The Lost Goats: an epilogue of sorts
Aug. 12th, 2012 05:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencer...What I have learned from my experience, boiled down to its simplest form, is just this: that the only way not to be afraid is...not to be afraid. Fear always comes from within; you cannot conquer it by having more money than anyone else, or by living in a fortress, or by surrounding yourself with sycophants and hangers-on. By doing that, you only succeed in locking fear in with you. You can never lock it out. To avoid the Spiral of Spending, to bridge the Guilt Gap, to stay clear of Debt Dependency, all that is needed is not to be so terrified of poverty that you have to spend money to prove to yourself that you have it. And that is both the simplest to state and the hardest to achieve of all the steps I have outlined in this book.
It can be done, though, more easily with help. Sadly, that help is not often forthcoming. There are too many worlds in our galaxy where that fear is still an elementary weapon in the political arsenal. Governments use it to keep the population under control, to gain approval for their agendas, to keep the wealth flowing away from the mass of people and towards the coffers of themselves and their friends; and if they can maintain the fear at a subliminal stage, where the majority of people are not even aware that it is ruling their lives, then so much the better for them. Where a society is locked into Production Fever, flooding its markets with tons of unnecessary things--where the cult of ostentation is preached every day through the media, through the adulation of celebrity extravagance and the anathematisation of the poor--where the Myth of Money has replaced the Reality of Richness in the minds of the people--then you can be sure that that society is corrupt and broken, its people slaves in all but name.
But all is not lost, even on such worlds. If you can achieve even a temporary stability, and if you then use the mental exercises and practise the habits I have tried to set out for you in these pages, then there is a chance that you can escape the traps and avoid the pitfalls. If you can set a realistic Sufficiency Standard for yourself and your family, one that with the resources you have been given can not only be attained but maintained indefinitely, you can realise that you are truly rich. It is not an easy task; outside forces will be arrayed against you, trying to force you out of balance and into the Debt Danger Zone. What is important then is to remember that any hope that the system offers you is false, any quick fix that seems to promise release is a lie, and the only way to return to stability is to take a deep breath and start again. Nobody can make you rich but you yourself; and the only way you can do it is by thinking.
It was once said "Money can't buy happiness, but it can enable you to be miserable in comfort." I have been there, and I am here to tell you it is not worth the cost. Maybe someday the forces of unbridled greed will be defeated and driven out of every planet where humans live, and the majority who have the sense to restrain their baser impulses will gain the power to shape all our lives. Affiliation, the acknowledgment of the Sagittarian Accords, is a beginning, but only a beginning; it is a set of training wheels. The true triumph will be when it is no longer needed; when each of us, on every planet of every star in this vast, beautiful, and above all rich universe, has the freedom and the power and the will to see clearly, to order our own lives rationally, and to Think Ourselves Rich.
(From the Afterword to "Think Yourself Rich" by Pervilious Snood, published on Ridding-Goat one year after the events recounted in this story, and five years before the planet sought Affiliation)
It can be done, though, more easily with help. Sadly, that help is not often forthcoming. There are too many worlds in our galaxy where that fear is still an elementary weapon in the political arsenal. Governments use it to keep the population under control, to gain approval for their agendas, to keep the wealth flowing away from the mass of people and towards the coffers of themselves and their friends; and if they can maintain the fear at a subliminal stage, where the majority of people are not even aware that it is ruling their lives, then so much the better for them. Where a society is locked into Production Fever, flooding its markets with tons of unnecessary things--where the cult of ostentation is preached every day through the media, through the adulation of celebrity extravagance and the anathematisation of the poor--where the Myth of Money has replaced the Reality of Richness in the minds of the people--then you can be sure that that society is corrupt and broken, its people slaves in all but name.
But all is not lost, even on such worlds. If you can achieve even a temporary stability, and if you then use the mental exercises and practise the habits I have tried to set out for you in these pages, then there is a chance that you can escape the traps and avoid the pitfalls. If you can set a realistic Sufficiency Standard for yourself and your family, one that with the resources you have been given can not only be attained but maintained indefinitely, you can realise that you are truly rich. It is not an easy task; outside forces will be arrayed against you, trying to force you out of balance and into the Debt Danger Zone. What is important then is to remember that any hope that the system offers you is false, any quick fix that seems to promise release is a lie, and the only way to return to stability is to take a deep breath and start again. Nobody can make you rich but you yourself; and the only way you can do it is by thinking.
It was once said "Money can't buy happiness, but it can enable you to be miserable in comfort." I have been there, and I am here to tell you it is not worth the cost. Maybe someday the forces of unbridled greed will be defeated and driven out of every planet where humans live, and the majority who have the sense to restrain their baser impulses will gain the power to shape all our lives. Affiliation, the acknowledgment of the Sagittarian Accords, is a beginning, but only a beginning; it is a set of training wheels. The true triumph will be when it is no longer needed; when each of us, on every planet of every star in this vast, beautiful, and above all rich universe, has the freedom and the power and the will to see clearly, to order our own lives rationally, and to Think Ourselves Rich.
(From the Afterword to "Think Yourself Rich" by Pervilious Snood, published on Ridding-Goat one year after the events recounted in this story, and five years before the planet sought Affiliation)