I often regard many of the 'ordinary' conditions of modern culture to be Parasites that suck out any life energy or free attention that might otherwise be used for Healing, Evolution, and other Radical Action.

For example, think how much time, energy, and attention these Modern Culture Parasites use up:
> Watering, mowing, fertilizing your Lawn (comparing it to the neighbors)
> Maintaining a swimming pool or spa
> Having a 'pet' dog that you must scold, train, take on walks, clean up after
> Paying interest on credit card debts - definitely a parasite
> Having to watch the News
> Being a fan of a sports team
> Surfing the Internet, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
> Keeping up with low drama messages from an amorphous cloud of 'fictitious friends'
> Having a car or house with maintenance, insurances, repairs
> Having a watch, clocks, phone that you must ongoingly look at to 'see what time it is'

The cure for them is step-by-step Radical Simplicity by letting go of Baggage.

...an excerpt from Clinton Callahan's revised and updated book Conscious Feelings.

There is a next culture. It is already working. When you get Radically Simple enough to discover it yourself, your first urge may be to try to tell
others about what you have found. The problem with this approach is that the others won’t be able to hear you, just as you could not hear the
ones who went before you. You can only go through a Doorway when you are at the doorway. People can only shift to next culture when their
matrix is ready to hold the new Distinctions.

Your next urge might be to try to transform modern culture into next culture. It can save you a big headache to realize that paradigms are unique species. One paradigm cannot be transformed into another paradigm, because a paradigm is what it is. Paradigms cannot shift. But you can. Consciously feeling your feelings changes you. It builds energetic matrix in you personally that permits you to suddenly function in a different paradigm. No one can do this for you. You cannot do it for anyone else. However, no one can stop you from doing it!

Awareness expands from feeling more and more deeply the pain of consequences. What can you do to facilitate the shift to next culture?
Feel the pain of consequences.

For example, if a businessman feels the outrage, anxiety and sadness he causes in local citizens when he gets control of public water rights
and raises domestic prices to make a ‘profit’ for the ‘shareholders’, he could not proceed. By feeling the pain of consequences, the businessman
would no longer be in the same paradigm where quarterly stock reports make sense. He would be in a new paradigm.

If a sales rep or manufacturer of plastic disposables feels the grief and shame of selling the plastic bottles and cigarette lighters that contribute
to the Texas-sized dead zone of partially decomposed plastic goop that is choking life out of the albatross chicks on Midway Atoll
in the North Pacific (please watch <http://albatrossthefilm.com>, she could not go to work in the morning. She would find another profession.
She might even take actions to disassemble the ecocidal corporate gameworld.

If a hamburger flipper at a McFastfood chain store feels the maniacal greed that is chopping and burning tropical rainforests one acre per
second, exterminating species faster than the dinosaurs died out sixty-five million years ago, merely to plant more soy beans to feed more beef
cattle for the hamburgers he is serving, he could neither work there nor eat the ‘fast food’ himself.

If a miner, manufacturer, transporter, or user of uranium weaponry felt the relentless agony of parents who gave birth to a baby with deformities because they were exposed to DU (as a soldier or civilian – on ‘our’ side or ‘their’ side… radiation poisoning has no political or

religious preferences) or of parents who got cancer themselves and would leave their children without parents, the worker would quit his
job immediately and do everything he could to stop the government-ordained but illegal proliferation of these materials, and would force the
cleanup of contaminated sites.

If a modern consumer felt the stunning nightmare of losing the once exquisitely beautiful tropical reefs due to ocean acidification produced
by automobiles, ships, airplanes and coal-fired electric power plants, she would cease driving her car, buying imported foods and clothing,
vacationing in faraway lands, and would never turn on an electric light that was not powered by regenerative means.

If an adult woman or man felt quaking fear about the thousand gigaton planet-killer methane time-bomb about to explode out of the Siberian tundra and shallow continental shelves due to global warming, and if that woman or man recognized there was a chance to defuse
that bomb by abandoning almost every aspect of modern culture, they would not hesitate one moment to get radically simple. They would
leave modern culture behind without regard for the uncertain consequences of leaving modern culture behind, because those consequences,
whatever they might be, pale in comparison to letting modern society devour the future of humanity.

Still, you are left with the question, “What should I do?” 

One of the greatest guiding lights for taking practical action that I have ever found comes from a letter written by Buckminster Fuller to a young man with an authentic question.

Exactly where are you on this descending scale of responsibility during your daily perceptions, decisions, and actions?

7. I invent new culture. I design and implement social-pilot-model gameworlds in the
world. I link up with other social-pilot-models and weave the system of influence for
the emergence of next culture, archiarchy.
6. I move my Point Of Origin to an alternative social system with a culture having a
different context (a different set of distinctions) than mainstream culture. I can now
shift from context to context, yet I prefer to live in my new culture.
5. What? There is something beyond the system?! It is possible to go to the edges of the
system and still survive? There are Edgeworkers and Riftwalkers already out there?!
My fears become bridges to adventure. I can explore and discover.
4. I have been fighting the system but I cannot beat the system. I can change myself but
the system does not change. Like they say, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Or?
3. Oh, my God! There is a system! Not only are there wolves (politicians), there are
also pigs (businessmen)! They are collaborating to shear us sheeple. It is a conspiracy!
I must fight the system!
2. Something is not fine here. I feel angry, scared, and sad – I feel betrayed, confused,
distrustful. I want to create, but hey! There are wolves around! I must hide out and
learn how to survive.
1. Everything is fine. I stand numbly in line with the rest of the Zombies. I give my
responsibility away. I give my Center away. I give my authority away. I am good at
keeping myself in denial. After all, it could be worse…