Jim Prues

Growing up in the fog of the dominant culture has left its mark on us all. Whether this fog really exists and what it consists of are fabulous questions. While it is often argued otherwise, from the World5 perspective, the fog is evident, pervasive and tremendously destructive.

The fog began ages ago when, having learned language, we began talking about the past and future, which eventually imparted them with an illusory sense of reality. So much has this occurred that by the time we reached modern times we tacitly accepted the notion of past, present and future as being a continuum.

A false notion. The past is gone and tomorrow never comes. And yet we feel a sense of continuity in our lives. We see the effects of change moment-by-moment, and yet our awareness remains continuous. It may well be that our awareness connects with something outside of time, oh, say an Eternal Awareness.

This condition of interpreting the world in terms of past, present and future created the fog. So from a World5 perspective, the fog is a mental/emotional construction to which many ascribe reality. [This doesn't make the fog real, but with so many human minds engaged in this illusion, the illusion has consequences.]

The fog has been exacerbated throughout history as elites and aristocracy have sought to advance and maintain their positions of power. Commoners, in the historic norm, were told anything to keep them docile, or at least at bay, in a terribly unjust world. The rise of social identities connecting to tribe, city, region or nation-state was heartily encouraged, though ultimately it played out as propaganda. We might be robbed, abused and suffering, but by golly let's have a round of "God Bless America". And of course, enemies have always been a requirement to herd local commoners toward the desired interests of the aristocracy. And so it was that other classes of people, other tribes and races, other nations, were all deemed as enemies to justify abusive policies.

The fog was taken to a new level again in the 1930s United States when Edward Bernays establish the idea of "Public Relations", a better name for what was previously called propaganda. He is notorious for his ideas of controlling group behaviors through manipulation.

From Wiki: Bernays' vision was of a utopian society in which the dangerous libidinal energies that lurked just below the surface of every individual could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit. Through the use of mass production, big business could fulfill constant craving of the inherently irrational and desire driven masses, simultaneously securing the niche of a mass production economy (even in peacetime), as well as sating the dangerous animal urges that threatened to tear society apart if left unquelled.

The idea of a benevolent corporate elite is ludicrous, and likely was even when the idea of PR was instigated 80 years ago. And yet from inside the elitist mind, such rationalizations are seemingly easily found. We find this condition still true today. The fog exists because vested interests, the aristocracy, benefit from our continued ignorance.

The fog plays out in our daily lives with our culture's misplaced priorities, the constant battering of advertising, government propaganda and corporate domination. Who was in charge of the Gulf Oil Disaster cleanup? The perpetrator, BP. Why does the financial reform bill lack teeth? Goldman Sachs owns the white house and congress. Will whiter teeth make you happy? You betcha.

The remedy? We begin by connecting our awareness with Eternal Awareness, a connection only possible in This Moment, as this Is, in reality, the only moment that exists. A mere change in perception that awakens and opens our sense of self.

Yet it's quite challenging to make this shift in perception, as our minds are over-burdened by a freight train of thoughts and feelings that keep us from recognizing our reality. We are incapable of discovering and experiencing this reality whilst caught up in a storm of fear. And if the aristocracy are good at anything, it is engendering fear in the rest of us.

As teachers and mystics have reminded us throughout history, as every animal and pet teaches, as Life exhibits without fail, Now is All. And we step out of the fog as we engender The Three Truths in our personal lives.

The first truth states just what we've been saying here, that This Moment is the totality of reality. In case of doubt, there is a simple test. Leave. Leave This Moment. It is impossible, except in illusion. We are all always here together. Period. The second truth states that of prime concern, Here, is our intent. Our intention establishes our perceptions. The common analogy is whether the glass is half empty or half full. But the implications of intent are far greater. Our intent creates our experience of reality. And as we come to understand the choice we face with our intent, fear or Love, we come to appreciate just how powerful our intent is, and its dramatic effect on our sense of self and our perception of the world. It is our intention that makes us human. The third truth is quite simple: only Love makes us happy.

Through understanding The Three Truths, we are able to clear the fog of our personal experience. We find ourselves connected with Our Source, each other and all that is in This Moment. We are grounded in reality, tremendously refreshing in this foggy, dysfunctional culture.

With this new stance, we are now far more clear and far more ready to address the fog in our shared cultural world.

To remove the fog in our culture, we have to appreciate why such fog is encouraged. To do this we find a simple, age-old adage that brings great clarity: Follow the money. There is little point in rehashing how we, the people, have been abused by the elitist agenda and their goal of corporate domination, a permanent war paradigm, a two-class culture, higher profits, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Chomsky, Vidal, Naomi Klein and a host of others have delineated the path to our current Disaster Capitalism model quite well.

Historically, this strategy has been quite effective. While there are uprisings and populist expressions of discontent, elitist power has been unchallenged for centuries. The forms of power and the forms of resistance change, but the game has been unchanged. We struggle, like Medieval surfs, against elitist control.

Much of the effectiveness of this strategy has relied on two tactics, propaganda and disempowerment. Elites contintue to use propaganda to create fear and hate of others who are somehow [seemingly] dissimilar. A tactic we saw played out just this week in all the hysteria surrounding a Muslim teaching center a few blocks from the old World Trade Center. Nothing but distraction, propaganda and fear-mongering. The disempowerment occurs as we are constantly reminded of the little we can do to impact our situation. Subtle pointers that claim this culture is fixed, and not something malleable to our intent. Fog.

This is clearly not so. Even in the foggiest of worlds it is possible to find clarity by seeing through the fog and into the Eternity that is This Moment. We find God Here, if you will. When our intention is unconditional Love, we find an unassailable peace. If this seems crazy recognize that sane behavior seems crazy when the world is as screwed up as this one.

Now the fog is lifting. Millions of us are questioning the dominant systems that exist much to our detriment. Millions of us implicitly feel our connection, and the falseness of the world presented to us by mainstream [read corporate] media.

And now we have a Banner of Truth to rid ourselves of the three-headed monster of corporatism, militarism and elitism, and replacing it with a far happier system that supports human life and planetary health. It's a new day. Welcome to World 5.0.

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Jim Prues is the founder of World 5.0. He runs a small business, writes, golfs, plays music and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He can be reached at: jim@world5.org