Really. Not being facetious or belittling your quite cogent analysis/overview.

But I think it starts with withdrawing our economic participation in our own enslavement as much as possible.

Yes, we need to buy gas to get to work and food for our children. I get that.

Does every stitch of clothing need to be "new?" How often do we need to update our electronic geegaws? Can food come from non-supermarkets? The backyard? Somewhere else?

Etc., etc.

They use the money we give them to buy the police to keep us in chains.

Why don't we stop giving them our money?

a few other reasons for angst, despair and mass self-immolation...

We have the Illuminati plotting behind the scenes, pulling all of those invisible strings...

Then there's the smoldering threat of the Yellowstone caldera...

And don't forget Asteroid 2003 QQ47's potential strike date of March 21, 2014.

Wake up just to die right? Why bother...

(if necessary)

There is clearly this sub scene... people working in shadowy ways to get things done. When they light shines on it, a cartoonishly bad scene is exposed, and the conversation becomes what to do about that. Its a tough conversation, but its the real conversation...yet for some reason its very hard to have.

Take some of the facts on human trafficking. A quick Google search shows 2.5 million in forced labor, much of it forced sex labor. So we're talking 2 million sex slaves, but the conversation on the news is often on feel-good topics. But talking about feel good things doesn't make the 2 million sex slaves go away.

There is simply a psychological aversion to taking on things once they get dark enough, and this psychological aversion can be systematically exploited by criminals to get away with crimes: Want to get caught? Be known around town as a trouble maker, and beat somebody up. Want to NOT get caught? Become a model member of the community and church, and beat somebody up after drugging them, and wear a pig mask and strap on dildo while chanting praises to Satan. Once the crime is sufficiently disruptive to the worldview of those who know you as a model community member, the cognitive dissonance will cause them to deny the possibility, just as they do with the dark sub-culture all around us.

A perfect example is the inevitable respondent to this kind of post includes the "tinfoil hat" icon. The tinfoil hat is a symbol of paranoids, who wish to prevent beams from effecting or reading their minds. They are derided as fools. The problem is that all modern science has fairly well already achieved mind reading, and it remains is an area of active research:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jan/31/mind-reading-program-brain-words
which could in time represent a dire threat to our privacy and liberties. The crowd dismissive of tinfoil hats and their mind reading fears has diverged from scientific reality, in order to find a more psychologically comfortable space where thoughts will always be private. "Grounded in reality" has come to mean burying one's head in the sand, rather than in tinfoil.

So the question is, how do we overcome these challenges in facing the dark and fearful aspects of life? I for one think there's power in the Buddhist path, like when they contemplate skulls and the impermanence of all things, like when they say "life is suffering". Its lost in the christian path, but its still there in life being permeated with sin, in knowing that everything in this world is corrupt. We need to understand the life we were promised in the sales brochure is bullshit, evil in all forms is out there, and our time is short. We need to be able to find a place of peace will looking all sad and dark things strait in the eye. Until we can get to that point, the power of the darkest and most absurd evil will always be amplified.

I believe that is what the Occupy movement is about. We need everyone to awaken and see that their attempt to divide us is actually having the opposite effect.

Because Ive not heard any concrete ideas/stances/mission statements/whatever from the OWS people.

Reminds me too much of this:

with everything you said.

The common response is something like "keep fighting" or "join MY group...heres a link." But in reality all the yelling and letter writing we can do wont counter the influence that even ONE episode of Limbaugh or Hannity has.

I dont know what to do. Ive heard you have to find your own way and method to make improvements...but if there is some magic formula I wish it was better known.

If you really feel nothing can be done now, take a break from the struggle and enjoy what you can in your life now. Sometimes taking a break from the fight and letting the fight fight for itself is the most effective thing we can do. When you resist others, they tend to resist you back just as a reflex. Big changes can happen sometimes when you leave your enemy alone to think for themselves for awhile. Even sometimes allowing your enemy to have what they want is the way they finally see they were wrong. I beleive there is such a thing as fighting too hard. We should be like water, as Bruce Lee said and sometimes step out of the way and let our enemy fight themselves for us.

because the odds are just too overwhelming. There are many ways people can stop giving power to the .01%. You may or may not despise the Occupy movement but you have to admit a lot of what they say and what they're doing is exactly how to fight the 1%. We really are the 99% and that fact has to have time to sink in and take root. Self-empowerment takes waking up first. Give the people the chance to wake up in larger numbers before trying to throw up your hands. Give ideas a chance to come forth and grow something.

I work in one of the most Progressive universities in the country, if not the world. It's the University of California in Berkeley, and many of my staff members are barely in the 'becoming aware' stage of what's going on. I've seen many on the verge of waking up get so upset and angry and fearful when they realize what's happening that they simply stop watching and sink back into their sleeping state. This is always the first step. Denial. Turning your back hoping it will all just go away or that it won't affect you somehow. But it will affect you and when that happens people wake up. Although waking up is a very confusing state because you haven't yet assimilated and internalized the facts in any cohesive and rational way. Acceptance of the reality of the status quo is necessary in order to finally come up with ways of dealing with it.

There are stages to waking up.

And yeah, it's a good thing to acknowledge the gorilla in the corner and discuss it and what to do with it. Nobody said it would be smooth and easy to go from waking up to winning.

do seem hopeless but I will still do them - like voting. At least it will not be my fault.