Have you ever wondered why people keep trusting career politicians to handle their finances? It’s a fascinating thing really. This is one of the biggest mind-boggling mysteries that seem to defy even time itself, mysteries that are impossible to explain from a purely rational point of view.

Ask any person in the world – scratch that – ask any person in the history of the world to describe politics in one word and you are guaranteed to hear some of the following words: Deceiving, dishonest, incompetent, cheating…Etc. And probably, this is from the generous side.

Now, ask any of those people how come they trusted those individuals to manage their finances, and it would seem like you’re speaking Chinese to them.

And that area right there is where the real game is being played.

That’s the space where critical thinking dulls, where the emperor sells clothes, and no one’s looking at Pinocchio’s nose. How on earth would a known dishonest, power hungry person convince the others that he should be the one that makes the decisions on behalf of everybody?

Worse than that, they give them all the power, no accountability and a virtual 100% probability to screw them , and everybody just keeps pretending to be surprised when these things happens.

Why Does This Keep Happening to Me?

You change the country, you change the century but the song remains the same, and the mystery survives. The only way to keep convincing people to accept a deal that acts against their own self-interest is to create a story that makes the exploitation of mankind look like the solution to their problem.

You look around, you find countries like Bolivia or Venezuela (just to give a few examples) that are extraordinarily blessed at the very same time with a rich abundance in natural resources and a starving population despite the fact that these two things should be mutually exclusive by any stretch of the imagination.

You can’t be that incompetent if you tried.

But then again, this isn’t about incompetence. Their solutions were already predetermined in the narrative, and when it doesn't work and the tale falls on its own weight, they’ll just repeat the same process again, because the narrative remains the same.

They keep seizing more lands, more factories and they keep “cracking down” on competition and seize everything in the name of ‘the common good’. Then they bankrupt them as well and they seize more and bankrupt those too.

If it wasn’t so heartbreaking it would be hilarious.

Here’s the crazy part of all this is that this wide spread phenomenon is completely irrelevant to the economic system, the economic policy, or to the continent, and it's happening across the board.

Find me a person in southern Europe that has good things to say about politicians in the ECB.

All the solutions they present are hell bent on screwing the little guy, whether it’s draconian austerity measures, raising the retirement age, bank bail outs…Etc

I’m not saying that it’s due to incompetence, dishonesty, or both. I’m saying that it’s irrelevant, because the solution is already pre-set beforehand to achieve one purpose, and one purpose only, that power keeps consolidating itself.

That might explain why we always keep hearing sentences like this one: “The game is rigged”, which happens to be one of the most popular expressions of our generation.

Let me give you another example.

When you turn on the radio and there are some finance experts on, how many times we hear the following words:

They’re making things worse; They’re repeating the same mistakes again; Things are actually getting worse and not better; The solutions are creating more problems than solving; How come the recovery is worse than the recession?

You see where this is going?

And this is not exclusive to our generation, in fact this story form is a very common archetypal myth that exists across every society and period of human history. With the very same the result, that whatever action that will be taken it will only serve to reinforce the dominant narrative.

Once Upon a Time

It is believed that the cavemen were the first storytellers, and whoever controlled the dominant story had a strong pull on the rest of society.

The human story is at the heart of everything, it’s the prima material of how most people perceive reality, the moment you question someone else’s dominant narrative, the debate is over before it’s even started. For many people, they much rather fall for the same thing again and again and until the end of times, rather than to dare questioning the story they grew up around.

“It’s easier to fool people, than show them that they have been fooled”.— Mark Twain

The crazy part however, is that the even if those individuals were to fully realized how they've been fooled, they would probably still willingly walk towards the fire nonetheless. Metaphorically speaking.

Unless of course, there is a new story that replaces the old story.

I remember reading one of James Altucher’s amazing posts and had a wake up call. I hope I’m not butchering the story, but it basically it goes like this: A friend of James asked him to go with her to the bank to help her decide the best option for her to put her money. Since he has some solid expertise in the finance world, it seemed like a wise decision for her part.

During that meeting in the bank, James just sat down, said nothing and only listened, when they finally left the bank he started explaining to her all the ways that they were trying to take advantage of her and rip her off.

“How can they do that to me?”

The next day, she went to the bank and did everything they asked her nonetheless.

This is How the Story Goes

Common folklore has it that there are those people among us that regular people that look just like me and you, but when they get a magical paper that says that they work for the status quo, then an invisible laser descends from the sky and grants them all sorts supernatural abilities and financial savoir-faire.

Well, sort of... Everything they touch still goes to crap, but that doesn’t matter anymore and their never-ceasing incompetence doesn’t seem to bother anyone either. Because now, they're part of the narrative.

And apparently, narrative trumps logic.

A successful investor once told me: Never listen to government economists, if they knew how to manage money, they would’ve made money themselves instead of telling people what to do.

As the Altucher story goes, along with countless others, whenever there is a threat to the narrative, the debate is over before it has even started. For many people in the world, defying authority is just about the last thing they would do, and that includes killing themselves and their own children.

But let’s go back to the subject of the day. We tell ourselves a story that defies every single law of the universe, that the idea of good business is spending trillions of Dollars bombing millions of people and generating the biggest debtor nation the world has ever seen.

If that is not telling you anything then honestly, I don’t know what does.

We tell ourselves even crazier stories, that if we just grabbed enough productive citizens and stacked them into jail cells for victim-less crimes, or for carrying bits of vegetation in their pockets, then we're going to revitalize the economy, and that oh! We will rehabilitate those poor souls through brutality and sexual violence.

Again, narrative trumps logic in ways logic can't even perceive.

Some people choose to deny their programming, and that seems as the right choice because sooner or later those stories could start acting as their very own gatekeepers. I’m not talking about inner resistance, I’m saying that maybe we need a new story that replaces the old story.

There has never been a better time for financial independence than the times we live in, there has never been so many options available for someone to start their own company, find jobs, or make their own movies even… All of that without dealing with a large number of resistant gate-keepers who may or may not have been programmed to serve a certain narrative.

I don't know about you but personally, if I had to follow a narrative, I much rather have one that I designed for myself rather than one that I was born into.

Closing thoughts

They say that when there is a paradigm shift, there is usually a new story that renders the other story irrelevant, but until then and even though the tools are already available to the public, people will not make the final move until they start seeing a certain degree of mass-adoption around them.

It is that mass adoption aspect that would make it acceptable for their psyche to separate from that old, probably coercive narrative that has been attached to them.

A few minutes ago, I was just going to end this piece with a question: “Does the Blockchain need a story?”

But then I realized that steemit has both the crypto-currency and the story aspect. So I’m swapping that question for a few modest words:

Can we just work together to build something beautiful? Do you guys see what we have here? Why don’t we just focus on what we have and how we can improve it. After all, it’s much harder to create something really great when you’re being held back by unnecessary drama. Wouldn't you agree?

And not to forget:

Your dream needs you full steem.

Sources: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8

Follow the Alien