Paint by Numbers: A Blueprint for Despotism

 

 

by Todd Walker

Drinking the liberty Kool-Aid

I hated painting by numbers when I was a kid. Even if it was a picture I really liked.

Now I hate them even more.

Let me explain.

Staying inside the lines and matching the color with the number didn’t appeal to me. My finished paintings never looked like the picture on the box. I’d make new shades of color and add them where they didn’t belong. Even though I mixed my own colors, I quickly realized…

I’m still painting inside their lines, their boundaries, and using their outline.

The manufacturer’s blueprint offered one outcome – their image.

What if the things we see in “trusted” media sites, alphabet agencies, and the printed page was nothing more than some master artist outlining our reality. We come to believe that “they” are the professionals and know what’s best for us. They wouldn’t intentionally lie, would they?

Sound silly? Conspiratorial? It’s not.

Here’s what I mean.

We’re lead to believe that we are a free people with essential liberties. Ha! The real loss of liberty is happening in broad daylight. It’s witnessed by millions everyday. And no one seems angry about it. We continue to march in lockstep inside the pre-determined lines of CollectiveThink. Security is our aim.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

If we delegate responsibility for creating our masterpiece, someone else gets to paint on our canvas. The blueprint begins with your child. Forced schooling is in the business to mass produce lowest common denominator artwork. No matter how much lip service is given about the importance of the individual child on the conveyor belt, a magnum opus is never achieved. Your child’s life canvas falls off the production line and gets tossed in the corner with all the other cheap paintings.

Paint by numbers reality

We exist in a reality created by our controller’s blueprint. The recent Boston bombing demonstrates my point.

America watched the mainstream media paint the picture of CollectiveThink for Bostonians. All the major media outlets filled in the corresponding color on the numbered canvas. Terror. Fear. Lockdown. Huddling in their homes, citizens of Boston gladly surrendered liberty to the black clad militarized enforcers stomping on their Fourth Amendment. The flag wavers gave the black helicopters a big thumbs up for doing their job so well. We’re safe now. The Calvary is here!

“It’s okay. They submit,” the blueprint designers must have thought. “Let’s try something even more daring next time. We must never let a crisis be wasted!”

We’re being conditioned to fit into their painting. Daily. The numbered canvas defines us. It’s our reality. We throw up our hands and accept our spot in their design. Their utopian paint-by-numbers masterpiece has your number.

Our behavior aligns with the artist’s paint brush no matter the circumstance. We adjust our desires and dreams to fit into our new regulated reality – no matter how cramped and uncomfortable you find your numbered spot. Independent thinking upsets the whole project. Trying to run outside the lines upsets the whole portrait. Colors begin to merge. The image blurs. Another “event” happens and we get back inside the lines.

Habit training is the flywheel of despotism and tyranny

You’ve been told what your numbered spot is and how you fit into this new portrait. You and I become useful on their blueprint. Of course, once the scary situation is resolved, you’ll notice the lines of liberty have shrunk significantly. The next episode, real or manufactured, fills in more of the artist’s canvas. Our skillful artists are able to define what we see, feel, desire, resist, and hope for.

We gladly stay inside the lines on the canvas. It’s for the good of the group we’re told. So we scurry around inside the lines of our maze like laboratory mice. We’re trained. Our habits benefit the blueprint maker.

Don’t be predictable. Rip the numbered canvas off the easel. The first step to painting outside the lines is to realize there are no lines.

Create your own masterpiece.