“Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath laws are girded too tight. Without liberty, man is a syncope.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
Take any concept you believe in deeply and say out loud, and with full conviction, that your dearest belief may be totally flawed. Say, “There is no doubt that I could be wrong.” If you cannot do this, then you do not possess the idea, the idea possesses you. Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are. An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in their understanding of things. We must evolve beyond our limited thinking in terms of exclusion and inclusion regarding people. Human nature seems to drift so easily into, and hold so feverishly onto the insane mentality of intensely competitive, us-versus-them rivalries of black-and-white and good-and-bad thinking. His-story is steeped in a dark misery, that stems from the phenomenon of social identities, that arises from even the most trivial characteristics. These thought-forms of social identities then become the class war-platforms, from which privileged groups work for greater power consolidation through favoritism. This is how class, privilege and prejudice converge to become a master’s heel of control on a modern slave class. These divide and control thought-forms are the basis of our deepest moral crisis. Male and female, black and white, citizen and non-citizen, Christian and Muslim, Protestant and Catholic; it seems there is no end to the dichotomous splitting and oppositional thinking of we and us, versus they and them.
People so eagerly embrace the belief that one nation (of people) is somehow superior to other nations. They invest in the false notion that somehow “their people,” as a national collective or cultural identity, is somehow separate, blessed, worthier, more deserving, and therefore, justified in acts of moral indecency against others. Statements can be heard in every country on earth, of course some more than others, that our country is “number one” or “the greatest nation on earth.” This insensitive and bellicose claim accosts the kind ear of reason, as a piercing screech of national supremacism. Nationalism is the world’s most accepted form of anti-humanism. It is that type of supremacism that leaves no room in the world for equality and justice; only equality, for just-us. The most unpalatable of these phenomena is the patriotic blather and banter over appointed and anointed sacred symbols; such as historical mythologies, anthems, mottos, flags, and victory remembrances. Far from mere reverent homage, the ceremony, fanfare, and hysteria over these idols points to a deeply emotional and frightening, nearly religious fervor of belonging, that at times even resembles worship. It is upon these spiritual, intellectual, and moral deficits that master manipulators apply their craft to sway the hypnotized and unthinking populaces into further engagements of moral indecency for the exclusive benefit of so-called national interest — and to hell with the rest of the world.
The absurd view that other communities, religions, races, cultures, states, and nations, are somehow “less than” one’s own comes from an underdeveloped consciousness and low self-esteem. Prejudice and supremacism reveal that people do not possess a balanced framework of compassionate independence and self-respect, which is necessary to respect others. We do not belong to any national construct, or group thought-form, but in fact belong to the great and beautiful world, and to the entire universe, as free and unique conscious beings. Prejudice comes from insecurity and its spiritually infantile need of belonging. Out of the hobbled spirit of attachment, and the insecure need of belonging, come the gross judgments against those who do not belong.
Through our shortsightedness, we find ourselves constantly in battle in the vast human theaters of conflict. From individual man-sized bug-tussles of intellect and thought, to city and state showdowns; then off to the high courts as word-filled cage-matches of law, and on to the general assemblies, like cultural thunder-domes of state, national and foreign policy — we are endlessly at WAR.
We have been conditioned. From the moment we are born, our minds of infinite possibilities are plowed, seeded and cultivated by every word, institution and sacred belief we hold dear, to produce a foul harvest of exclusion, apathy, brute domination and death. It is a rotten harvest, where good people are manipulated to spill the blood of their beautiful children, and lose their honor by abandoning their highest truth as compassionate beings. We hide among one-another, lost in the crowd of anonymity and collective culture. We huddle tightly together as cowards, protecting the ranks of our false collective identity from “less-human” intruders, when the only obvious and sane truth is that we are all the same human beings.
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