WAKING UP THE SLEEPWALKERS

WAKING UP THE SLEEPWALKERS

Article by Charles E.J. Moulton

Laughing to the grave. That’s what he was doing as he fell off the bridge. James Bond struggled a bit with Max Zorin. Once this man, played by Christopher Walken, realized he was falling and not going make it – he laughed. It was a desperate laugh of someone who in the last minute understood the truth. The film A View To A Kill segued into a brilliant finish. The bad guy fell and Bond survived.
The only problem is that, in our reality, we are Max Zorin and we better wake up before we fall off the bridge.
We have to start redefining what makes us feel good.
Because escapism is not always the road to happiness.

Two kinds of laughter

The famous Austrian entertainer Georg Kreisler once said: “Everyone is laughing these days. But what is everyone laughing about? Terrorism? Unemployment?” Laughing is healthy, yes. No question about that, but laughing on the expense of spiritual depth? No. His point has merit. The fact that people will laugh about anything also means that they laugh in order to forget their own obligations. They run away from the truth.
So, here is where we stand: there are two kinds of laughter.
1) The first one embraces all of life, enjoys it, lives it, knows it, feels it. It doesn’t exclude anything. That is the kind of laughter that children will present you with. Children love laughing and their laughter makes everyone else laugh. On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HttF5HVYtlQ, if you have the chance, check out this little boy. This laughter has another name: honesty.
2) The other kind of laughter points its finger. It excludes other people, excludes the truth. It is the laughter of the more important people, people who would rather have other people excluded from their own mutual admiration society.

Who wants to be a victim?

The fact is that we live in an excessive society that thrives on forgetting and is devoted to avoiding work. Two teenage brothers I knew faked an accident so that the older brother didn’t have to go to work.
The future will be owned by the educated. That is painful truth. People who work hard will get more benefits. That also means that we have to help those less fortunate than us. But we should aim to be at the winning end.
Who wants to be a victim?
The gap between the rich and the poor is widening. The competition is fierce and the natural resources are slowly but surely turning the world into a desert.
Our weapon against this apocalypse is knowledge. Knowledge can be fun and it gives you jobs. Working hard is good fun. Getting good grades is even more fun. Getting a good job is three times as fun. Becoming a successful professional makes you laugh yourself senseless. Success is fun. Hard work makes you grin.
“Even if it is wrong, do something,” my father used to say.
The only problem is that people have been taught how to blindfold themselves with their own desire for fun.
This was known even to the old Romans.
“Keep the people busy with food and games and they will not notice us making other plans.”

Seeing the truth

Inspirational literature often speaks of the new change and that society has to start shaping up. The fact is, however, that it all starts inside you.
Books like Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch preach this kind of a change. The focal point is inside the individual. A person that realizes that he can change the world by changing himself IS changing his own world, if nothing else. But it has to start with you. Inside you.
I have always been spiritual. When people see my resumé, they often say how much they admire how much I have done in my life. The fact of the matter is, though, that I spent many years in my youth just dawdling. I was singing, studying, living a very cultural life. But I took a lot of things for granted. Maybe I was influenced by other people or there was no one to give me a real kick in the butt.
The truth is, however, that I would’ve needed it.
The way to that truth is twofold:
1) Never be afraid of honest hard work.
2) Never be afraid to look the honest truth in the eye.

What is the truth?

Let’s take logistics, just for kicks.
A normal family buys its food in a normal supermarket, but doesn’t realize that the bananas have travelled for four weeks in three different cool water compartments thousands of miles in order to get there. The man eating his steak in a steak house doesn’t realize that his steak actually is three weeks old and newly defrosted. Everything is taken for granted. Once the hot water boiler or the electricity breaks down at home, however, one realizes how dependant man has become on his modern society.
Borders are a human invention. We are one race. Yes, multiculturalism is a blessing and the wonders of versatility is a necessity. But what we are doing is closing our eyes to our fellow man’s pain. And so one fourth of the world’s population enjoy three fourths of the world’s assets.
In that sense, escapism becomes not only running away from the problem. What we are doing is sticking our heads in the sand and hoping that the twister that is coming closer will somehow blow over.
To this fact, we can add that we are spiritual beings that constantly get hints from the other world of its existance. The human race can unite in its will to embrace a new spirituality. Following the inner voice is one answer among many.

Conclusion

So, when Max Zorin falls off the bridge at the end of A View to a Kill, we see a man who has followed his wrongs and his lack of depth for too long.
Avoiding to do something constructive and escaping reality eventually causes a stir within the heart and leads to a very bad wake-up call.
One way to avoid that is to stop complaining about your fellow man, work on your tolerance, embrace your spirituality and be inventively creative.
The world we live in is, in many ways, a society of sleepwalkers.
All the more important, then, is it that those not sleeping try to wake up their neighbours. But wake them up gently, will you. You wouldn’t want them to get startled.