Sneaking Up

One day when I was in my high school trigonometry class, a fellow student declared as the teacher entered the classroom, “Look alive, it’s a buzzard!

A while back I revisited the movie “Sneakers”, about a couple of college kids who hack computers for kicks.  One of them gets caught (Cosmo, played by Ben Kingsley) and one of them doesn’t (Martin Bishop, played by Robert Redford).  As their lives unfold Cosmo goes to prison and later becomes adept at working on the ‘other side’ of good, while Martin Bishop uses his hacking skills in designing security systems.

As the plot unfolds, a third party scientist has developed a master code capable of breaking into any computer system in the world.  Now, the race is on to obtain the ‘black box’ that holds this information.

This movie was released in 1992.  Now, here are some lines that you might find interesting…

Cosmo:  Pollution. Crime. Drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair – we throw GOBS of money at them and problems only get worse. Why is that? Because money’s most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don’t have it.

There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think… it’s all about the information!
The world isn’t run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It’s run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It’s all just electrons.

Cosmo: Posit: People think a bank might be financially shaky.

Martin Bishop: Consequence: People start to withdraw their money.

Cosmo: Result: Pretty soon it is financially shaky.

Martin Bishop: Conclusion: You can make banks fail.

Cosmo: Bzzt. I’ve already done that. Maybe you’ve heard about a few? Think bigger.

Martin Bishop: Stock market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin Bishop: Currency market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin Bishop: Commodities market?

Cosmo: Yes.

Martin Bishop: Small countries?

One of the men on Bishop’s team is a blind soundman, known as Whistler.

Whistler: Anybody want to shut down the Federal Reserve?  Anybody want to black out New England?  Anybody want to crash a couple of passenger jets?

In thinking about this Independence Day with the theme of liberty and freedom I feel it’s important that we think about freeing our minds, liberating them from the traps that we’ve fallen into.  Just because someone says “it’s” so, doesn’t make it so – unless we buy into “it” and make it our own.

When we abdicate our personal power to others, even unconsciously, we feel the full effect when we realize that our lives are not as we desired them to be.  When we give in to the fear about our safety and security we give our power away as well.  When we take for granted that our leaders and media are supporting us, and that our cultural systems are operating as they should, we allow apathy in.  When we are not observant and alert about what is happening in our world, not globally necessarily, but where we ARE, we allow things to sneak up on us.  And then we are surprised when the truth is revealed.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – consider what these words mean.  Free the mind of what you’ve been told, or believed over the years.  Reconsider and find the truth.

Be alive – be aware.  Don’t be carrion for the vultures.