Freedom’s Delusion of Grandeur: Plight of The Ego’s Identity

Politics, religion and economics often allude to freedom, or the free will. Western societies tend to oppose restrictions on freedom, but only a highly conditional freedom, where usually the conceptual parameters of the freedom being considered are rendered a plus or a minus depending on ones circumstances.

When I was a child, I was often in charge of burning up huge leaf piles in our front yard.  I really enjoyed the responsibility; trying to keep safety my number one priority while getting the job done.  Yet these days I would be arrested or cited, and perhaps rightly so, for air pollution. Burning down my neighbors house, or myself, is considered not worth the risk of individual freedom–where others become held accountable for my own actions, by state and municipal interest.  This means the representation of The Commons finds the behavior unacceptable, and I agree.  One “freedom” bites the dust, or goes into the compost bin.

But then if I am not so understanding of my extenuating responsibilities and accountability’s to The Commons; WELL, how dare you tell me what to do, you and your government designed to restrict my freedom (by obvious restrictions on behavior).  Shame and blame on you all! It is so easy not to see the connectivity to my actions when that connectivity seems to make me do things not seeming to represent my instant gratification, or quick solution to a problem I have encountered.  And that is a kind of rub; for we would rather just do what we will in Western cultures, and rather not know of what greater impact my actions and inaction’s may have on The Commons.  In fact; try to get rid of this The Commons idea, except in abstractions, where I am seemingly left to my relative opinion in these matters.

-What Connects Freedom

We all seem to have faith in our words, like freedom; that they actually mean something.  We are free to express ourselves, usually, maybe not at times in church or at work, and maybe not to strangers is certain ways. We are told democracy and free choice make us free, including freedom of speech, but we find these have conditions, usually implied and out of sight, like not calling out fire in a crowded theater just for fun. But society decides to deprive some of freedom to vote, even though we claim to have the freedom to vote, or the right, because it believes those deprived do not deserve to vote for one reason or another, often a  punishment.  Again, Freedom, with all its pride and long history of sacrifice, rendered conditional.

We are not free at times, though if asked we would claim to be, overall.  We can be led to assume freedom means certain things and not others, while others can assume freedom does mean those other things.  Freedom is an abstraction; it declares a positive amidst an assumed negative; I claim to be free from something. That something, can very wildly by the minds of those considering what freedom means—-in context and to them.

Now context is another matter, we declare reality is pinned in by certain parameters of consideration. Much political “proof” uses these parameters to spin conception my way, or else someones I disagree with.  We can restrict or expand context by our own intention.  Sure it will rain at my house, absolutely.  But rain today?  That diagnosis is much more specific and restricted. I am no longer free to assume forever, just today.  The context of if and rain has changed.  In my view, many ideas are manipulated in these ways to suit the ideological preference.   Ideology, usually seeks to reproduce itself, and stand alone as truth for those who will buy or not question the explanation.  In that trick; emotion can present “facts” in ad hominem “proof”, when attitude leads the logic’s connective dialectic.

Usually we are not free to make up all of our own words, except with a known context exception, but changing the context around a word can make it seem to be something more specific that I mean.  I want to be free from your meddling in my affairs! Or; I wish I were free from this caste on my leg! Or; I intend to be free from money worries. Freedom becomes the sought after release from stress in the abstract.

Like the air, words belong to a collective, a common thing.  This common thing is sometimes called The Commons.  Most all things in life are derived from commonalities, or communally possessed givens; poems from existing words; inventions from existing ideas, most of my or your genes from humanities gene pool. We are free to ignore our common ground to our peril.  The Commons is effectively the Super Context—my breath is taken in from our common air. Ignore the air or ignore the language, and you will find yourself in dire straights.

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I can be mad at anyone who calls these in common things “collective”, if I have one of the anti universal ideologies inserted into my conceptual programing.  If collective or commons has been turned into a socialist or communist ideological tag, just mentioning it can become a Thought-terminating cliché for me. It then is a bias to me, to hear such things called collective; why, you have yours and I have mine.  If I bias to the subjective end of consideration, my ego can better identify reality as being mine—my possession, my God, my stuff, my whatever.  I may have then shrugged off awareness of the collective aspect, The Commons.  If so, I may never give it another thought, and wish others would never bring it up.  My big truck is polluting your air?  Mind your own freak’en business! And so The Commons becomes denied or derided. And I assume I know ‘the kind of people’ who mention collective or commons.

But now, with my subjective identity, if someone comes along and says to me that taxes are taking my money and giving it freely to those who do not deserve help?  The Commons can be quick led into a kind of inferred obvious negative weight.  One that I can then assume I feel, cause I, and most of us, could use more money for something.  If I have clean air, I posses it as far as I am concerned at my house, why should I care if someone else does or does not?  Let them buy their own air filter.

Yet The Commons is effectively The Universe; it is a unity.  If I declare unities not relevant to my thoughts, my thoughts do not actually have the power to exclude the real Universe, but to instead be ignorant about it.  My denial of connection still caries consequence, so then its resulting problems or perception and cognition will be assigned to some imaginary cause.  Perhaps a religious or political one. Oh lets say; You people.

Environments are this way, and society is even this way, and yet by focusing on my background’s rules and expectations, I can be excluding others just as valid, or just a truthful.  I render their image less worthy than mine.  Heck; if I had to buy an air filtration system, why don’t they just get responsible and do the same.  The problem with those people is that they are lazy and want government to do everything for them! This kind of stance boldly ignores that some may not be able to buy one.  Then what is my responsibility to this commonality; what do I care?  The answer is telling to levels of detachment to identity to The Commons, by those led to believe they are somehow outside of it.   Or that it takes care of itself, and does not depend in any way upon me.

-Cutting Up Identity——-The Trouble With You People

We seem stuck with individuals thinking as they will, and so seeming to be free to do good or ill. We see in our world today, that God so often stands in as a kind of abstract idol.  Allegedly monotheistic religions claim their subjective experience of religious narrative as absolute truth. Then, others, with their one God, are false, for this one God could not be so different in human impact and behavior.  These others, with their alien God, become strangers with behavior to reject as not being true.  They become The Other, others who are so different we need not attempt full understanding of the legitimacy of their ways.

This is how much conservatism reacts to inwardly contain followers identity, to shelter it in ideology, and effectively, arrogance or indifference toward others not of their group.  Their religion might say respect all, but rationalizations say the others do not deserve respect unless they become us, otherwise, they seem to represent the bad unknown and undesirable otherness we are attempting to eradicate.  This seems to institute the inevitable conservative turf battles with others as they compete over resource; human and material.

Again in this, The Commons, the generic like unity of all things in existence, is effectively bypassed for what I know and am told to respect or to not respect.  Freedom is again highly conditioned; I am free to believe what I am told by those claiming a-prior awareness of absolute truth, or I am free to digress and go my own way, outside the group paradigm, and into a place seemingly alien to it.  For instance; who says that pantheism is not a kind of One God, only revealed specifically into all things?  —The dictionary? Monotheist? Atheist?

Monotheist will see the danger; the pagan past seems hard to detect if God is in everything, so make Creation seem somehow independent from God; God created it and left it for us, or God no longer wants anything to do with it. However this does leave me and my life’s concerns, so tied into that Creation, as perhaps of no concern to The Creator,  unless I selectively see ways to make God interested in what I am doing here.  But I will thank God for my new car or for helping my sick child, because I do not really know exactly how the Universe is working and how involved God is with my life and its hopes, dreams and realities.

In reality, we find that may monotheist will look upon Creation as delivering signs from God.  The prayed for rain; the prayed for child; the prayed for death of one suffering terminally; the prayed for defeat of a foe; the hoped for outcome. We can very much believe God is involved with the minutia of our lives.  We seem to want God to be so involved; to manipulate The Creations Commons to my own needs and desire.  If I pray for rain, and the neighbor, just as wholesome, prays for dryness to bring in the hay, do I really expect it will be raining at my house and dry at my neighbors?  For many, the answer by default is, Yes.

God will answer the righteous prayers.  But why should God reward me for following orders to achieve desired results? This seems not a freedom of choice, but a barter system of reward and punishment.  Where is the spiritual merit in that?  Yet for all too many, the important thing is actually not to question beliefs, it is to not have questions, rather to act in rote conformity and be rewarded now or later for not engaging my own critical thinking to freely make my own choices.

Travel around this world we live in, and beliefs such as these are scattered everywhere; trust authority concepts and do not think about them, except in ways to validate them.  Again, these conserved notions are much of what human conflict is about; the inability to be present in the present moment with all or faculties available to address Creation as it is.  We are instead, busy forcing our ideas upon it, claiming they are some absolute truth, so reality must in some other way be wrong.  And so come the many varied forms of rationalization, to explain away Gods motives as unquestionably pure, or those of others as unknowable except in the negative of their strangeness, or otherness.

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Most human identity is derived from conditioning by whatever hereditary platform I have.  If I am a woman, well in many cultures, the idea of freedom was seldom meant for me.  I am free to be me, obviously, but only so long as I follow the cultural programing.  The Commons, as far as culture is concerned, is saying my role is restricted to certain definite parameters, while men may not be.  Even in the USA, where we claim all kinds of freedom, I can just assume, as commercials do again these days, that the woman can afford to be at home and cleaning the floors while the man is out working, or…

In the name of Freedom, as in the name of God; all manner of perversion and good works are done, while the holistic impacts of our beliefs are ignored or assumed the credit of God.  Yet those who are too other than our currently accepted beliefs, are most likely bizarre and discounted, except in the negative, as an influence in our worlds.  Subjective arrogance, the allusion of abstraction, the mind games of idea manipulation from abstraction to subjective narrative, all these are combining everyday with our and others ignorance to produce many of the “complex” conflict conundrums hounding humankind.  This remains problematic and persistent, as we are led to allow others to do the thinking for us.

My Freedom ignoring Connection will likely lead to extinction; F-C=E.  This is one formula, where I am one of the ingredients, as are you.

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HUMAN HIVE

I have lived around Africanized “killer” bees for over a decade. I grow many flowers and have many flowering trees which are often filled with the now ubiquitous Africanized bees. I was stung by one for the first time just the other day, at night. It seems I have become more sensitive to bee, hornet and wasp stings through time.

The once dreaded invasion of Africanized killer bees was not the disaster it was built up to be. They are slightly smaller and darker than regular old honeybees, and pollinate many more things. They are a wee bit more defensive, so when surrounded by them, one generally needs to be a little more cautious. They are mostly a greater threat if you are fairly close to their hive, or someone within a half mile has been perceived to be a threat. Being close to these bees hive is farther away than than being close European honeybees. Unless, as I was living on a farm with honeybee hives, they happen to tune into your number for some reason. Then they are equally aggressive quite far away from center. Eventually this post will be closer to becoming a philosophical piece which should not sting you or cause an allergic reaction, unless you are primed for one.

You, me and US.

The individual and the hive are sown together via the queen bee. It is a curious paradox of the individual initiative, under the queens umbrella will. The bee that stung me was (I believe) hit by a ceiling fan down onto me. It then was cast into a defensive mode and could not help but sting me.

I am not like some people when it comes to the why. When some things happen you may hear; “Everything happens for a reason!” However, the reason implied is often vague; perhaps suggesting a divine reason such as a moral values lesson. It is notable the lack of definition that usually follows this statement in my experience.

But straight forward cause and effect? I’m for that one. It does not necessarily exclude the former, but an available rational answer is often at hand. The ‘it happened for a reason’ crowd, often seems to be hinting at their philosophical or religious world view. They personally know this “reason” truth, while your ambiguity or questioning is seen as being lost or ungrounded. It is kinda like saying; Well the sun is overhead at noon, you who knows not cause and effect. What would be the issue or the lesson of a fact based inherently redundant expression otherwise? Anyway.

Minding the Matter

We know the human mind does influence matter by the actions we take. We also know fairly certainly, that ones attitude effects outcomes as well. We need not necessarily jump into the metaphysical bus to come to this conclusion. Humans do tend to get the results they are looking for, perhaps not consciously, but in their basic assumptions or attitude of life. We can also interpret the world and events through our ideas of cause and effect and reach any number of conclusions, not scientific necessarily, but by the impression of our lens on life.

As a volunteer for restorative justice groups, I get to experience some peoples attitudes towards life that seem to be beyond their awareness. (I suggest we all have some unawareness of our motivations at times). They do not consciously know why they do what they do, nor that they could behave differently, merely by becoming aware of their own biases in perception, then choosing to be different. I also observe these tendencies in my own life, and believe that the vast majority of us do not always know why we do what we do, but we might think; It is what I always do. Or. “That’s the way I am.” Implying I am unchangeable. Indeed, some even think to question oneself is a basic sign of weakness, rather than strength.

We are set up in more ways than one to both, serve others interest unknowingly, as well as work against our own deeper interest, simply because of our own self ignorance and the patterns of action-reaction we have learned. Likely these were modeled by someone influential and not just invented. This introduces an obvious problematic scheme into the relationship equation; we tend to believe we are more honest overall, than many others we come to know. And conversely, we may feel ourselves lacking compared to others in some ways, even envying, resenting or feeling in ways intimidated by those who seem to “have it more together”. Many guru’s represent this sort of yearning for advancement, seekers of knowing Life and Being may have. Overall, religions are constructed to seem to poses such a knowingness.

With our friends, we tend to ignore these seemingly apparent failings, or find them part of character traits, unless we have a falling out. Then in defense, we may find these once overlooked nuisances or interesting behavioral qualities, loom large as some form of deception, or serious personal failings. We can become quite good at analyzing the qualities of others, both positive and negative, yet have only vague notions of our own. I tend to have some awareness of my strengths and failings through time by results, but I may chose to value them differently depending on my mood.

Those invisible to us lenses.

I often hear people giving life a specific religious tag for the very same feeling and experiences I have. Their lens adjustment of interpretation is their belief in their brand of cause and effect. I tend to believe that there is much more than I know, for ostensibly spiritual “reasons”, however, I do not require the specific religious “tag line” to quantify it. I hardly think we know all there is to know about life and being, and am not willing to sacrifice my acceptance of this likelihood of clear reception for conceptualized tag-frames that can actually color and distort my experience of life. In that sense, my religion, my belief system, is to avoid too many fingerprints of preconception by  religions or ideologies cast on my lens. This is a sacred thing to me, and not the lack of belief or faith in that which is greater. Those who have faith in and believe as I do, may well be tagged with being non believers, agnostic or atheistic by the unknowing of the nature of this beliefs cause.

The vast majority of us have a default philosophy. It is usually relative to our upbringing; the kinds of ideas we learned and the kinds of culture we individually grow up in. This is a sort of unconscious guidance. We go to a church, or believe in a God in a certain way because we have learned to. Not necessarily that we have freely decide to. Likewise, other belief systems are inserted into consciousness by other interest. Politics may have been handed down to us by our parents. We are “imprinted” in many ways like this.

We might later on decide that some primary idea of merit has us switch “sides” to a differing view because we feel it is more beneficial to our view on life. Regardless, these beliefs can still be highly subjective and perhaps overtly wrong to our life, but we may not see the forest for the trees we plant in front of our view. The life unexamined, may well be the wrong life lived.

The Ceiling Fan

Often our sense of being, even of necessities of survival, can be hit with a notion or a perception that acts as that whack to the self of a ceiling fan blade. We can lash out in all honesty and just cause, and still remain quite wrong. Just as the bee that stung me, religion and politics, most conceptually trapped ideologies, find that outside their own box, “alien” ideas are a direct and immanent threat. When in fact they may not be that at all to a true self. They may even be the effect of something more honest and containing the enhanced truth of higher awareness. Yet in colored by lens perception, they are large, dark to the core, and threatening survival itself.

Without an objective sense of cause and effect. Without a granting of the dignity of existence to the unknown. Without the permission to question my own beliefs and submit to a higher cause. I can be both believing I am honest, faithful and serving the truth of life, when I am in fact doing the opposite in fundamental ways.

Essentials to understanding this dichotomy of being, is that permission to question all things to prove themselves truly real. In that I must bend my will to the truth of Universal Being, the unshakable Laws of Life. What are the obstacles then, preventing me from not being misguided by the ceiling fans and other diversions in the environment that I assume are causing dissonance? What instead of this primal pursuit into knowledge, is telling me not to question and get to know life intimately, up close and personal, with all its nuance filled pathways and ambiguous explorations into differing colors of the rainbow? Which prestablished conceptions do not allow my own investigations into beingness and deeper purpose meanings to Life and Being?

The invisible obvious balance pointing to Union

Humankind has created many apparently competing assumptions regarding interpretation of life. Some see religious based testing of purity as a final truth of a life. Others see a basic decency and honesty as their core value, with the ends being not a primary concern. Still others see life as another sort of extreme play out of competition itself. The individual is then, in this self centered view, allowed to do whatever it can get away with doing and “enjoying”. Enjoyment is perceived as a penultimate result of successful living. The proof of this “fact” is in the self centered pudding; hedonism is seen as a kind of final fulfillment of the self, a self apparently on its own to get what it wants and enjoy what it gets. The modern world has combinations of these kinds of views sown into societies cultural quilts.

Some are rewarded by suffering and serving without self gain (that love and caring is seen and felt as the “gain” in and of itself). Others do a bit of both. And certainly some of us want all we can get, “within reason” often conditionalized to our apparent station in life, so we plan on how to achieve a list of these getting’s to hopefully fulfil our life.

These folks have a basic optimism, as the prior groups may well have, and see a ladder to success, where one gets to enjoy ones getting on the rungs of the ladder, hopefully moving us upward. Many who feel for some reason socially or institutionally trapped, can have quite a feeling of being held back, and resenting that position seemingly imposed upon them by doings other than their own. Their basic human optimism can be quite tainted by this seemingly human caused condition appearing to ignore them and their dreams.

The millions who play the lottery are likely looking to quick jump to the top of their hypothetical dream life ladder. They want that “good life” “free from worry” (an illusion in most mindsets), and they may well want to spread some of their good luck to family and friends, expanding their winning ground and sense of self, or at least self interest. This suggest we are under economic stress, and a kind of ego fulfillment stress or sense of endemic lack. It also suggest we wish our situation was different in fundamental ways, but adapt as best we can to what we have overall.

There seems to be definite universal qualities to being human, and we tend to have a basic same list of stress and challenges to face individually. It is my sense that we are under one invisible Queen like rule. Some may call this rule Gods will, Spirit, or even Gaia, but whatever this overarching organizing principle is, I seriously doubt that it is actually for selfish, self centered self achievement, or a list centered self actualization’s. Humankind not only has diseases built into its genome for survival reasons, but we can assume that personality types and individual characteristics, though perhaps seeming surely negative, may have overarching positive reasons for being conserved as well. If one believes in a logical and rational universe, as opposed to an existential fear and question fest covered with ritualized behaviors to carry through the day with sufficient mystification and domination undertows.

Missing the boat for all the life preservers floating around.

I contend that we are all in this together more than it appears most of us realize. Do we realize that high intelligence needs to be balanced in humanity by “lower” intelligence, the latter often indicating an unrecognized form of specific high intelligence into other matters? These individual gifts or curses are all for the well being of us all. If this idea is correct, our monetary value system, as well as work (value placed on individual life consciousness) value system, is highly mistaken and corrupted.

We have, in effect, divided ourselves up in many fundamental yet false ways, leaving a kind of supermarket of ceiling fans positioned to hit certain segments of our fellow beings down repeatedly. We also appear to disavow any realization of this continuity and balance of human union, but instead insert many moral or other value tags to explain the need for the continuance of the apparent judgemental disconnections and hierarchical value assessments.

The modern world has gone so far as to propose the assumption, that the collateral damage caused by what may well be an extinction machinery embedded with rampant unaccountable individualism, is a good outworking into progress for modern precepts, these being just and right by all the good stuff. Materialism has these sown up in the modern world, and many of the reactions to materialism lack of apparent guiding Supreme “Soul”, validate many religions into their purging of attempts at objective reasoning with its truly empowered critical thinking abilities in the individual. The very creative Life mechanisms humankind relies on to fulfill its needs.

IGNORING THE QUEEN

The fundamental assumption at question in these words is; What is the consequence of not recognizing the fundamental ordering principles occurring in spacetime? We notice that humankind seems to acknowledge during most of its history some greater Being or Center or Source to Life. I contend that we all have the sensor for this connection in love and the purpose that comes with caring for all things great and small. In many societies, cultures, but especially the modern western world view, a kind of predatory invention has become more refined. It is a machinery without a conscious captain. The captain is the self centered world view and order being imposed upon humankind.

We are taught from our earliest days, to submit to external authority, and to submit to the wills of those beyond us, merely because we are vulnerable. While some of this vulnerability is indeed true, particularly in youth, the concept goes on to permeated and mutate across the fields of human relationships. It has gotten to the equivalent of the might makes right extreme prejudice; that simply possessing more entitles one to take and have more. This is dominator and predatory philosophy. It is as if the bees in the hive decide on their own, to do whatever they heck they want. Never realizing that if the Queen is not returned to, if Center or Source is not recognized as the organizing principle, the hive itself will degenerate. The bees themselves, flying right into the blades of conflict and extinction.

The notions of individual freedom have become divorced from individual responsibilities to the Whole of Life. They are running rampant into corrupt associations of often highly dysfunctional dominator consciousness. Consciousness that have their own sense of Queen like grandeur, without any universal right to so act. To the degree we continue to follow these dysfunctional leaders of separation and alienation from the Whole, humankind will continue to push the earth to the breaking point of its ability to contain counter reality consciousness.

We are in this Garden of Eden called earth, but also called Life and Being. Some take those whispers they hear as their own self enlightenment to take, get and have whatever they can keep for themselves and their “own”. This is being as God, being as the Queen bee. It is fundamentally delusional, for actually you are a member of the one and only human hive.

Quite like bees, we must follow the landmarks and the light source back home.

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