Chapter Nine – R(W)e-create our social story Pt I
Intro – social power
This is our society, it belongs to ALL human beings who live on this land. So why is our ability to have a real say about what goes on in our own lives, our own business, and in our common environment, becoming weaker and weaker?
Social power, social voice, the ability for individuals to have a say in what goes on in their modern society, is dependent on three main things – Law, Economics, and Politics.
law is being used to bind and stupefy, economics to constrain and distract, and politics to quieten while leaving the impression that we (the majority) have actually been involved with any social decision making. Look hard at how society works and you will find that human beings are not in fact treated as human beings. In this corporate orientated social structure we (living beings) become economic units (in reality moving a corporate entity most do not even realise exists); and are therefore treated as such by the ‘system’ (of social interaction built upon stories; fanciful structures, of law, economics, and politics). It may seem a little bleak, the fact that we are born into a structural system designed to farm your life energy, as represented by the $$$ you work so hard for ($$$ you may obtain yet are still owned the issuer). But keep hope because, as we are infinite creative potential, there is always a way out -we have the ability for choice.
There exists today valid, scientifically developed, models of human society and social organisation which are greatly more beneficial for our species, causing less social/psychological and ecological harm, than our current system. Look them up, some are really great. At the end of the day, and becoming more urgent with every day that passes, in order for our species to move from where we are to something more suitable for healthy life systems, whatever form that will eventually take, individuals must be set free.
Humanity is moving into an age of lateralisation, of systemic thinking. Our current social structure is a remnant of ‘top-down’ organisation, of categorical thinking. While this belief structure may of had its social place, a few thousand years ago, this form of social organisation has long moved past its usefulness .
As humans explore the physical and mental worlds, the relationships between the two, and allow ourselves to EMBRACE the subtle knowledge contained in inspiration, intuition, WISDOM we realise that (when we change perspective enough) all boundaries disintegrate – there is one. Consider, that when we get down to the very building blocks of matter, there is no real difference between were you end and I begin. When we realise that boundaries are fundamentally just a matter of perspective it becomes silly to attempt to keep viewing the physical world as a collection of isolated things – it is folly to maintain a perspective of the world which is limited to discrete categories. At this point we naturally start to realise that focusing on the visible (objects/things/organisms) aspects of our existence is of less importance (for our ability to make overall decisions) than paying attention to the more subtle, and even invisible, aspects of existence (such as interactions/relationships).
All systems are made up of parts, individuals, which connect through their interaction (with the other parts of the system). While we may look at the individual parts of the system to define its physical boundaries, there is something more important when considering the system as a whole. A whole is more than the physical sum of its parts; because when individual parts come together, in relationships, they develop unique qualities the individual parts lacked. For this reason the most important defining factor of a system is not the individual parts, but how those individual parts interact to produce the whole (ONE) system. The gold to find within this – RELATIONSHIPS are the most important part of ANY system – think about the system of your family, of our society, life. What is the quality of the relationships which make up these systems? What can you do to change things?
As an individual human being we are a system; we receive, process, and react to matter/energy (information) – if we stop doing this our biological system breaks down, dies. As collections of human beings (in relationships, families/friend groups, communities, nations, and as a species) we are also a system (in fact we are part of many systems simultaneously). We are part of a system of family/friends; the individuals who make up this system, and the way they interact, defines the family/friend system. If the individuals cease processing together as a system, if they stop interacting in the ways which define the family/friend system, then the system breaks down, dies. Likewise, we are part of the system of our community; which is defined by the individuals which make up the community, and how they interact to make up the whole. When the individuals of a community change their relationships, when the interaction between the individuals changes, the system we call a community changes in nature. And so on and so forth for all conceivable systems made up of groupings of individual humans.
The whole point of economic, legal, and political theories, and of the associated human created conventions for how we interact with each other, is so that (as a collection of individuals) we can work together (at least in a way that we do not bring harm to others, but ideally in a way so that our system of humanity along/within the system of life thrives). Looking at the world today, at the destruction of life at human hands, at the mental illness rife within modern society, and at the greatly disproportionate social power found generated by our current economic, legal, and political beliefs and their resulting affects on human interaction/relationships, it is clear that some humans have missed the point. For we, the majority, have been lead, manipulated, bribed, and coerced into accepting economic, legal, and political stories of how humans should interact – stories which have been carefully designed and maintained so that the majority of humans work to benefit those who actively create and maintain the social economic, legal, and political fantasies. It is time WE, each individual as part of the whole, create the story of our lives; it is time we set ourselves free.