Blog-detail - Project Orchard

The other thing which is common is that the oppressors are all hypocrites and two faced. On one hand they appear to be helping the people while in reality they are actually working against their interests.

This hypocrisy used to be mainly associated with sales people and rarely with religious, political and judicial institutions.

It seems however that now it renders its ugly head almost in every institution, especially politics.

The Republican Party when I joined it during the Reagan years stood for the right kind of competition, supporting the entrepreneurs who were trying to be the best that they could be. It believed in rewarding hard work and was opposed to free loading.

Yet somehow over the years it lost its bearing, or perhaps the hypocrisy was in the shadows but now over the years the hypocrisy out in the open and the competitive spirit has transformed from being the best you can be to being better than everyone else and nobody personifies this more than our president, but he only reflects the true nature of those around him and those who support him. Like some wise man once said “birds of a feather flock together”. And the Republicans are certainly flocking together and how they can so blatantly ignore the fact and the evidence and blindly defend this, clearly, unethical and dishonest, to say the least, President must be mind boggling to any reasonable person.

Another example of this hypocrisy is Aung San Suu Kyi

Here is person who won a noble Peace prize for fighting for the tights of the people of Myanmar, yet she is at this very moment part of an oppressive regime, accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslims. In here pathetic defense of those committing these atrocities, she can’t even acknowledge the existence of these people and say the word Rohingya, here very own people for whom she supposedly fought, Clearly NOT. If this is not hypocrisy, what is?

So what we have here is that all over the world in various communities, whether they be a family, a tribe, a village, a city or a country, a minority continues to oppress the majority of the people in that community. And when the majority can’t take it anymore it protests and struggles to remove the head of the community which it itself had appointed.

Another wise man once said, if you keep banging your head against the same wall at the same spot expecting to get a different result, you are in for a huge disappointment. Perhaps it is time for a new approach.

Clearly replacing the head is simply “ out of the frying pan into the fire”. All we accomplish is replace one symbol of oppression with another.

This doesn’t mean we give up and stop protesting. Nor does it mean we leave the problem to the future generations.

What it means is that we assume responsibility and jointly with the next generation seek a sustainable solution.

It means is that we reexamine our old beliefs and values and discard the antiquated and irrelevant ones.

It means we clearly identify what exactly is it that we are trying to achieve. We identify the oppressors, their means of oppressions and find a way to FREE ourselves of the oppression without causing harm to the very people who we are trying to save. Which is often the case that “what is known as collateral damage” are the deaths and injuries of the young people who we are trying to give e better life.

It means that it is not the leaders that need to be changed but rather the culture of oppression. The culture of oppression, which incidentally is expanding at an alarming rate, and must be transformed into a culture of collaboration.

It means that the protestors, need to acknowledge that the competition culture is what is leading to the increasing prosperity gap. And the strategy of the oppressors is “divide and rule” and instead of various oppressed groups across the globe protesting in ISOLATION, need to come together and instead of fighting individual cases of oppression, be it “me too movement”, anti child abuse, anti slavery etc. etc. , we need to fight OPPRESSION period. In any form.

We need to recognize that while in the past due to geographical and communication constraints this was an impossible task, in the modern age of social media, however, this is absolutely possible.

We need to recognize that the freedom we have been yearning for but never had sufficient motivation to pursue is within our grasp.

We need to recognize that we have the opportunity to take charge of our own destiny and turn the tables on their oppressors, the various institutions. And make no mistake they are the oppressors, which is how they control us. They have us in invisible shackles of providing jobs and economic prosperity, for which we are expected to be grateful when in fact we are the ones being exploited. They system has been carefully designed for us to compete with each other and waste our resources beating up on each other while they reap the benefits of our labor. It is an age old shell game which has been going on for centuries and we the people have been falling prey to it again and again. And after these protests, each time the game changes the oppressors change the means of oppression giving the impression that we have succeeded in freeing yourself only to find ourselves trapped only in a different trap.

We need to recognize, no we need to believe that this time it can be different. This time we have a weapon the social media. But beware this weapon is two-edged sword. On the one hand it can be the magic wand with which to break the spell and remove the shackles and set us free and on the other hand it can itself become the GOLDEN CHAIN and enslave us for another generation.

We need to recognize that unlike the past we have the opportunity to choose whether this weapon will be our savior or the chains of enslavement. If we get under its spell we are doomed but if we can resist this spell then, if we are lucky, we may be able to use this “Social Media”as path to prosperity for ALL, including the 1%.

And MOST importantly of all we should recognize that It is not the 1% which are the oppressors, no they are simply the BENEFIVIARIES of the oppression. As mentioned earlier, remember the oppressors by nature are hypocrites and two faced and as such they and their agents are often hidden amongst us. They are like chameleons, often disguised as our leaders, our state and government representatives, armed forces, the judiciary, the police force, the clergy and family, yes even as our parents.

Recognizing all of the above, it seems to me the best course of action is to use the social media to bring many of the disparate movements fighting oppressions across the globe, come together one movement, under a common goal of REDUCING if not eliminating Oppression through collaboration, reducing the prosperity gap along with carbon footprint and thereby SAVE OUR PRECIOUS PLANET.

Finally recognizing that a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, all we have to do to succeed in our mission are two things:

• 1. Change our mindset from Competition to COLLABORATION.
• 2. Bering all the protests demonstrations and any other activity to fight injustice, under one umbrella so that one we watch each others back, don’t get distracted by other issues and stay focused on our mission and leverage each other’s strengths.

You and only you can achieve number one.

Number two, WE, do together. And we have already initiated ProjectOrchard.org, a virtual community to bring all these protests, demonstrations and movements under one umbrella.

All YOU have to do is join and let your voice be heard and let OUR actions speak for themselves

The fact is that every individual matters, and every contribution, no matter how small, matters. What matters above all is that we do our part and take responsibility.

Simply go to ProjectOrchard.org, join and become part of the solution or find out more about project Orchard.