“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exist.”

Such “good” is not for any real good, but to acquire and maintain a grip on power. Vaguely worded hate crime laws are a convenient way to censor public opinion, dissuade debate, and discourage dissent. Private education is a threat to the “company view”, and allowing 16-yr olds the right to vote is a simple and inexpensive means to expand an impressionable voting base. These are not done in the interests of society, but to ensure the powerful and rich remain in power.

Yet, we remain largely silent. Why?

Neil Postman (1931 — 2003), a cultural critic who warned against our increasing reliance on technology to make us happy, wrote “We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

How many of us will rock the boat that feeds our hunger for happiness? J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, the quintessential novel of teenage angst and loss of innocence, wrote in Nine Stories: “The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.” Happiness arises from the pursuit of form; joy is an intrinsic part of our nature and takes the form we give it.

In 2015, I took an advanced 4-day, 3-night residential programme with Sadhguru at his ashram in Tennessee. At the end of this incredibly profound retreat, I walked to a pond to sit with myself and reflect on the previous days. It was a sunny afternoon and I noticed the clouds and the surrounding pines reflected in the still pond. As I sat, a comforting wave from an all-encompassing Perfection washed over me and I experienced myself in perfect harmony with the world around me. In this state, there was nothing to change, nothing to do, or think; there was simply the experience of perfection, not as I thought it to be, but as it was, exactly as it was: the trees, the pond, the dragon flies that danced among the lilies, and the small fish I could see just below the water’s edge. Most of all, I was a part of this perfection. Perfection, I discovered, is a state of mind.

Does the world need changing? Perhaps. Perhaps we will all hold up signs and march in unison along the boulevard. Perhaps we will be compelled to glue ourselves to a work of art, or admonish a Holocaust survivor for being Jewish. Or maybe, just maybe, we will understand that our limited perspective is what drives the world’s problems. Stuck in the pursuit of happiness, we have forgotten to simply be joyful…

I encourage all of us to step back from our political party, our social circle, even our family and friends, and certainly our knee-jerk reactions conditioned upon past trauma. There is only one way to do this: be joyful. Let happiness come and go as it may, but let us discover the state of joy within. We may indeed change the world, but not because it needs to change. We will change the world because Joy and Love and Compassion compel us to do so.

This year, Jupiter in Cancer invites you to discover your Joy.

 🤗

David 🔆

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