Who are you? What is your purpose?
In some religious texts, you chose to be here, in your body, in this moment, in this reality. In other belief systems, your purpose was defined by God before you were born. Either way, it is reasonable, and perhaps even unharmful, to suggest that you came here for a reason, to do something, to serve some purpose in your limited time on earth.
Maybe you’ve forgotten what that purpose is, or perhaps you never really knew it. So how can you find happiness (at the minimum) or “level up” to a higher state of consciousness (at the maximum) if you don’t know what your reason for being is?
Allowing people to discover their purpose, without interference or coercion, is the essence of humanity. Unfortunately, various forces conspire against you to stop you from realizing your calling, your nature. There are numerous forces conspiring against humans discovering their greatest good, but among the most profoundly influential forces are:
The education system: Its negative influence exerts in many ways, but one in particular is the way school systems pressure kids to decide their entire future early on. Government school systems in particular, want children to choose a career or college while still in middle school. When I was in 7th grade, a computer program projected that my best and highest purpose was to be a wastewater treatment plant manager. (Some might say that I achieved that objective by being in politics, but I digress). What a weird system to train kids that their profession is who they are, and they need to know it by the time they’re 12.
The healthcare system: Even before we are born, we are confronted with a healthcare system that favors medication over natural solutions, disrupting the natural path of self-discovery and dulling the senses. When people can’t figure out their purpose, or they’re encouraged to find a purpose that doesn’t align with who they really are, various ailments manifest. The western healthcare system prefers to confront this problem with medication, further obscuring the path of true awareness.
The military industrial complex: Nations of people live under the constant threat of war and violence. Banks fund both sides of a conflict in order to perpetuate the illusion of separation. Politicians feed the fear, often in service of their own agenda for reelection, and real people with no real sense purpose except to defend or aggress against others in another land, get caught up in this endless matrix of violence.
Atheist/agnostic readers might argue that humans aren’t born with any kind of special or specific purpose, that we are just part of the randomness of the universe with no special preconceived path. But they might acknowledge that there is an order to reality that is undeniable, found in nature in the form of Fibonacci sequences, golden mean ratio, fractals, and prime numbers. Spun from the web of that order are humans, animals, insects, and plants with patterns in appearance and behavior, changed and influenced when acted upon, which dictate outcomes.
Left to their own devices, allowing people to allow and flow with the natural forces of the universe, provides people the greatest path toward becoming who they were meant to be.
Few politicians have the wherewithal to unravel the systems that hold humanity, or individual humans, back. They view questions at scale, addressing problems in collective form. It is doubtful this will change any time soon. The incentives to act in this manner are too great, and the institutions that benefit too powerful.
For us, the next best hope is to recognize the existence of these systems (along with others that conspire with the three main ones) so that people can discover their actual purpose in the face of systems that otherwise keep them from leveling up humanity.