Quote Originally Posted by Niya View Post
I'll be honest, I wish I had Shaggy's super-positive outlook on life but unfortunately, I cannot. I dared to wonder what was behind the curtain and now I'm forever tainted....condemned to see the monsters lurking in every shadow.
They don't exist. You are creating them.

If you think there are sinister forces out there bent on doing you harm...well, you're right about that, but they aren't intelligent. There isn't some global conspiracy. It's just people, and likely people who aren't as smart as you are. If you don't believe you are smart enough to orchestrate a conspiracy of the magnitude you are seeing, then don't believe it of other people, either. People can do horrible things to one another. They don't do it because of some over-arching plan, but usually by accident.

There is a case wending it's way through the Idaho courts about a couple kids. They disappeared a year or two back, then their bodies were discovered buried in the backyard of their stepfather. The mother and stepfather were going to be tried for murder, but at this point, the mother isn't thought mentally competent to stand trial. That's probably correct. The stepfather isn't all that stable, either, but the mother appears to have believed herself to be some kind of messianic figure, and the stepfather was either along for the ride, or supporting that view. The children were killed to save them.

Now, you might say that's crazy, and the courts currently would agree with you, but that IS the reality that those two (or at least the mother) are living. In this case, the result was considerable harm (there seem likely to have been two other murders, and possibly three or four, connected to this in some fashion), but what if there hadn't been? Perhaps we are all living in our own frantic delusions? We certainly don't all see the world the same way.

However, I am struck by the hopelessness that comes through with this "sinister world plot" point of view. Nobody has suggested that there is anything meaningful to be done about it. You do suggest that your life is worse for it, but not that there is anything useful to improve the situation. Perhaps you feel that you are better off knowing about it. That would be kind of a 'red pill' thing, like in the Matrix, with the notable distinction that in the movie, the whole point of the red pill was that there WAS something that could be done about it. Take that pill and you could be the 'special guy' with special skills, able to fight with the puppet masters and not responsible for any of your actions (cause those were just puppets that you killed or injured, and they didn't understand the reality that you lived in). Except that there's no red pill, no special skills, no real puppet masters, and no magic phone booth that whisks you out of the game so that you don't have to take responsibility for your actions. So, you get all the anxiety and the gloom and for what? As far as anybody knows, this IS the world we live in. The real world. It is what you make of it. The puppet masters don't exist. They're just people with the same strengths and weaknesses that you have...with perhaps a bit more money, but it's really just connections that they have. They pull strings and things happen because they have connections. My life is what it is because of the connections I have with other people, even with all of you. Form enough connections and you, too, can shift the world when you pull the strings.

That's what every powerful person has learned over all history: If you don't like something, lean in until you can change it.

Don't waste your time whinging on about the dark, malign, forces shaping the world. YOU are shaping the world, so long as you lean into it.