There is a dirty little lie that has been sold to the American public for years as a truth. The fact that this so called 'fact' is a lie has been one of the best kept secrets among the hierarchy of political leaders, policy makers, campaign strategist's, most politicians, corporate executives, religious leaders, and the whole media including the right and left wing blabber mouths.

These are all the people that most of us listen to and based on much of what they say and do, many of us form our political beliefs, religious beliefs, philosophy's, moralities, and ideologies. And they know that. That is why they find it necessary to propagate the lie that most of us are intelligent, rational, critical thinkers who are quite capable of understanding fact from fiction. To say anything otherwise would be in defiance of political correctness. But there is a giant elephant in the room and somebody needs to expose that bugger! Here is the plain and simple truth....We are not as smart as they want us to believe we are. But then again, neither are they.

When you are being told what to believe, or somebody is trying to convince you of something, that person must convince you that you are smart enough to figure this thing out for yourself. That way, when you come around to adopting their belief as your own, you will think that you figured this thing out for yourself, because after all, you are smart. But sometimes we may be so smart, we fool our selves.

Tell me this. If we are all so smart, why have we over populated and over polluted our planet to the point that we stand on the brink of self destruction? Why do we have enough nuclear bombs to blow the world up several times over, and why doesn't anybody ever talk about this anymore? Why is half the world starving to death while in this country we pay farmers not to grow food? Why do we have a national debt of 12 trillion dollars? Why have we allowed corporate interest to have more clout with our leaders and policy makers than "we the people" who they were elected to serve? Why do we treat movie and sports stars as true heroes? Why do we have no problem turning a blind eye to the torture and animal abuse that goes on in order that we can have fresh meat on our plates? Why do we tell our children that fairly tales are not real while building whole religions around them, creating fairly tales and myths that we are ready to defend to the death? Why is 1% of our population in jail? Why do we think our skin color is better than another skin color? Why do we need so many guns? Why are there so many different religions all preaching to know the truth?

Why? Perhaps we're not as smart as we think we are. Maybe smart isn't even the right word here. Maybe wisdom or self awareness are the words I'm looking for. When it comes to technology, we are smart. When it come to understanding freedom and what it takes to hold onto freedom, we are not so smart.

To be truly free, we must first want to be truly free. Most of us equate freedom to the rights that are guaranteed us by the constitution. But having those rights does not give us freedom any more than education gives us intelligence. It takes intelligence to get the most out of education just as it takes free thinking to get the most out of our rights to freedom. And that's my point here....we are not a free thinking society. We want to be told what to do, what to believe, and how to behave. We want guidelines, we want rules, we want interpreters, we want everything to be shown to us by somebody else and then be pointed into the right direction. The dirty little secret that we hide from ourselves is the fact that we are not ready to be truly free and we do not want to be truly free.

True freedom requires a level of responsibility that does not exist within the psyche of the human race, but I think we are slowly evolving in that direction. If we were ready to take on the responsibility required for true freedom our whole societal structure would be completely different than it is now. We would not have people telling us what is right and wrong like so many radio personalities, politicians, and religious leaders try to do because we would not need them. Our moral compass would come from within ourselves, not from the likes of Pat Robertson. Rather than preachers we would have motivators and counselors. Motivators and counselors do not interpret the truth, they help you to realize your truth. Commercial advertising would be different....an ad would only exist to inform you, never to try to fool you or talk you into anything. There would be no prejudice because freedom and prejudice cannot co-exist. In fact, if we were ready for true freedom, there would be no locks, no jails, no money, and no laws at all. True freedom is beyond our comprehension because we have not yet evolved as a species to accept that kind of responsibility. So where does it start? Being aware when we are being manipulated is a good start.

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog about the mid east and how our kind of democracy will not work over there at this point in time because those people do not want freedom. Sure, they want basic human rights, but they do not want freedom as we know it in the west. Why? Because freedom is not structured into their religious beliefs and therefore the two cannot co-exist and if they have to choose one, they are going to choose their religion. At the risk of being politically incorrect again, I have to say that the overall consciousness in the mid east is not as evolved as the consciousness of western countries. The proof of this is in the way that they treat their women and their intolerance towards any who do not subscribe to their religious beliefs. But on the other hand, I can also say that the seeds have been planted and the mid east is going to evolve. Perhaps later in this century some of those countries will be ready for our brand of democracy. In the west we have evolved from many of the prejudices and intolerance's still practiced in the mid east. That's why we enjoy a freer society than they do. But in reality, are we really that different? A little more evolved perhaps, but still, a long way to go.

If we allow corporations more power in choosing our leaders, if we continue to listen to religious and political blabber mouths tell us what the truth is, if we do not accept full responsibility for who we are, what we do, how we think, and what we believe, we will continue to loose, rather than to gain freedom. We need to get smarter. We are as free as we are ready to be. We are as free as we choose to be. We are as free as we deserve to be.