Populations are best kept in a kind of stupor. Best kept there if you are wishing to use them for your own interest as a status quo hierarchy, no matter what kind of hierarchy; church, state, warlord, abused partner.
I wish the vision imbued in the constitution was allowed to expand. It was liberalism at its most manifest at the time. Immigrants to this nation were tired of abuse, tired of being downcast, sick and tired of being persecuted, or left with next to no possibility of personal development according to ones innate desires.
That very basic dream of being free drew us from far and wide, and as it so happened, we did not think much of those who were here, they were called savages or heathen and so virtually non human. Pushed to the side for freedom? No, for domination for one groups ideas of freedom, ideas which seemed to include indoctrinating the natives into the invaders ways, or simply locking them away on reservations after many a treaty broken. Broken due to the prime directive of opportunist advantage; because one could get away from it–not held to account. The dream of any dictatorship or human predator.
It is hard to be proud of some of our past. I am not a blame American first anybody to bring this up. Natives here as well as in Africa had slaves and often constant warfare. Some natives however, did establish relationships based on the Categorical Imperative, such as the Algonquin Federation, which deeply impressed our Founders and changed what this nation was to be.
Much of the world currently owes a great deal of its goods to the cheep labor in China. The once RED MENACE is now baling the US out in that way, cheep goods, and by loaning us much. Is it smart business globalized, or is it more greed, that is both binding nations as never before, and finding wherever the cheapest labor is to make a good profit? Or am I just glad that my income still goes somewhere, not knowing it is at someone else’s lifeblood’s expense?
So far it seems most countries and individuals can be bought out of higher principles by simply offering them security and or a hoard of wealth. I grew up thinking that democracy somehow was that special guarantee that offer the individual a fair say, but I was young and easy to be mislead. Perhaps this is why cults, governments and related organizations that control minds, like many churches, strive to get their ideologies into you when you are little. Then you are imprinted and will require a supper nudge to wake you up to actual realities effecting individuals, humankind and the planet.
I grew up in an ancient established religion, and it was truthfulness that forced me out of it. Much later I was involved, and was a full time member of a more “enlightened” church that saw through the conflicting images of many religions to their generic core values, human values, even humanist values. They were aware that change happens in me first, that is where life and consciousness is.
If I require some unquestionable authority to instruct me on how I am to be, what guarantee is there that of the thousands of groups that believe they are the one true to you one, what likelihood is it that mine happens to be the right or truthful one? Inside the group you will always be told it is special and God given that you fortunately happen to have the right one. Praise whomever.
These group identities represent the core of conservatism; non compassion, empathy, or full understanding of other groups. That would seem self refuting to fully and truly consider your selves equally valid, so they may preach all these wonderful values, or just the threat of eternal damnation ones, but forgiveness and understanding is essentially relegated-gated to those of your own kind. This is a kind of identity retreat from universal humanity, to some, conserved notions of separation and probable isolation-superiority complex create a comfort illusion that you are protected from error, by not having intact critical thinking abilities.
I am not against conserving justice and responsibility minded values along with all the cultural ones we may be born into that celebrate both the joy of life and the sacred joy of being a part and parcel of Creation. These are universal unless short circuited when young or otherwise overridden by fear and insecurities that present the universe, world or others as intrinsically hostile.
I remind the reader that many on the left, or even liberal well intentioned, are not what they think they are. They may be their own kind of elitist, with no compassion for those they oppose. They in effect become conservatives of their own making; being reactionary to what they believe reactionary. I can view conservatism as a hyper-liberalism; where one assumes all manner of truths-untested as long as someone in alleged authority states it so. The USA is currently experiencing the hyper-liberalism of certain alleged conservative forces, who require no reality check on their proclamations. Now that is being liberal to the extreme; to the excess of ideology over any responsibility to objective truth finding. The conservatives (at least some of them) of the former Soviet Union are the—-Communist. All authoritarian-totalitarian ideologies of the left or right meet at the same means to the ends, with only their ideas, seeming in their own minds, to make the 180 degree world of illusionary difference.
Stand back and look at the world in its conflicts and you will see conservative turf battles at the cores of them. Most conflict is insecurity based, understandable, but not true understanding. The “enlightened” church I was part of could not honestly question itself. The individual was trapped into the new-age breaking of a mold, only to find that the same old molds were establishing themselves under new and unquestionable hierarchies. We all lose when we cannot question authority in a responsible manner.
Conservatism may find the facts to be only useful when they can be manipulated or cherry picked to suit their point of view, but in America in particular, this was not the common creed nor the contract citizens of a proclaimed free nation have in trusting that nations institutions.
Our new world of corporate citizenry, which seems to be now bearing down on the inherent interest of democracy, seems to be establishing a new level of feudal state. Some corporations are on guard to slay one another as if they were dragons, and if that proves an incapable act at present, they may seek to merger to eliminate the source of competition. ELIMINATE COMPETITION! Through all these bottom line wheeling and dealing, the commons of Creation is most often off the radar, and when it appears, called a false reflection. Pollution; acid rain, water table poison plumes, diminishing resources, national interest re defined as corporate interest but still called your interest and “way of life”. These all are to be ignored, like on the Wizard of OZ, don’t look behind the veil, the curtain of ignorance.
In the name of our highest aspirations of a just and peaceful world; with the rights of the individual to define themselves to their highest potential, yet remain responsible to the whole, these interest are being attacked by both government and religion varying place to place. What I would call the War to defeat Unconditional Love, is underway and well funded.
Opposed to the more or less unconscious movement of darkness over light, are what was once called “A Thousand Points of Light”, but I would call them actually, Six Billion Potential Points of Unconditional Illuminated Love. For whatever reason of which I was least expecting, I was once privy to a spiritual epiphany in the midst of great anger at my looming violent expectation. I tell you this because the scientific view many of us are raised on, assumes by its absence, that metaphysical or transcendental being is unverifiable by scientific method, and thus nonexistent.
This is a kind of folly, since it then assumes that the current state of rational thought as defined by Western Civilization is innately right, a foolish assumption given that we have mystery, love, awe, and a just plane thrill of exploratory revelation, that is part of both scientist and ministers conscious states of mind. Probably would not wish to live without them. The wedge of us verses them is ultimately a reduction of the potential of the self, if the us versus them is predicated on denying an understanding of the other, and not undoubtedly immanent threat to survival. But I remember someone said, and in so saying implied a higher and more powerful truth to; “turn the other cheek.” It is courage beyond belief, it is knowing the power and authority of Unconditional Love regardless of immediate outcome.
This is why I write this.
Benafia
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