systems Archives - Free-Man's Perspective

Is This Really the Best Way Possible?

I was taught in school that our modern governance was the best thing ever, and I suppose that you were too. But do any of us really believe that the way of life we now have is the best possible? I dare say (and hope!) that few of us are that intellectually barren.

And yet, the systems of the West are treated as gods: No thought of changing them is permitted. Working inside the system is acceptable; anything else brands you a “domestic terrorist.”

How then shall we improve? The system we have is despised on all sides, and yet to suggest anything outside of it terrifies the servile citizen and incites the security complex to violence.

It would be a disgrace to human nature if we didn’t try to improve our situations; our descendants could and should condemn us for such a failure. And so, here lies the social problem of the age:

New ways of living are prohibited; they are ridiculed at their outset and punished if continued.

If you’re tempted to think that I’m overstating this, please give it a try sometime. You’ll find the experience educational.

Going More than Halfway

The streets are full of people who complain about the political systems that rule them. And millions more have been recognizing their abuse recently. I welcome this enthusiastically. Facing the truth is a crucial virtue.

The holdup in this process is usually at the halfway point, where angry people blame factions rather than structures. In the US, for example, half the country blames the Reds for everything; the other half blames the Blues for everything. But they both stop short of seeing that the system itself is the problem. And so, they get more and more polarized, to the point where it’s starting to bleed over into violence.

So, yes, Mr. Blue, you are being abused, and yes, Mr. Red, you’re being abused. But your abuser is the system itself, not the slimy parties that slither through its belly. If all the parties vanished tomorrow, your abuse – at the hands of a hundred government agencies and their partners in crime – would continue unabated.

And this really should be obvious: The Reds have had their turn with control of the full Congress and the presidency; the Blues have had their turn with the same advantages. And yet the abuse continues unabated. It doesn’t take a genius to draw a lesson from that.

Blame the Structure

As I’ve explained before and no doubt will again, the system we now “enjoy” is primitive and barbaric. It’s really a relic of the Bronze Age.

Think about it this way: If you weren’t taught all your life that ours was the best possible organization for the world, would you seriously choose to give one small group of men all the weapons and full power to control and punish everyone else? And if you knew that this ruling group would be morally inferior to nearly everyone else, would you still think it was a great idea?

Only if you were deranged.

My message, and one that I suppose I’ll keep repeating so long as I have breath, is that we are better than this. Humanity is far better than their barbaric ruling systems. We are better than manipulative elites and perpetually false politicians. We just need to stop believing them, that we’re all vile and weak. If we did that, we’d never put up with the abuse they heap upon us year after year.

The Bottom Line

If you take an argument like this to political obsessives, they’ll take you on an hours-long tour of confusion, throwing authority and intimidation at you and all the while and warring against your personal judgment. Truth, on the other hand, is simple and clear. And the question that cuts through all the BS is this:

Are we free to experiment, or not?

If you can withdraw from the ruling system and experiment with new ways of living, then you’re a free man or woman.

If the system won’t let you out – if they won’t release you to try something better – then you are enslaved, and no amount of confusing talk will ever change that.

We are better, and we can become much better. Archaic structures of dominance stand in our way.

* * * * *

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Changing the World, Slowly

Those of us who have seen beyond the noise and confusion of the present world system tend to become urgent about other people seeing the same things. And while this impulse may be understandable, it’s not realistic. By refusing to let go of it, we frustrate ourselves and subvert our efforts to help others. It makes no sense to sprint when the race is actually a marathon.

It makes no sense to sprint when the race is actually a marathon.

The Hurry-Up Method Doesn’t Work

First of all, the “accept everything I say right now” method spawns bitter intellectual battles, requiring people to say, “You’re right and I’m wrong; the foundation of my life is stupid.” People won’t do that, and demanding it turns us into intellectual bullies.

Second, people change in steps, not all at once. And those who do change all at once usually are unstable people who will change in a different direction soon enough.

Third, the demand for fast change drives us into totalitarianism. The only fast way to get everyone to live our way is to force them… which is why hardened ideologues always love a strongman ruler – he can force everyone to do as they wish.

Finally, the demand for instant change – followed by continual rejections of that demand – spawns an “us against them” mindset. And that leads to all sorts of dark places.

What Does Work

What works is the slow, persistent planting of good seeds: showing kindness, expressing clear and pertinent ideas, absorbing the knee-jerk abuse, and persisting in this over many years. Whether we like this or not, it’s the only thing that works.

The seeds we plant do have an effect, but it’s a slow process. We plant the seeds, water them if we can, and still it takes years for the fruit to show up. But again, whether we like it or not, this is what works.

If you’d like a historical example of this, look no farther than the early Christians. At first routinely hated, they persisted in behaving well, loving each other, and loving everyone else. And over time, they won over millions of Romans. The Caesars stopped persecuting Christians mainly because the Roman people (including millions of non-Christians) knew that the Christians were decent people and objected to them being abused.

A Double Illustration

At some point in my 30s, I noticed there was very little elegance left in the world. The only elegance I saw was a fake kind, like dressing in very expensive clothing and showing off at very expensive events. But that’s a demonstration of status rather than elegance.

I remembered real elegance, strangely enough, from the old “Negro” men and women I used to ride the bus with during my youth. These people had little money, riding city busses rather than driving cars, but they had authentic elegance. That is, they sat up straight, spoke clearly and well, and treated me, at perhaps nine years old, with kindness and with dignity. They also dressed nicely. It was easy to respect them.

I’ve never forgotten two of these people in particular, nor the dignity they displayed. So, this is the first illustration. Simple good behavior in daily life – in this case a few bus rides – left a lasting impression on a boy they didn’t know and bore fruit that long outlasted their own lives.

And remembering that elegance led me to my second illustration.

At some point in the 1990s, and probably toward the middle of the decade, I noticed the inelegance of a very common interchange:

How are you?

I’m good.

Grammatically, this is wildly incorrect. Our health may be good, or we may do good, but we ourselves are not good – that would be like saying “I am goodness.” The correct thing to say is, “I am well.” That’s far more elegant that “I’m good,” and it couples very nicely with “thank you.”

So, beginning roughly twenty years ago, I began to routinely say, “I’m well, thank you.” And I found that I liked it a great deal; it added a bit of elegance to my life and to the world around me.

So far as I could tell, however, I was the only person in the city of Chicago – or anywhere else – who was saying this. People looked at me oddly almost every time I used the phrase. They seemed confused, but they did comprehend my meaning. And so, liking the phrase and liking to inject a bit of elegance into the world, I kept using it.

And then, in only the past five years or so, I’ve begun to hear it from strangers. It has, apparently, caught on. Of course it’s unlikely that this change is wholly attributable to me, but it still seems that my persistence paid off.

Things change slowly. In this case it appears to have taken 15 years of persistence.

This is how improvement really works. We have to let go of our demands for instant progress and latch on to the beauty of slow but real change. As the Bible says in one place: By your endurance you will gain your lives.

Persist, my friends; run the marathon; it’s what works.

* * * * *

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It begins with an attack that crashes the investment markets, brings down economic systems, and divides the world. One part is dominated by mass surveillance and massive data systems: clean cities and empty minds… where everything is assured and everything is ordered. The other part is abandoned, without services, with limited communications, and shoved 50 years behind the times… but where human minds are left to find their own bearings.

You may never look at life the same way again.

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Hustled Through Life

Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to face them, then held to those decisions by fear and shame. They choose from a limited set of options, and they know that change will be punished.

Eventually they get old and find time to think, but by then they can’t bear to question too deeply; that would jeopardize their self-worth, and they haven’t time to rebuild it.

For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:

What’s life about anyway? What’s the point of what we do?
What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above everything else?
Why should I glorify the existing system? Why should I agree to support it?
Who paid for everything I learned in school?
Should I have a family? If so, why? If not, why not?
What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with the beer ads on TV?
What’s the purpose of being like everyone else? Why am I so afraid to be different?

We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. Even in a church or synagogue – places where larger questions are supposed to be addressed – the person in the pulpit wants us to become and/or remain a member of the congregation; their job depends upon it. There are true ministers and rabbis, but for most it’s all too easy to push their audience into what’s convenient.

As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest of motivators: things that match a line from the Bible that says, “Whose god is their belly.”

Mind you, I’m not against wealth, good food, or sex. I think those are fine things. They are not, however, the whole of life. We are much bigger than that. We ought not be limited to belly-level aspirations. But when we’re rushed, that’s all we’re able to see.

Status and Fear

The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative.

Fear is a manipulation technology; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. (I wish I could cover this in depth here, but we haven’t space. Please see issue #54 of my subscription newsletter.)

When we’re afraid, we make our worst choices. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis… and it destroys us by inches.

Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings, it is deeply destructive. It’s also irrational, but the advertising business would crash without it and advertisers currently own the collective eyeballs of humanity.

Fear and status are, in a broad sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking pot every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the pot.

Confusion

Let’s be clear on something: Nearly every adult in the West will agree that politicians are liars and thieves… and yet they obey them without question. Is there any possibility we’d do such things if we weren’t harried and confused?

When we are confused, we pass over our own minds and their deliberations. There’s an old joke: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” But that’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes.

Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. But the existing hierarchies of the West couldn’t function with a calm and confident populace; their operations require people to be frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status.

As a Result…

As a result, most of us hurry through life, never knowing why. We live as others do, simply because that path is streamlined for us, exposing us to a minimal level of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves.

Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein:

Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the popular script. Stop feeding at the same trough as everyone else. Break away and learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart.

Don’t conform. Let people criticize you. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter.

* * * * *

If you’ve enjoyed Free-Man’s Perspective or A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, you’re going to love Paul Rosenberg’s new novel, The Breaking Dawn.

You may never look at life the same way again.

Get it now at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Status, Evolution, and Human Nature

As we move into a new year, I’d like to post something that I feel has fundamental importance. I hope you can take the time to read it carefully. Status is generally defined as a person’s condition, position, or standing relative to that of others. Please read that definition again and consider this: Status automatically creates division and conflict. Status forces us to think in terms of position, hierarchy, and dominance, and …

As we move into a new year, I’d like to post something that I feel has fundamental importance. I hope you can take the time to read it carefully.

Status

Status is generally defined as a person’s condition, position, or standing relative to that of others.

Please read that definition again and consider this:

Status automatically creates division and conflict.

Status forces us to think in terms of position, hierarchy, and dominance, and can’t possibly do otherwise; it is built solely upon our standing relative to others.

In other words, status is a poison. It causes us to think of others as adversaries and to compulsively compare positions.

To be very blunt about it, status is a primate model of seeing other beings. But it’s even worse than that: Not only does status poison our inter-relationships, it poisons our self-image. After all, it requires us to think of ourselves as above or below every other person.

Here are the two central problems with status:

Status is plainly irrational. We are massively complex beings, at the same time better and worse than the next person in a dozen ways.
Status forces us to see each other as adversarial. Status seeds hate, malice, and war.

Evolution

Status stands before us as an evolutionary hurdle. If humanity is to rise as a species, it absolutely must transcend status. Until we do, humans will continue to think primate thoughts, and human history will remain centered on conflict.

Status is a continuous, pervasive, and internalized culture of man versus man. And most human minds do hold this as a central concept. How many people like to see themselves as richer, prettier, taller, or more powerful than others? By so thinking, they build the foundations of envy, abuse, and violence.

Our present world is dominated by status-based structures. Whether kingdom, democracy, theocracy, or whatever, status-based structures set one man or group of men above all others. These people of a “higher” position-relative-to-others collect the production of the “lower” people, issue edicts they are forced to obey, and punish those who do not.

In other words, the ruling systems of the present world are incarnations of status… they are “status made flesh,” to paraphrase a famous scripture. This is a primary reason why the world is perpetually at war. The very model on which our society is built sets man against man and group against group, automatically and unavoidably.

Human Nature

Status is not “us.” It may be something we’ve been trained in for dozens of generations; it may be something that has influenced us all our lives; but it is not “us.” It is, rather, a dirty and old habit.

Individual humans tend to transcend status fairly well when they exert effort on it. They usually learn, for example, to drop the concept among people they love. And therein lies the proof that it is not truly “us.” We are better than status.

The truth is that humans can and do demonstrate non-oppositional thinking and living. And in this we see that human nature has been sold short.

Humans, even while immersed in the poisonous and persistent mindscape of status, still demonstrate love and charity.

That fact speaks extremely well of us. Human nature is better than we thought it was.

It’s time to start stripping status from our minds and lives.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com