Trap 1 of the 33 traps of the predator system. The last thing fish notice is the water. Do you want to see the water?

You know something is not right. You see it all around you. Behaviour that feels dehumanizing. Disconnection. Burn-out. People running on fumes, but posting pictures of their fancy, overprized, indivualized, caffeinated drinks. People chasing things you know won’t make them happy. And because everyone is doing it, you start measuring your own worth by a standard set by people you don’t like, a standard you reject. People are performing their idea of what life should look like, without knowing why, without knowing why they seem to do everything right, but are filled with anxiety nonetheless. People are fronting, not living, but trying hard to convince you they are living their best life. Why? You live in a predator system. The system is not broken. It’s peaking. It’s working exactly as it should. Its goal? To keep the predator system going, no matter what. Did humans come together and design this system? No, it arose organically with some help from cunning individuals who knew how to tweak the system to benefit from it. The system essentially exists because our human brains are not made for 21^st century conditions.

Here is the the first trap. We do not know that we are mimetic parasites. We imitate who gets attention, not what makes a person free from the system. Even if we rebel, others will copy us. If we rebel against the system and enough  people start rooting for us, the system defangs our rage by turning us into celebrities who start getting the ‘best’ the system has to offer. All of a sudden you can sell a T-shirt with your face on it and little by little what was real about your rebellion against the predator system fades. You can clearly see this in US politics. Someone starts out as a real rebel against some parts of the predator system, becomes a celebrity, discovers there are lots of perks coming with celebrity status, and instead of a real rebel he or she becomes his or her own brand. Result? She wears a dress with a rebellious slogan to go have dinner with the richest people in Washington.

This happens everywhere. On social media, in politics, in business. Someone can start out teaching wonderfully transformative, cheap, yoga classes and sooner or later the person discovers or is pushed by friends and family or someone who smells business to make money and reach more important than presence, genuine caring about participants and authenticity.

The worst? People like things and they don’t know it wasn’t a real choice.

If a white BMW gets you the most attention people will crave having a white BMW, they will even convince themselves they want it cause it’s so beautiful. But they would do the same if an orange Toyota had the same effect. And then there are people who think they rebel when in a city full of white BMW’s they choose to drive a green Opel. There is no rebellion there, because the system wins: in this case it managed to convince you that your care is an extension of your ego, your status, your worth. Real rebellion would be to choose to have no car AND not to brag about it. Because of you have to brag about not having it, then you are still measuring yourself by one of the standards of the predator system.

TLDR:

‘Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like’
 
But it’s not just material things we chase for reasons we never fully recognize. We also copy opinions we think will make us look good or loyal to people we look up to.

It would take an inordinate amount of painful soul-searching to fully understand why we want something and why we have the opinions we have.

We think we put ourselves together with LEGO blocks. We didn’t. Some LEGO blocks we were simply born with and the other LEGO blocks we chose based on how we navigated our environments for survival, status, affection, approval or to set us apart.

That’s one trap of the 33 traps of the predator system. A system you suffer in, a system you may rail against, a system you at times try to make work for you, a system you measure yourself against, even if you claim you don’t. A system you operate in, expend a lot of energy in in the hopes of having a better life, and curiously you rarely find any fulfillment and all around you see people pretending to be fulfilled and on the right path, while you can feel it in your bones that they are faking it and hiding their real pain, even if they overshare some of their pain online.

The repercussions of valuing what we think will gets us approval, tacit approval or open approval, from some corner, quitely keep us trapped.

32 traps will follow.

If you want a real transformation, let me coach you. It will revolutionize your life. You will lose everything that is holding you back.