I love the internet. I really do. Before the internet our access to information was rather limited. I have given myself the challenge to ‘unlearn’ historic truths that we just take for granted because our fifth grade teacher told us so. We are, for obvious and time-saving reasons, indoctrinated into a certain world view from an early age. Here are the good guys, these are the bad guys, and here’s why and how this war was fought. Usually the good guys win and our worldview remains safe and orderly. We can even illustrate it in a nice little chart.

But the internet removes historical barriers to information. You can now instantly find any version of the truth by typing in your question and clicking ‘go’. So when I type ‘who was behind Hitler?’ I get a variety of results. It’s one of the questions that has been nagging me as I tumble down the rabbit hole of alternative world history. Did an angry, insecure, racist little man really bring the modern world to its knees for five years? Extinguish millions of lives? This question would be impossible to ask an encyclopedia. I know encyclopedias well because before we had the internet my mother invested in a 20 volumes, $2000 encyclopedia collection so that I would always be able to ask questions and look up the answers. Bless my mother, and bless the internet for allowing any person with a brain and a computer to find multiple truths in 2/10 of a second. The world may not feel so safe anymore, but it makes a heck of a lot more sense.

For this particular question the third search result seemed promising, and the article yielded the information I had pretty much concluded on my own – that a group of international bankers and financial power players that stretch beyond governments bankrolled Hitler’s rise to power in those interwar years. Maybe the whole thing was designed in advance and the players merely acted out their part for a place in the history books, or maybe they were unknowingly manipulated to fit their roles. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure, because some version of the same dog and pony show is still going on globally right now, but at least the internet gives you the freedom to ask questions and get some answers.

We should not take the internet for granted. Never before in history has such a large percentage of the global population been so empowered by access to information. But we are losing it in the static noise and distractions designed to keep us, well, distracted and entertained.

Here are two of my current favorite ‘undistractions’ : Jon Rappoport’s Blog and StormCloudsGathering at YouTube
Both have found a unique way to look beyond headlines and tying together the bits and pieces of information out there and construct a terrifying, but believable, vision of the future. Unlike commercial doomsday prophets, they also offer solutions for a brighter, more sustainable future, which sounds better than what any of the current governments and corporations in charge can promise at this point as they are still chasing that ever-growing GDP/bottom line. I’m not sure how anyone over the age of ten can still believe that the economy has room to grow ever larger at this point. The economy is already almost twice the size of our very finite planet. There is no room to grow. Anyone who tells you differently is either willfully ignorant or a MBA student. Either way, I wouldn’t say getting ideas on how to start planning for a different way of life is a waste of time regardless of how the future is going to look. Who knows, maybe it will be exactly the same as it is right now and we will continue to gleefully pop pills in order to numb the pain of being alive while purchasing plastic junk made in China. Or maybe we will all be in concentration camps. Or maybe we will actually be healthy and happy, globally connected while living in small peaceful communities, placing value on life over money in harmony with nature.

My current favorite distractions are watching documentaries about serial killers on YouTube (endless supply!) and laying on the floor with my bunny when I really should be writing to process all this information, but that’s neither here nor there.