Working For Free

A Mug - British Slang. a gullible person; dupe; fool.

I do work for free, so it is hard for me to talk about this. I write my blogs for free, make videos for free, help people on our Church course for free, take time to do graphics for all our sites for free. I do interviews for free. I do it because I don't have much of an option, we live in a world where everyone wants everything for free and our sites rely on me and others working for free, otherwise the information we provide would never be discovered, and it has been hidden (occult) for long enough already, like thousands of years. Some are kind enough to buy the things I produce, such as books and products on some of the sites, which helps, and some even make donations, which help with the overheads of running a charity.

People ask: Why isn't the Church course free. Why do I have to pay an admin fee when I join your Outer Order. Running a charity isn't free. By law you have to pay for an Accountant every year. Also there are the hosting fees for the sites, the domain name fees, the cost of supplies and postage. They all mount up and that has to be covered before we can use anything for the causes we are raising money for, like Theomerla.

I am however, maybe, a hypocrite then when I say people shouldn't have to work for free. I am volunteering my time to the Church and Order, but that doesn't mean I don't need money to pay my bills with and other living costs. Everyone needs money in this kind of system.

Unfortunately, unpaid work has become so common that people have an embedded notion that they deserve no compensation for their work. So much so, that they even give arguments as to why this system should be perpetuated.

Freud called this defence mechanism "Rationalisation", more recently a very interesting line of research in Social Psychology has named this process "System Justification Theory" and has found strong evidence about how and why it develops.

System Justification Theory (SJT) is a theory of social psychology that postulates that people are motivated, often unconsciously, to bolster, defend, and justify the status quo–-that is, the prevailing social, economic, and political systems. The term “system” is, intentionally, loosely defined to include a wide array of such arrangements and institutions from relationship dyads to family systems, to corporations and organizations, to economic systems and governments, thus the effort is to identify the general social psychological processes that play out in variety of social establishments.

System Justification Theory seeks to address, from a social psychological prospective, the ultimate question of why despite the prevalence of systems of inequality, injustice, and exploitation, resistance and collective action for change, even by those who suffer most from such systems, are relatively rare.

In my opinion the exploited don't seek change, because that would mean they would have to live with the fact that they are being a mug right now, no one wants to admit they are being a mug, apart from me, I admit it. I do too much for too little, I have self respect and know I deserve more and that is why I will say that working for free is wrong. But in true hypocritical fashion I will say that I don't think that the other people who help out in our Church and Order are being mugs, because they know I am not getting anything myself, so have nothing to give them. Bit different than when a corporation asks writers, models, photographers or designers to work for free, for a job that they say will look good in their portfolio, when they CAN afford to give them something, they just don't want to.

I have been attacked for saying people should be paid for their work, called a hypocrite because I am doing everything here for free. And as I explain above, I probably am. Hopefully in the future it won't be a problem, Theomerla is the dream, and the dream is to be self sufficient and live in a care, share and trade type system... but that is only just getting started and we have a long way to go. So I and others like me will continue to be mugs as we work towards permanent change.

Big thanks to those who are supporting our efforts and anyone who wants to give any help, in whatever way you can, please speak up, we need more mugs like us. :)

Confession Time

I make mistakes, I have and do make a lot of mistakes. I am not good at getting my point across, especially in text conversations, but also in other ways. I can sit here writing my blog and get my thoughts down pretty easily. But I never have any idea how many people will be offended by my writing, because the world is a magical place filled with people who are waiting to be offended by something.

I remember years ago a moderator on a forum decided to delete one of my posts, because someone had a go at me and they took the other person side, even though it was the other person who attacked me for no reason whatsoever, other than her being offended by something I said and taking an instant dislike to me. In private messages the moderator basically told me if I didn't like what she did I was welcome to leave, and I said I would. She was being irate and nasty, full of stress and anxiety. I told her to calm down, because stress can make you ill and can even cause cancer, it isn't worth worrying about I said. I basically didn't want her getting all worked up over something as stupid as a forum post. It wasn't until about a year later that someone who knew the woman came to me and said that I was a horrible nasty person for wishing cancer on to someone! I couldn't believe what I was hearing, talk about someone taking an innocent comment and reading something else into it. But it shouldn't have surprised me, the woman who knew her also decided that I was a bad person because of something she misinterpreted in a text message and then proceeded to spread lies and bs about me to everyone, including the cancer comment, which was twisted and used against me. Almost like the comment I made to the moderator was the proof she needed! I would go as far to say that this women was an attention seeking insecure narcissist, and couldn't wait to put me down, she had decided in her mind I had higher value than her, as she constantly tried to impress me when around, bragging and boasting about how wonderful she is. I am sure that all those who suddenly dropped me, on her say so, eventually found out the truth about her when her mask slipped and she revealed her true self.

I understand why these people try to make out I am such a bad person, it is because they hate themselves, but would never admit that, so they project this on to other people. Having work in the public eye I do put up with these types of thing on a daily basis now. The constant comments under my Youtube videos and on my pages. I know I am not alone with this, anyone who puts anything out into the public domain also puts up with this. The angry and insecure people of the world feel it is their right to go about harassing people because they hate themselves and want to project all the nasty things about themselves on to others. I get that, I really do, I know it isn't easy facing your own dark side. So I know why they do it and have learnt to not take it personally, after all, they don't even know me.

It is one thing when this happens and it is people I don't even know, but when it is someone I do know, or thought I knew and they keep projecting their sorrow, anger and frustrations on to me, being nasty and abusive and expecting me (the strong one) to put up with it, it is heart breaking. You care about someone, but you also don't want this cycle of abuse to continue. You already know they have been given the tools to look within, but instead they put you on a pedestal and look up to you, then get so upset and disappointed when you make the slightest slip or do something they feel is wrong. They are ready to put you down and try to make you suffer, because you are supposed to be the strong one, the enlightened one, the one who knows better.

Well I have never ever said I can do no wrong and I have never ever said that I should be on a pedestal, or that I am special or don't make mistakes, because I do. Sorry to disappoint you. I even have times when I feel like I can't cope and need to get away from everything and everyone. I get ill too and lonely. But one thing is for sure, if I let you into my world it means I care about you and when you hurt me like this it makes me think I was stupid for ever caring about you in the first place.

No matter how spiritually aware, or how strong and independent you think someone is, it doesn't mean that they won't be affected by your actions, and it doesn't mean they should have to put up with your bad behaviour just because you are too scared to face your daemons.

Imagine if everyone in the world learnt to know the darkness that they have within themselves and stopped projecting it on to others, and also learnt to never set high standards for others by putting them on a pedestal, when you should be doing that to yourselves. When you are great give yourself praise and when you are bad or feeling down, rather than project it on to others or take it out on others, have a word with yourself, think carefully about what is causing those emotions, you could even write a blog post about it. You have the power to heal you.

So we all make mistakes, I handle things wrong a lot of the time and can come across as insensitive, no need to sit in judgement of me or others for that, we are each responsible for that ourselves. If someone upsets you with something they say, tell them and I am sure they will try to explain that they didn't mean it the way you thought. But don't just hate them, life is too short to hate someone who probably cares a lot about you.