Have you ever looked at the world and everything that’s going on, then thought to yourself: ‘I don’t matter’?
If you have, you are not alone. Many people have had such a moment, more people are about to, and there are many more to come.
What you may not realise, understand or accept, is that to the people who are making the decisions that ultimately end up making your life feel that way, what you are experiencing is ‘Out of sight and out of mind’.
It’s not that you don’t exist. They know you are there. In fact, they are counting on it so that they can keep power or so you continue to be one of the numbers on a long sheet that they use to guarantee how their profits will be made.
But you aren’t real. You certainly don’t count as a human being. They don’t even know you.
Whatever you are and whatever is happening to you; beyond being a number, you are Hiding in Plain Sight.
Everyday people are being hurt because their existence is Hiding in Plain Sight
Whether or not you agree with the suggestion that all the problems in your life that haven’t been caused by you, by someone you know, or by a choice that you have made, exist because you are Hiding in Plain Sight, the chances are that you can imagine how you would feel if decisions are made and actions are taken by someone else that then have negative consequences for people that they have never met or don’t even know.
It’s not a great feeling, is it?
It reeks of injustice, unfairness, imbalance and inequality. All the things that more and more of us are starting to experience whenever we stop for a moment and look outwards at what’s going on in the world.
What if the Person unknowingly hurting others was you?
We all find it easy to believe that others do wrong. Meanwhile, it is very rare that we cannot justify our actions or what we do ourselves, no matter how bad they might be.
Just imagine for one moment however, that where everything bad happening in the UK and across the world is concerned, the person making decisions and taking actions that work in what they believe to be their own best interests, without any thought for or perhaps even the faintest idea that what they are doing is having negative consequences for anyone else – and perhaps everyone – is you.
You may not be running the country. You may not be running a large bank or finance house. You may not be running a big corporate company or trading in the things that they sell. But what if the things that you do, or rather you don’t do, have consequences that add up to being just the same?
Yes, your immediate response is very likely to be one that excludes even the remotest possibility that you have any responsibility for anything that is going wrong for anyone else.
But what if the things that you aren’t doing that you could do, are adding up to being very damaging to the lives of many people beyond your own?
We don’t see what we don’t expect or what we aren’t looking for.
Where the pain, poverty and inequality across the UK and the world today is concerned, it doesn’t matter if it’s the tools and processes or the outcome that’s bad for someone or all of us.
If we have played a part – which could be as simple as allowing something to happen because we aren’t aware of the role we are playing – we are as responsible as anyone else who has allowed that experience to happen to someone, whether we are conscious of it or not.
Hiding in Plain Sight is a question of awareness.
So just as the banker may be creating more money from nothing to enrich themselves today that will reduce the value of the same amount that you have tomorrow, the reality we all face is that by not being aware of the things that are happening around us that affect us and everyone else negatively, we are all playing a damaging part in perpetuating the lie – even if it is not something that we are responsible for or designed.
Just because you don’t ask questions, doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible.
The part so many of us play in allowing a world to exist that is so unfair to so many and is getting worse and worse for all but the few, may not be deliberate, or even conscious.
But that is the biggest point of the mess that we are all in:
The suffering that greed, profiteering, incompetence and negligence is causing from the hands of those with wealth, power and influence isn’t conscious either. There’s no conspiracy. It’s stupidity and ignorance at its absolute worst.
And because we don’t look, we don’t ask questions and we take for granted the credibility and authenticity of what people we have never met have to say, we are allowing the increasing pain and suffering that is being caused to continue, because the choices that we have, the understanding that gives them and all the warning signs are Hiding in Plain Sight.
You have a choice, and the choice is there for you to make, right now.
Just as a drunk will not willingly leave the pub until it shuts, the path that we are collectively on means that everything will remain the same and will continue to get worse, until the moment that our broken and now collapsing system can finally function no longer.
Then, with the lies exposed for all that they are, our leaders no longer have options to fool anyone and simply don’t know what to do.
By continuing to ignore the warning signs, by not asking questions, by not looking beyond the accepted narrative and not listening to what all speakers say, rather than only listen to those who have a platform or a name, we are making the choice to support the lie that is hurting so many of us and may even already be hurting you or someone you love.
The alternative choice is to begin asking the questions and to start looking for the answers – wherever they come from. To be critically minded and discerning enough only to accept or look further at the answers that your inner voice or gut feeling tells you makes real sense.
We are responsible for our destiny, and we cannot blame our demise on whatever may be Hiding in Plain Sight.
Adam Tugwell 