false control they seek.
That’s how you and I can change the world. Since “they” don’t care about you and me, let’s stop wasting time, energy, and resources giving them power.
In the words of the late, great, John Lennon,
“Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world / You
You may say I’m a dreamer / But I’m not the only one / I hope someday you’ll join us / And the world will live as one.”
Can you see not only that “they” don’t care about you and me, but that you can be far more empowered without them?
This is the six-hundred and forty-fourth (644) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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