Conjectures of a recovering dilettante while traveling the road to Utopia
The quest to be an authentic you is the most difficult journey in life. If you are fortunate to have a number of years to work this out, you may see the journey come to a successful end.
Be grateful, not all are as lucky. Why is authenticity so difficult? One reason: the world does not want authenticity; it wants conformity. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Conformity in tribal days meant survival of the tribe. Any perceived behavior that interfered with the well-being of the clan was not tolerated. In many ways, we have not changed with time. We are just better at disguising it.
If you are skeptical about this just think how families treat the so-called “black sheep” among them. Are corporations any different? Yes, I include those companies that believe they have created a freer more advanced business lifestyle. Actually, these organizations may be the greatest offenders. Nothing disguises conformity greater than words that proclaim to be against it.
We see ourselves as very advanced. It is inconceivable for many of us to understand, even to acknowledge, how emotionally primitive we actually are. How many of our primal instincts have been codified into sophisticated, complicated cultural and religious dogmas? If we could understand this, how many tragedies might be avoided?
One sign that clearly shows how conformity is at work is when a nation, collectively, sees itself as possessing the “truth” and believes they are called by destiny to share (impose) this so-called “truth with the world. This is different than a nation or culture whose citizens understand who and what they are, and are willing to leave it at that. How much better a world it might be if more nations were content to leave well enough alone.
There is one area that is more confusing and less clear. At what point does a nation morally use its superior force to halt an obvious injustice or tragedy occurring beyond its own borders or area of national interest? You would think this would be easy, but like most issues that affect nations, it is not.
For one, when does the sacrifice of treasure and lives for the sake of others deplete a nation’s resources at the expense of its own citizens? In a democracy, this is surely an issue that should be decided by the people. How naïve this must sound to those we elect to represent and guide us. The world now is so complicated, or so they tell us, our leaders today must have the authority to act when they believe it is in the “national interest.” A simple perusing of a newspaper tells us how this plays out daily. Need we remind ourselves of unintended consequences?
This takes us back to our original thought about conformity. How many citizens are willing to speak out? Very few apparently – not only do we not raise our voices individually - more than forty percent of the eligible citizens of the “world’s greatest democracy don’t participate in free elections.
The question is why?
Brother Giovanni
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