Mass culture is going through the most important rebirth of modern times.

Not everyone is strong enough to realise that they’re just not special.

I feel sorry for them. Those people still clinging to the idea that their life will ultimately mean something. That it has a purpose. That the universe or humanity cares much one way or the other what they do with their time here.

What a burden!

I think the “I’m special” mindset might go down as one of the shortest-lived cultural phenomena in history.

It’s a relatively new thing. Up until the television age, it was pretty much just kings and queens that suffered from the delusion that what they did mattered. That they were divinely selected for a life of special destiny.

Nowadays, that delusion is available to everyone. We mass produce it.

Our stories used to be about heroes – demi-gods effectively. Ulysses. King Arthur.

But with books, then cinema, then television, our stories became about everybody. They became ‘common’.

And that’s a great thing. Except that it sent the message that we could all be the heroes of our own movies. And we consumed that message, over and over again.

And so it became an affirmation. “I am special. I am the hero of this story. What I do totally influences how the story plays out. Everybody cares.”

We didn’t even realise we were buying into it, but we bought it hook line and sinker.

And having set up this unrealistic expectation, we then became miserable when the movie of our life kind of sucked. How’s that Fight Club quote go?

“We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

But I think we have now passed the peak of “I’m special”.

(Thank god!)

The internet makes information flow far and wide. It is incredibly hard to maintain the illusion that you’re special when you understand your tiny role in a population of 8-billion.

Even if you are one of the demi-gods of the moment – a Mark Zuckerberg or a Jeff Bezos or a Vladimir Putin – if you’ve got any sense of history you’ll know that you’ll have the world’s attention for the briefest moment.

We have all seen stars burn and then flame out. Whatever happened to Britney Spears?

And so in just a few years, you’ll just be another footnote to history… if you’re lucky.

And the rest of us won’t be remembered at all.

But don’t be sad. This is a delusion. The sooner we bury its sorry corpse, the better. And if the internet helps make the delusion untenable, then we should be grateful.

We are not special.

You are not special.

Ooohh. I know. Sorry. I know it’s a hard thing to hear.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that we are nothing but a brief and transitory clump of galactic compost, we cling to our belief that we are special like a drowning sloth clings to the timbers of a shipwreck.

I know this. As a blog writer. As a marketer. Nothing sells like, “you’re special.”

I could join those American guru’s with their “you’re special” sales pitches. I could join them pumping people up – “you’re special, you’re important, you’re going to change history. The school children of tomorrow will memorise your name and put your face against quotes you never actually said. “

But I never have and I never will. (Probably cost me a million dollars over a lifetime.)

Because it’s just not true. And nothing will make you more miserable than clinging to the idea that you’re special.

It’s such a heavy burden.

You want to know happiness? You want to know lightness? Let it go. Let go of the idea that you need to do or be anything.

Be ridiculous. Be silly. Be humble. Be insignificant. Be inconsistent and confusing to people.

Just don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t let the pressure of living up to some historical ideal distract you from the joy of living the life that is simply yours.

Live to make yourself happy, not get written up in a history book.

Let your own joy tell you you’re on the right path, not the roar of the crowd.

Do things because they’re fun, not because they ‘matter’.

The sooner you can let go of the idea that you’re special, the sooner you can start living a life you really love.

Be strong. It’s worth it.

I fact check a popular conspiracy theory.

I found myself going down a bit of a worm-hole when I stumbled across ‘the cremation of cares’ ceremony on the internet the other day.

If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the opening ritual in a week-long gathering at Bohemian Grove. Bohemian Grove is a sort of Californian holiday park for the who’s who of wealth and power. Some people say ‘Illuminati’. Members include Ronald Regan, Richard Nixon and Walter Cronkite.

This club has been closed to women for most of its life and is fairly secretive with what it gets up to. So it attracts a lot of suspicion.

Some people say that ‘the cremation of cares’ is about the shedding and shredding of human empathy – a process that is necessary if you’re to become a fully-functional member of elite society – i.e. someone who is willing to butt their cigar out on the butt cheeks of third world slaves.

Others say that ‘cares’ here just means anxieties and worries, not empathy. The ritual is simply an invitation to leave your worries at the door and enjoy the festivities the week has to offer.

What’s the truth of it? Who knows. It’s fun to speculate, but I’m only interested in actionable knowledge these days.

(Though this obviously has the illuminati’s fingerprints all over it.)

But what I thought was interesting is the cultural touchstones this conspiracy uses to feel so believable.

And I don’t want to use conspiracy theory in a negative sense here. Conspiracies are real. They happen. Not all of them obviously, but don’t judge a theory by who it hangs out with.

But anyway, this theory taps into the idea that to accumulate serious wealth and power you have to have a sociopathic lack of empathy. You have to be completely morally bankrupt.

And it’s not just something that looks good on your resume when applying to join the Illuminati. It’s actually a required skill. Ruthlessly oppressing sheeple without any flinches of moral qualms is part of the job description.

And when you get to that level of power and wealth, you have a self-enforcing culture. Innocence, purity, and righteousness simply cannot coexist. The culture’s immune system forces them out.

You hear stories of this in prison gangs. The first step of initiation is to knife someone. That way, you become damned with the rest of them. You share a common fate.

And so I can see how this story could catch on. It’s got currency.

I think we can also see it as the end game in a system that has some fairly perverse incentives.

It’s like, we all feel that we could be richer if we were willing to be more of a heartless bastard. We know we could make good money dressing toxic plastic up as baby food and selling it to orphans, but unfortunately for us, our morals get in the way.

In modern capitalism, a strongly defined sense of right and wrong is a liability. You’ll never get ahead.

And the sum effect is that everyone at the top of the pyramid is the very worst of us. It’s the people most willing to do horrible but profitable things. And if you want to compete with them, then you need to jettison your human decency, and let it burn on the funeral pyre of cares.

True or not, this story points to something.

But what I would say is that morality is not learnt. The heart has a compass. It knows right from wrong. I believe.

And because morality is part of our make-up, it cannot be ‘unlearnt’. And it can’t be destroyed by dressing up in a dress and prancing about in the forest.

And we can only go against the instincts of our heart for so long. Eventually, we break down or get cancer.

If you really want to know power – and I mean the fullness of your own power, the power that is your birth right – then you need to move in alignment with your heart.

You need to be in integrity. You need to do what your heart knows is right.

Even if the cremation of cares worked, and severed you from empathy, in doing so it would also sever your from a powerful source of energy – the energy that comes from moving in integrity and alignment and with your mission and purpose.

And so I just can’t see it as a process that’s going to give people enduring and potent power.

So the verdict on this episode of Jon Giaan’s myth busters?

Cremation of Cares?

Myth.

A small revolution in Mexico might be showing us the way forward.

If you get the time, take a look at this video here.

It’s a fascinating case study in revolution and the use-by date on our current political system. I reckon.

Anyway, the short version is that Cheran town in Mexico has banned politicians and political parties.

(I know, doesn’t it sound like heaven on earth?)

Cheran is a remote village, and they had illegal loggers coming into their forests and stealing their wood and resources.

When they complained they were harassed, murdered or just disappeared.

And so they went to their politicians, but their politicians were corrupt, on the payroll of the loggers and their big-party bosses in the city, and did nothing.

And so they just kicked them all out.

What I love about this is that it wasn’t one of those planned uprisings. Basically, a bunch of women just had enough one day, and started ringing the town bells, and everyone just showed up in force.

They didn’t even have a hashtag. #nottakingthisshitanymore

It seems the revolutions are often like this. Ferment can fester for years before it finally erupts, often over something relatively trivial. The seeds are sown, but the spark that lights the fire often comes out of nowhere.

And so now the people of Cheran have a new system, based on neighbourhood campfires and a general council. They also have their own police and an armed checkpoint into and out of town.

What I thought was interesting about this story though was just how familiar this story felt.

The world over, politicians are not there to serve the people. They are there to serve themselves… apart from a rare few.

I mean, think of the goose-stepping march of politicians in Australia that have been shown to be on China’s payroll.

We kind of put up with it because we don’t know what the alternative is, or think the alternative would be worse.

But stories like this remind us that politicians are parasitic pains in the arse.

I think we’re all feeling it. Disaffection with the political process is rife. Our revolving door of Prime Ministers reflects this. People have lost faith in the whole damn system.

And so they should. Even in Australia, which is still far and away one of the best places on earth to live, the government has been co-opted by power and does more to oppress and control that uplift and elevate.

(And you have to pay for the privilege!)

So how many people would shed a tear for our two party political system if it ended up on the scrap heap? Apart from all the lobbyists in Canberra, not many.

But I don’t think we’re on the brink of a revolution… yet.

What you see in this village in Mexico is an isolated people with tight social and cultural fabric. That makes a revolution possible, and an alternative viable.

There might be some small towns in Australia that could pull something like this off. But you wouldn’t see it in the major cities, and I don’t think you would see it at a national level.

This is the idea of Hobbs’ Leviathan. He said that the world is dominated by monsters. Government is the least bad monster, and we all agreed to give all our power to the least bad monster if it would then go and stop all the other monsters fighting and stomping on our children.

(Look it up. That’s literally what he said.)

Government wasn’t ideal, but it was better than the alternative.

And so it’s hard to see a way through a revolution because we worry about what might happen in the power vacuum it could create.

If there’s no government and no police, whose going to protect you from the bikies? If you’re a bikie, whose going to protect you from the vegans?

That’s why I’m not very optimistic about top-down revolutions. They can re-jig who’s in charge, but I don’t think they can create meaningful change.

The only hope, I think, is to start small, and hope to inspire and build up. Like what they’ve done in Cheran.

And so if you want to start a revolution in Australia, go out to Boggabri and start from there.

But no. All the revolutionaries are drinking coffee in Fitzroy.

Pretenders.