Found while listening to a track via SomaFM, a quote woven behind the music. I don’t remember the song artist, but a Google search revealed the quote:

“People under the age of 20 have this massive hole in their soul. And they have built their personalities around cynicism. Cynicism means, simply, aping or putting into an ironic form, mocking, existing institutions, instead of building institutions of your own.

What I’ve discovered is that because these people have such a deep need for something to believe in. Someone like me or you who can come along and show these people that there is a meaning to life, that there are things worth believing in, that there are things worth being passionate about, they respond immediately.

I’ve been searching the Gods all my life and now I know them, the Gods inside of us. Or I feel I do.

Now, we’re either going to have the new Adolf Hitler’s coming along, who know how to manipulate this need, and do it with the new nationalisms and the new tribalism’s, and the new hate groups, or we’re going to have a you or a me, who will come along and pour a positive message, a positive sense of something to believe in, a positive crusade for emotionality.

The only messiahs who exist are as human beings. We human beings are all basically cockroaches at heart. That is to say, we’re insecure when we’re alone by ourselves, we have all kinds of self-doubts, we have our depressions, and we have all kinds of reasons to believe that we’re nobody at all. But it’s the ‘nobodys-at-all’ who become the Isaiahs of the world, it’s the ‘nobodys-at-all’ who become the Einstein’s of the world, it’s the ‘nobodys-at-all’ who become the Jesus Christ’s of the world.

It’s up to human beings to be the messiahs. We’re the only ones who are there to do it. And we have to do it. We have to do it. Because if we don’t do it, someone with an equal belief and passion to ours, who believes that the way to achieve things is through the old animal way – built into our limbic system, built into the lower parts of our brain, who knows that the best way to unite people is by uniting them in hatred against an outside group; and uniting them in mass murder.

We have to come along before that person comes along. We have to fill that void, and we have to fill it with positivity. It’s about digging into the elemental passions. All of this plays a part in trying to give to the new generation a movement that’s based on something extraordinarily passionate. That you can powerfully believe in. That you can use to advance humanity tremendously, absolutely tremendously, but that excises, deliberately, the God of War.

When you find the Gods inside yourself, you’ll find the God of War. You’ll find the God of bloodlust. You’ll find the God of genocide. And he will be one of the most powerful passions in you. And you have to knife him out of existence. You have to freeze him in his own private Hell, and make your positive Gods the Gods that take you over.

And by ‘the Gods that take you over’ I mean you have to find those passions that are so much more powerful than you, than anything you’ve been allowed to express in your life, and making those things the things you work on. In other words, not putting off until you’re 40 or 50 the things you feel passionate about at the age of 15 and 16 – but going directly to those things, and trying to implement them when you’re 20.

Pass ‘Go’. Forget the 200 dollars. Go directly to Park Place. And put your life there, on the line, with all the emotion and power and passion and insight in you.

And fuck the God of War.”

- Howard Bloom

It’s tempting to describe the Machine as familiar objects of scorn: big corporations, white men, society, the Illuminati, etc… but when you do that, you’re easily laughed off by the mainstream.

It’s become the ultimate cliche… “evil corporations” hell bent on making as much money as possible, staffed by fat-cat rich folk, always eager to trod on the lower classes.

That’s too simplistic, people say. Society is much more complex than that.

And it’s true: there are many reasons we (humanity) find ourselves in this predicament. Rampant war, dwindling resources, and climate change.

But when you ask where terrorists come from, they’ll give you a simple answer. “They’re extremist radicals, hell-bent on ending the Western way of life. They hate our freedom!”

How is it that one simple answer is more acceptable then the other?

In the wake of the Moscow bombings, President Dmitry Medvedev urged “harsher measures” to crack down on terrorism.

And yet, the bombing itself appears at least partially motivated by the killing of innocent civilians by government forces a few weeks earlier.

Then, four garlic pickers died along with 18 suspected Islamic militants in a three-day shootout in the mountainous forests that straddle two other North Caucasus provinces, Ingushetia and Chechnya.

The Memorial rights group on Saturday said the four were villagers caught in the crossfire and then dragged away and executed while gathering the wild shoots to sell at local markets.

“That shooting was just lunacy,” said Alexander Cherkasov, a Memorial spokesman. “And that lunacy was used to justify terrorism.”

Seems like a complex issue, and yet… also very simple: violence always creates more violence.

But why do we continue to get this simple equation wrong again and again? Bhikkhu Bodhi, an American Buddhist, identifies the problem lies with our understanding of peace.

“We think that peace means the absence of conflict; thus we try to gain peace by subduing our opponents and by bullying our environment to serve our desires, unaware that this process is ultimately self-destructive.”

I believe it’s also what Haruki Murakami meant when he said he’s “always on the side of the egg.”

No matter the side you identify with: the Right or the Left, the activists or the corporations, the fringe or the mainstream; it’s no longer about creating an enemy. Having an “other” different from you is a symptom of dualistic thinking that has created untold misery for millions.

As Ralph Waldo Trine writes in “In Tune With The Infinite“:

“The truly wise man or woman will recognize no one as an enemy.”

The defining conflict of the 20th century tends to be characterized as Democracy versus Totalitarianism. First, the Fascist dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin, then the spectre of Communist Russia.

By the turn of the century, it appeared that Democracy had won. Then suddenly, a new threat emerged to fill the hole: Islamic fundamentalists.

It’s tempting to see this struggle as something new and far different than previously fought. After all, nations can be reasoned with, truces negotiated, cease-fires declared. But terrorists (theoretically) want nothing less than to destroy or convert the infidels.

Bush Jr. made it clear when he stated, “You’re either with us or with the terrorists.” There is no middle ground in this war.

And so the 21st century’s defining conflict has become Religious Fundamentalists versus Freedom. Or has it?

The real issue is revealed when you look closely enough.

Distilled even further: Good versus Evil.

Finally, you arrive at: Us versus Them.

The current struggle is simply another incarnation of the previous wars. The enemy changes, but the position remains the same.

Rather than continue to replace one external threat with another, I believe the real challenge of the 21st century will be whether we can transcend the destructive mental illusion that we are separate from others.

We must go beyond Us versus Them.

If someone doesn’t have the same opinion as you, most people take it personally.

That was a great movie! How can you not like it? This music sucks! Your taste is awful. And so on.

Our preference often becomes part of our identity. So when someone else doesn’t share your preference, we feel they’re insulting us personally. And this isn’t limited to music/movies/food.

Politics and religion also falls under the identity umbrella. Some people believe the US should have invaded Iraq. They have based their opinions on what they read/watch and what they believe they “know.”

Radical fundamentalists hate our freedom. War is unfortunate but necessary.

If you try and demand otherwise, it doesn’t matter. Any amount of facts won’t change the mind of a person who has already settled on “the truth”. Persisting will only cause them to feel their worldview (and by extension, identity) is being personally attacked.

So how do you change someone else’s mind? You can’t…directly.

You can only offer alternative information. If they choose to absorb it – to allow it into the realm of possibility – then you just might have a chance.