The sales people
The worst and most wicked of us are the ones who sell out and sell themselves all at once. Perhaps they allow themselves to be bought, precisely because they cannot see. Sales are of little use except to prolong and ensure the comfort of darkness. This kind of blindness feeds the consumerism of false ideas, of bullshit and of superficial "little truths. Only these can see depth in sales, like a blind man looking into a well.
They are the worst and the most dangerous. They are not, necessarily, because of the evil they can do. They are so because they will only do good by chance; because they blindly buy what is sold by those who produce a fake and disposable good. Thus the cycle will never end. In the following way it perpetuates itself: those who sell themselves to blindfolded salesmen will remain.
The problem with sales, like that of all materials, even the most resistant ones, is that they wear out, they spoil eventually. This is why the salesmen continually feed the system of capitalist blindness. At the very least, a strong myopia will be, both voluntary and unconscious. "In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king," they say. Even with a lack of sight, if you live among those who choose not to see, seeing, you are a snob, fool, arrogant or "intellectual", for not being part of the majority.
But I will not leave you, dear reader, blind as to the meaning of these words. The intention I put on them is the opposite. They serve to wash our eyesight, so that we can get rid of the blindfolds, together. The words I write are about people who buy ideas without judging them, without passing them through the sieve of criticism and sense. Don't get me wrong, dear reader. These are not words advocating intransigence or inflexibility. They advocate acceptance, but not unconditionally. Those who accept unconditionally remain blindfolded, even though they buy the illusion of seeing more and better. To accept, truly, implies knowing that one is conditioned, always. To accept with truth implies assuming that what is true can cease to be true; that all truths can become falsehoods when a better and more up-to-date one is discovered or invented.
Such sell-outs are the ones unable to see the falseness of their absolute and indelible truths. They are the ones blinded by the need, which has become belief, to always be right. These are the ones who accumulate truths without ever surrendering to the possibility of being wrong. How could they do it? To these, all those who don't buy sales like theirs are liars. To these, anyone who seeks to peek to find the "real truth" will be lying or complicating matters.
Those who try to see beyond the blindfolds are the ones who know that they start blindfolded. It is exactly because they know their limitation that they can see a little more and a little better. They are the ones who don't put themselves in the position of salesmen; they are the discoverers and builders; they are the ones who choose to see ideas as ideas, judging truth and lies as transitory, temporary and always relative concepts. They judge like others, of course, but they do so while judging their own judgments. They are the ones who, while not ceasing to be judges in their own cause, manage to make the causes greater than themselves.
Written for Link to Leaders on June 27, 2022; published August 15, 2022.
