The underlying theme of all of our documentary-esq work, whether we are behind the camera or in front of it, or just narrating as audio only, is hopefully self-development of the individual. So Niles, why do you occasionally touch on politics? Which is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of control relations among individuals. We realize it can be generally so exhausting, and would instead love to be talking only about higher level third eye related things and don't want to make all of our work solely about politics and we wish we could just fast forward to a point where it's sane, stable, and boring, and thus we do not focus on it at all, but due to the current landscape throughout the world and specifically in the United States, along with things that have been happening our whole life, American democracy, which has not even yet been fully achieved, as we typically have had kleptocracy, even that, is gravely under threat, and currently is more in the flavor of plutocratic oligarchy.
Moving toward real actual direct democracy, which belongs to everyone, is the group project that never ends. It’s where everyone gets a say, no one agrees, a way too large chunk of the team often doesn’t even show up, and yet somehow we mostly still pass the class. It's priceless because it gives power not to just the financially powerful, but to the person standing next to you in line. Regardless of their societal status or income and thus hands over the steering wheel of society - not to cunty kings, not to tyrants, but to all of us, collectively. It’s priceless because YOU have the ability to speak, protest, write, run for office, or support others who do. Of which many have zero reference points on how rare that has been through much of recent dark age history. The ability to disagree, very loudly, but still live near each other as neighbors is a good thing. Every generation's shared ownership, slow, flawed, fragile and frustrating as it can be, is always worth defending. And within it, every voice counts and if real cannot be bought, though many have tried and will continue to do so. Its ultimate beauty is that it can survive violence, revolutions, wanna be dictators, and even in its imperfections, it offers an evolving society. But most of all, it's 100x better than authoritarianism where not only does one not have any space for ability for self development, but also when the worst disagree with what you say or want you are disappeared into the shadows and at the time of this writing and speaking, there was a textbook wanna be authoritarian event in our country with military parade elements that was a pathetic flop and simultaneously there were thousands of cells of pro-democracy counter protests which were some of the largest in our nation's history. And that, pals, is exactly why evolving towards democracy is worth the struggle - when engaged in, it shines grassroots light on astroturf darkness and moving toward actual democracy requires not only such constant participation, but vigilance and refinement in order for it to evolve.
Voltaire certainly questioned if we're smart enough for it, and man... Many feel that way in the West in the first quarter of the 21st century, primarily cause of the deplorable state of the rebooting fourth estate, (meaning journalism and the media) but a well educated voting populace, which is desperately needing to continue being developed, can only continue to happen through the self-development of each individual that takes an active part in it. And we, as hopefully part of that, are unapologetically on team pro-democracy and recommend listening to our essay series on the subject.