Well as usual my wife is tired of hearing me rant about the system and the ways in which it needs to change.
What's new right ? Another weekend warrior, dinner table politician, bending the ears of unsuspecting conversationalists who fall into my trap.
These conversations usually end up getting wedggied by the statement " SO ! What are YOU gonna do about it ?" . Good question . What am "I" gonna do about it.
I see examples all over the place of people who are trying to do something about "IT". One guy I read about was living his life in a cave. Another was building windmills for poor people so they could pump their own water. Some folks are busy trying to change our relationship to the foods we eat. community currency, Solar power, composting, rallies , marches, call your senator, the list goes on forever. If you live in the Bay Area you might actually come to the conclusion that people are waking up. We have for ourselves at least created a nice little corner of the world where we are allowed to complain as loudly as we want. But try to take some of that to Sacramento and see how much we have actually changed. Every election cycle we get a new batch of promises quickly followed by all the reasons it cant be done after elections come down. Our present situation is no different. So what are we gonna do? Who am I to do something?
All my life I have been taught by polite society that it's uncool to talk about uncomfortable topics. In fact as far back as I can remember I have been told that material attainment and seeking the highest possible amount of security for myself and my family in perpetuity is the ultimate and acceptable goal of the individual. In fact finding someone with an opposing view point that is willing to sit and talk with you about what's real is extremely difficult. Unless that somebody's point of view is absolutely rooted in the status quo. The Moral Majority Christian right. I never appreciated any conversation more that someone who is willing to stand toe to toe and tell you what they believe. For me it doesn't matter if you are educated or illiterate. The truth is that the majority of Americans are not college educated, like myself. Never the less We the People are charged with the sole responsibility for the quality of our own governance in a document called the Declaration of Independence........
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
Simply put , the government has "Power". This power is given to them by our consent. So does that mean that we are powerless?
Essentially , like it or not, we are the governed. As far as I can see our consent is given in one of two ways either directly or passively. Direct consent is the more obvious one, voting, paying taxes, volunteering for the military, ect. Conversely, since our system of government does not require total participation to validate itself then we must conclude that doing nothing is also consent. So if you are like me and you think that something is terribly wrong with the picture of society and you keep banging the set trying to change the channel you might be asking yourself, How does one remove consent in a system that continually presents us with an endless procession of benign options. Where participating on either side ( Democrat or Republican) yields the same results, and non participation yields the same results. The lives of average Americans are unchanged. The lives of people in third world countries who continue to suffer because of our policies are unchanged, and now we have a new addition to the mix...... a time clock in the form of global warming.
Have you ever heard the term "think outside the box"? This is usually said when someone is presented with a problem or road block to a desired outcome. The phrase itself is a box,if you will; it implies that you are in a box to begin with. Here is another one I learned as a door to door sales man for newspaper subscriptions as a teenager." Would you like to sign up for the paper for 7 days a week, or Sundays only?" The question is in a box, or frame if you prefer the term. The frame work is this ... you will sign up for the paper. Most people were smart enough to shut the door. But eventually someone would get caught in the box. and grudgingly sign up for Sundays only. Once in a blue moon a happy customer would say "Yeah sure give me all 7 days". Now if I could walk away from every door and sign them up whether they said yes, no, shut the door or where not even home , then I would have a racket that resembles our present political system.
Usually if you were sitting at my kitchen table this is where I would tell you that the system is the problem, Government and politicians are the problem. International Bankers are the problem. But recently Ive come to a new conclusion...... The Box is our problem. Or rather our inability to recognize where it begins and we end. Our current election system is one of those boxes. Would you like a Democrat or a Republican this year ? The framework is this the presupposition that its only a two party system.If you try to escape the box by saying you will vote independent then the collective mind quickly jerks you back in the box with slogans like " its better to have the lesser of two evils", or my favorite " You'll just waste your vote". There are millions of such boxes floating around in our collective and individual consciousness. Especially in the areas of politics, religion, money, race, gender, marriage, to name a few.
Recently I learned this gem of wisdom from someone I have come to admire greatly. " Bad results com from bad actions, Bad actions come from bad thoughts, bad thoughts come from the mind. Therefore if you are getting a bad result examine the mind ".
We the People must examine our collective mind. Since consent is predetermined (short of violent revolution, which never seems to work either) the only way to have real change is to change our mind. We must change our collective mind about a great many old ideas. In order to do this we must first recognize that those ideas exist in a framework. We must grant ourselves the collective permission to examine the framework thereby reinventing ourselves and the world.
