Groundhog Day
Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day
The 1993 movie Groundhog Day is the story of a person trapped to live the same day over and over. The main character responds to this situation in three phases:
  1. Manipulative control for selfish short-term desires.
  2. Depression and attempted rejection from no escape and no satisfaction.
  3. Self-expression for virtue and service with satisfaction.
After selfish desire is transcended, the character awakens on a new day with all the earned skills of practiced virtues.

Five-minute overview:


2016 planet Earth is the story of humanity trapped to live the same psychopathic control system over and over. Relatively unaware humans are like the background characters in Groundhog Day, operational work animals for the .01%. Relatively aware humans respond to this situation in three phases:
  1. Manipulative control for selfish benefits (willfully operating within parasitic systems and/or joining the .01% psychopaths).
  2. Depression and attempted rejection (aware and disliking the system, refusing to join it, but also with resistance to embracing engagement)
  3. Acceptance of the factual condition of a psychopathic control system, with engaged self-expression for virtues.
Let's consider three possible lessons from this analogy:

First: If the point of Life is evolution of experiencing and expressing virtue, be focused and go for it

Both in the movie and our lives, virtue (however we best define it) seems to be the purpose, both in experience (what we feel) and expression (thoughts, words, actions).

The main character in the movie began in shallow self-gratification, with discovery in living the same day over and over that those experiences and expressions are ultimately manipulated, loveless, and unsatisfying.

In our lives, to the degree we associate with personal desires, we may trick others to get outcomes we think we want (money, agreement, dominance, etc.), but also discover a future of never-ending control to bullshit others to do what never satisfies us.

Virtue, in contrast, is inclusive to connect with all Life, and recognizes our human mutual challenge to both experience and express virtue. This game of virtue and service is uncontrolled and bold discovery of the creative, with evolving nurturance in cooperative competitions. It's a truthful partnership with Life.

Importantly, and what most people miss, practice for virtue includes to really feel virtue from others, not merely take actions to express virtue. We cannot control when and how virtue is expressed by others, and we can develop the art and science of nurturing it.

Second: Surrender control over Life; accept control over what is in our hands

Groundhog Day is a lesson of surrender over what Life does to you. We, too, of course, can engage however we wish with Life, yet what happens is what happens.

After exhausting simple desires, the movie's character discovers openings to explore creative options: ice-sculpting, learning French, playing piano, discovering the lives of the people he lives with that includes what they feel most important about themselves, and that genuine service makes him feel best in his evolving experience of being connected to others.

We Earth humans also feel strongly to develop virtues with whatever time and openings available. For me, this includes virtuous behavior and experience with the other beings in my Life, the best work I can provide, service to others through research and writing, exercise and playing a sport, and a sensitivity to recognize and act upon opportunities of service for what others find important. This "service to others" has me rarely ever mention the most important work I do in Life that I believe serves others, such as working to end poverty, war, and constant "official" lying, and has my experience by sort of like a spy. Importantly, service to others has my personality disappear from the interactions.

Genuine virtue and service is attentive, and therefore has no room for negative experience. Attention on the acts of relating, work, play, service, etc., makes it impossible to experience anything outside of being with those choices. That is, any resistance, rejection, and complaint is dissolved when one is attentive.

Third: Sure, we'd rather win this game of .01% psychopath control, but make the best of what's in front of you and the resources you have

In paradox, the movie's character loses desire with attention on virtue and service, while in moments of thought surely imagines a better life than living the same day over and over. The character beautifully develops in genuine virtue and service from focus and practice on virtue and service.

On 2016 Earth, time moves forward, but the .01% control system engages in one lie-started illegal War of Aggression after another, loots trillions while constantly gaming economics to debt-enslave more, and constantly feeds bullshit lies of omission and commission to treat humans as their sheeple. It's constant manipulative control, over and over and over and over and over...

Almost every day I desire for humans to win this game with our .01% opponents, with empathy for annual millions killed, billions harmed, and trillions looted from a planet that could be a really beautiful place for all its inhabitants.

Almost every day I desire:
  • Real leadership to name and end the ongoing war-murders, looting, and lying.
  • Human freedom for us to love each other, and especially to evolve beyond the damaged human reactions of fear.
  • Genuine creative intelligence of unleashed freedom, and especially to end the ongoing sheepish bullshit humans cling to connected to their own slavery.
  • The art and science of harmonious relations; the mindful practice of evolving and enjoying human interactions and interactions with all nature.
  • Unleashed technology and science to evolve the human experience.
  • Spiritual practices to most fully experience and express our interconnectiveness with Life and each other.
  • Unleashed efficiency to maximize our free time for creative exploration of Life.
Almost every day I practice virtue and service so fully that all those desires disappear in the attentiveness of the moment, and attention on others' well-being.

The movie's character and we cannot control how long our captivity will be. He adjusted to his "captivity" with unimaginable virtue and creativity.

We, too, cannot control how long our captivity to psychopaths will be. We, too, can respond with unimaginable virtue and creativity.

Both scenarios, fictional and real, can be appreciated as "Red Team" stories: an apparent oppositional force strongly motivating to bring one's best "game" forward.
"Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit." - Virgil's Aeneid (book 1, line 203), "This suffering will yield us yet a pleasant tale to tell." Or: "A joy it will be, perhaps, to remember even this."
For Americans still still believing the fiction that our "leaders" want to help us, please embrace the reality that 40% of US children live at least one year of their lives in under-measured poverty, while oligarchs most responsible literally laugh in grandiose glee of the poverty they euphemise as "income inequality."

Please absorb this 1-minute reality check:


Real-world Earth's Groundhog Day of day-after-day illegal and looting empire is an Emperor's New Clothes obvious story to anyone caring to not live in fiction.

Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen's lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu