#ImagineKalamazoo The lie we live in Kalamazoo Michigan
Transcript
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At this moment you could be anywhere doing anything
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Instead you sit alone before a screen.
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So what's stopping us from doing what we want, being where we want to be.
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Each day we wake up in the same room and follow the same path, to live the same day as yesterday.
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Yet at one time each day was a new adventure.
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Along the way something changed. Before our days were timeless,
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now our days are scheduled.
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Is this what it means to be grown up? To be free?
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But are we really free?
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Food. Water. Land.
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The very elements we need to survive are owned by corporations.
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There's no food for us on trees, no freshwater in streams,
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no land to build a home.
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If you try and take what the earth provides you'll be locked away.
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So we obey their rules.
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We discover the world through a textbook.
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For years we sit and regurgitate what we're told. Tested and graded like subjects in a lab.
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Raised not to make a difference in this world. Raised to be no different.
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Smart enough to do our job but not to question why we do it.
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So we work and work left with no time to live the life we work for.
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Until a day comes when we are too old to do our job
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It is here we're left to die
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Our children take our place in the game. To us our path is unique
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but together we are nothing more than fuel. The fuel that powers the elite.
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The elite who hide behind the logos of corporations.
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This is their world. And their most valuable resource is not in the ground.
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It is us.
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We build their cities. We run their machines. We fight their wars.
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After all, money isn't what drives them. It's power.
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Money is simply the tool they use to control us.
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Worthless pieces of paper we depend on
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to feed us, move us, entertain us.
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They gave us money, and in return we gave them the world.
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Where there were trees that cleaned our air, are now factories that poison it.
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Where there was water to drink, is toxic waste that stinks.
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Where animals ran free are factory farms where they are born and slaughtered endlessly for our satisfaction.
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Over a billion people are starving despite us having enough food for everybody. Where does it all go?
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70% of the grain we grow is fed to the animals you eat for dinner
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Why help the starving? You can't profit off them.
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We are like a plague sweeping the earth.
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Tearing apart the very environment that allows us to live
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We see everything as something to be sold. As an object to be owned.
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But what happens when we have polluted the last river? Poisoned the last breath of air?
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Have no oil for the trucks that bring us our food?
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When will we realize money can't be eaten, that is has no value?
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We aren't destroying the planet. We're destroying all life on it.
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Every year thousands of species go extinct.
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And time is running out before we're next.
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If you live in America there's a 41% chance you'll get cancer.
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Heart disease will kill one out of three Americans.
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We take prescription drugs to deal with these problems.
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But medical care is the third leading cause of death behind cancer and heart disease.
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We're told everything can be solved by throwing money at scientists
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so they can discover a pill to make our problems go away.
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But the drug companies and cancer societies rely on our suffering to make a profit.
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We think we're running for a cure
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but really we're running away from the cause. Our body is a product of what we consume.
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and the food we eat is designed purely for profit. We fill ourselves with toxic chemicals.
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The bodies of animals infested with drugs and diseases.
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But we don't see this. The small group of corporations that own the media don't want us to
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Surrounding us with a fantasy we're told is reality.
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It's funny to think humans once thought the earth was the center of the universe
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but then again now we see ourselves as the center of the planet.
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We point to our technology and say we're the smartest.
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But do our computers, cars, and factories really illustrate how intelligent we are?
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Or do they show how lazy we've become.
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We put this civilized mask on.
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But when you strip that away, what are we?
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How quickly we forget only within the past 100 years did we allow women to vote,
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allow blacks to live as equals.
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We act as if we're all knowing beings yet there's much we fail to see.
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We walk down the street ignoring the little things.
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The eyes who stare, the stories they share.
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Seeing everything as a background to "me".
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Perhaps we fear we're not alone. That we're a part of a much bigger picture.
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But we fail to make the connection
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We're okay killing pigs, cows, chickens, strangers from foreign lands.
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But not our neighbours. Not our dogs, our cats, those we have come to love and understand.
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We call other creatures stupid
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Yet we point to them to justify our actions.
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But does killing simply because we can, because we always have make it right? Or does it show how little we've learned.
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That we continue to act out of primal aggression, rather than thought and compassion.
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One day this sensation we call life will leave us.
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Our bodies will rot, our valuables recollected.
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Yesterday's actions all that remain.
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Death constantly surrounds us. Still it seems so distant from our everyday reality.
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We live in a world on the verge of collapse.
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The wars of tomorrow will have no winners.
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For violence will never be the answer, it will destroy every possible solution.
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If we all look at our innermost desire, we will see our dreams are not so different.
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We share a common goal. Happiness.
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We tear the world apart looking for joy, without ever looking within ourselves.
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Many of the happiest people are those who own the least.
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But are we really so happy with our iPhones, our big houses, our fancy cars?
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We've become disconnected. Idolizing people we've never met.
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We witness the extraordinary on screens, but ordinary everywhere else.
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We wait for someone to bring change, without ever thinking of changing ourselves.
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Presidential elections might as well be a coin toss. It's two sides of the same coin.
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We choose which face we want and the illusion of choice, of change is created.
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But the world remains the same.
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We fail to realize the politicians don't serve us.
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They serve those who fund them into power.
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We need leaders, not politicians. But in this world of followers we have forgotten to lead ourselves.
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Stop waiting for change and be the change you want to see.
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We didn't get to this point by sitting on our asses.
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The human race survived not because we are the fastest or the strongest
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but because we worked together.
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We have mastered the act of killing. Now let's master the joy of living.
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This isn't about saving the planet. The planet will be here whether we are or not.
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Earth has been around for billions of years. Each of us will be lucky to last eighty.
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We are a flash in time, but our impact is forever.
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I often wish I lived in an age before computers. When we didn't have screens to distract us.
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But I realize there's one reason why this is the only time I want to be alive
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because here today we have an opportunity we never had before.
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The internet gives us the power to share a message and unite millions around the world.
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While we still can we must use our screens to bring us closer together rather than farther apart.
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For better or worse our generation will determine the future life on this planet
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We can either continue to serve this system of destruction until no memory of our existence remains.
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Or we can wake up. Realize we aren't evolving upwards
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but rather falling down. We just have screens in our faces so we don't see where we're heading.
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This present moment is what every step, every breath and every death has led to.
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We are the faces of all who came before us
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And now it is our turn. You can choose to carve your own path, or follow the road countless others have already taken.
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Life is not a movie. The script isn't already written.
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We are the writers. This is your story.
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Their story.
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Our story.
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