This year all things seem to come together right on this one weekend
- Memorial Weekend
- School’s out
- Summer weather
and particularly the first point makes me ponder the eternal question of ‘what is real’. It helped a bit that I also listen to a talk by Larken Rose, one of my favorite anarchists.
Let us look at my spiritual path for a moment and see if we can somehow apply this to my pondering.
On this path, I have now reached a point where I believe that I create my own world. This is often expressed as “The world IS as I see it” and not the other way around, something that I did subscribe to at some point on my path.
However, I have to admit that this is still, to some degree, a belief and not a certainty, as sometimes doubt creeps in. Occasionaly I wish for just one very good and solid experience to show me that something that I had just created in my inner world, was also visible to my physical eyes – that would be a nice thing to have and would remove all uncertainty, right? To give a rude example – I create a Ferrari in my inner world, go out the door – and there it is – in RED!
Unfortunately, these examples work both ways, so every time I create something in my own universe, and it does not show up in the one that I share with other, or believe to share with others, is like a punch in the teeth of my certainty.
If I could only find one (oh so) little example where it really worked – creating in my own world and finding it manifested in the ‘real’ world!
Today I understood that I’d better not look for little things only – I have a really big one right in front of me and after being able to see it – it’s undeniable.
“So, what is it?” you might now ask.
I was tempted to write some more sentences in order to build tension before I tell you, but I can’t stand this excitement myself any more – so here it is:
Memorial Day!
Huh – that makes no sense, this is something everybody knows and agrees upon – we honor our fallen heroes and celebrate that they are dead!
Maybe that did not come out right – ‘celebrate’ might not be the right word. Let me try it a bit differently and start at the beginning.
- We, as a group, came over here from Europe, mostly to escape slavery from the kings and the nobility that owned us.
- We made the mistake of bringing with us the conviction that others can own us – we did not leave this behind. Could have – but did not.
- With this emptiness inside, of a leader telling us what to do, we quickly got us a new set of rulers. We got us better ones that did not milk us as much as the old ones, but we allowed them to take rights that we ourselves don’t have.
- The first few waves of leaders were very gentle with these rights but slowly but surely the thumb screws were tightened, not in the arrogant ways of the rulers we had left behind, but instead with delicate psychology telling us “You are free” while putting the chains on.
- And we did not notice because we were still feeling the old chains, and their weight might have actually felt good because it was so familiar – and the new ones were a bit lighter, so all was good.
- Leaders, like every other group of people, do not always agree, but they never had the need to work out their differences themselves because they had us to go into battle for them, to find out who’s view was the right one.
- Smart as they were, they did not tell the families left behind something like “Oops, George did not make it – maybe in the future you next son has more luck – but don’t worry, everything went fine and I got what I wanted.” Instead they said the same thing but with words like “George put his life on the line for a [insert noble cause here] and in doing so, he became a hero. You should be proud!” And then they handed the happy wife/mother a shard of metal with ‘George – Hero’ scratched into it.
- As the years went on the reason for George’s demise was quickly forgotten but everybody remembered that he was a hero.
- All this because we forgot to leave behind in Europe the conviction that somebody can (and should) own us.
Now let’s see how this would have played out had we actually left that conviction back in the old world.
- We had come over here into the new world and had started to interact freely and voluntarily with each other, knowing that I own myself, and you own yourself, and that we have every right to do anything as long as it does not infringe in these very rights of others.
- Now a strange group of people might have come along, claiming rights that they themselves did not have, like stealing or making random rules that carried cage time if not followed. That would have been normal, every society breeds some of those crazy individuals but in this hypothetical scenario, where we all know that we own ourselves and can not give what we don’t own, these strange individuals would have just been put into the loony bin where they belonged – Imagine, the idea of ‘I have the right to take your stuff without an exchange and without your consent!’ – They must be surly mad!
Today then, we would not have one hundred million people that give away up to half of their wealth obeying the command of a few hundred (congress, etc.) who back up their ‘power’ with about one hundred thousand enforcers. A nice graphic representation of these ratios can be seen in the ‘The Tiny Dot.’
This article you are reading here right now, also demonstrates the ratio of Us v. Them – taxpayers v. IRS employees: it has about one thousand words. If this article represents Us, then the total of the enforcers is ONE WORD – 100 million v. 100 thousand – and of those latter the bigger part are only pencil pushers and not real ‘enforcers.’
Imagine how strange it is that this whole article is terrified of one word.
The only explanation that would make sense is that this power is a creation of all those one hundred million tax payers. On a logical level the few could not terrorize those many. Only when those many would create the existence of this power, which, in a so-called ‘objective reality’ is just not there, can this government (and any other) exist. Neither does ‘the law’ exist in some kind of ‘objective’ fashion as it was created by the few that we put into existence and which we could just as easily un-create if we so decide.
We only have to answer this one question for ourselves:
Who owns me?
Everything else falls into place automatically – there is no ‘government’ – no ‘authority’ that could possibly make rules which I have to live by.
