The Poverty Program: The Operating System We Inherited

Perhaps the hardest programming to recognize is the programming that masquerades as virtue. It doesn’t arrive announcing itself as a limitation; it arrives as common sense, responsibility, humility, morality, even wisdom. We absorb it so completely that eventually we defend the very boundaries that keep us inside the smallest version of ourselves.

.   .   .

“The Cultural Hypnotic Societal Mechanism programmed you to be sick, broke, misinformed, and fearful.”

— Myron Golden

This quote, in a nutshell, is something that, at fifty, I still struggle with on the daily, and I’m sure most others do as well. I’m referring to people who are generally moral, ethical, and operate on a foundation of strong character, care, and consideration for their fellow human; people who know right from wrong, and good from evil. People who have been, for the most part, culturally conditioned into believing that poverty is righteous, that wealth is inevitably corrupting, and that making do with less is virtuous.

It can be. I’ve eschewed wealth, prosperity, and abundance in my own unique ways. I’ve mastered living simply and living without, finding virtue in extreme minimalism, driving nearly-dead cars, surviving on a near-zero daily food budget, seeing just how small my electric bill can be in mid-summer, and then having to rely on friends or family for help.

In truth, it’s not very inspiring, perhaps even hypocritical, given what I choose to write about almost daily. The process inevitably defines a very small and constrained reality bubble: repetitive and depleting routines, constantly checking account balances, and convincing yourself that you’re choosing not to buy things you want or need. Even when, in truth, the ideal is freedom, ease of movement and travel, the means to be generous and giving to causes and concerns, and, the big one, being able to actually choose.

When you’re honest with yourself, is it really true for you? Is poverty — and therefore scarcity — righteous, favorable, and the better option? Are you being genuine and honest with yourself? Or are you quietly resenting those who have financial means, who can throw cash around, play with six, seven, or more figures of debt while buying and selling property and assets, making impressive profits by hardly lifting a finger, weathering all kinds of “market corrections” and “great panics” — all of them, in one way or another, in ways either caused and/or capitalized upon by “the rich” — without concern or worry, and, in the process, judging them to be less substantial, less grounded, or of lesser character than you?

The difference is the programming, clearly. The operating software. That which governs the type and format of the “application” you may be interested in installing and using in your own life.

You and I were educated, learned skills, and were even taught about the benefits of business ownership and entrepreneurship. All of it with a good side of “don’t be evil”: don’t be greedy and indifferent, and don’t screw people over. Unfortunately, the more intelligent we are about these things, the more we tend to cut ourselves off at the knees because we overly moralize and justifiably class virtually every kind of business or corporate practice and pursuit as damaging to someone, something, somewhere, in some way.

So we’re crippled, yet again, by bad programming.

Yes, there are many creeps, criminals, psychopaths, parasites, and predators in the world, but it’s not all of them. Again, this is part of the cultural program: movies and all other media keep telling us that wealth is bad, evil, corrupting, and squarely in the arena of Satan. It’s all fiction. But clearly, it works. Today, most people are either sick, broke, misinformed, or fearful.

There are many variations of this theme, but reaching through to the authentic you requires shedding the many layers of lies you’ve adopted and adapted to, and this poverty thing is a particularly insidious one. A truly inside job, fraught with all manner of psychological and emotional complexity, none of which serves us in our efforts to do right by our fellow humans in the collective family.

Instead, we root for their success while, at the same time, deeply resenting it when and if it happens.

That’s poverty programming.

I know that some of what I have put out into the world over the past 30+ years — music, articles and essays, books, videos and films, photography — has had a positive effect, even if only for a very few other humans (and a lot of bots, algorithms, opportunists, and the insatiable siphons of AI). The motivation has always been to educate myself, pay attention to and observe the patterns, synthesize ideas and information, and share what I learn — regardless of whether any of those efforts ever produced any material benefits for me, save the reality of having multiple forms of expressing myself creatively and sharing my ideas, which eventually became simply “amplifying the light.”

I’ve written about the CHSM idea Myron presents in the attached video (shared by Jason Christoff in a recent newsletter) in my own ways over the years, revising, refining, and distilling the ideas into a multitude of storylines that inevitably bring us around full circle to the most simple and profound truths.

“Scarcity and poverty is engineered. It’s part of the construct and the institutions that govern the construct. It is just an offer, because once you come back toward your nature, the institutionalised construct holds less power over your being.”

— Tom Barnett

We are all run by our subconscious mind, while we mistakenly believe that our conscious mind is actually calling the shots. It isn’t. The fundamental truth that the system we were born into has usurped and misappropriated our creatorship and agency isn’t a happy thought. In fact, it is frustrating and endlessly infuriating. But it is clear and obvious once you notice it. And you must notice it before you can take ownership of the programming, unlearn its misinformation, and uninstall that dysfunctional software that is running your life.

And know that this isn’t a one-and-done deal, either. It’s a daily meditation. A daily ritual, even hourly. A routine and regular schedule of mining, refining, and flushing the sludge. Keep the precious and rare gems. Forge the raw, purified materials. Discard the rest. Then do it again and again.

There will always be accidents, delays, and even the odd catastrophe, because earthbound life is chaos, even if a strange kind of ordered chaos. Face the pains, fears, and worries. All of them.

The idea is building up a spiritual callus, for lack of a better term, by paying conscious attention to our inner image — not hardening oneself to life, to other people, to circumstances, or offerings, but developing resilience to the many assaults, impositions, insults, and injuries that will be coming your way.

There’s no way to “stay safe” from life.

“No one has to live cheque to cheque. We can choose how much financial wiggle room we get in life. We decide. We’re in the driver’s seat. Poverty programming doesn’t have to limit us anymore. Running a business isn’t immoral, unless you’re already an immoral person. Money is like a magnifying glass. It makes you more of who you already are. If you’re a nice caring person, who genuinely wants to help humanity…….having money will make you more of that. If you have some personality flaws hiding just under the water line, having money will bring those flaws to the surface as well…and magnify them. Becoming an entrepreneur, even by first starting a small side hustle business, is a great way to learn some of the most valuable lessons in life…….especially about morality, ethics and the fair use of the power wealth can wield.”

— Jason Christoff

This is how you start walking as your truer self, the self that shouldn’t likely be sick, broke, misinformed, and fearful at all times. One or more of those four are dictating your every day. That’s “their” plan. That’s what keeps you down, controllable, programmable, agreeable, docile, pacified, passive, hoping and praying for better days, for a savior, for something or someone to save you from yourself.

That’s not much of a plan.

What would you prefer?

Solvitur ambulando