The Other F-Word

The main thing this current election season in the United States has me thinking is that the People do not appear ready for Freedom. I know it has been said, but as long as we are content with this appearance of democracy, and as long as we are ambivalent about the ownership of power, there is little hope for drive toward freedom. Squabbles at the party level are almost meaningless, and I always feel like an outsider in such discussions, even when I share the views of some of the others participating. I do believe some level of participation, even in a near meaningless operation of politics, to be important because participation is an essential element in the drive for freedom. I believe the best route for me at this stage is some level of devotion to particular causes. There appears to be enough slack in the arena of particular causes to travel from A to C, to include the work done by Amnesty International, various environmental groups, various groups for relative equality, and the like.

A lot of the party-politics commentators, in the US at least, don't even try anymore. It is all fluff and flatulence, cotton candy farts. Most of the People seem glued to one side or the other and/or they are completely apathetic. I don't know where to look for others like me, the “sticky ones”. We're the ones who aren't completely unglued, but we fail to find impassioned understanding or purpose in national politics. For a long time, I think I was not okay with being a sticky one. My most likely group of friends appear to be tightly glued, and their conversations take a form within which I find myself unable to comment. It is not that the conversations lack fascinating, engaging, interesting and informative commentary (better than anything on TV); they just seem to originate from a place I've never visited.

Many have warned that the political system is broken. It is not time for a change. It is time to trash the whole damned thing. Freedom, Equality, Justice are all in trouble. It is indeed time to wave the bloody flag, now. When the bloody flag is waved too late, you get the French Revolution. The French Revolution was perhaps the last significant step toward freedom, yes, but at what costs? It is time for One World, One People, One Heart. When those stories appear showing how this world leader is related to that one, and that one to the other one; it is not some quirky coincidence. It is the status quo for practically all of written history, and this status quo is the enemy of freedom. I am not saying the leaders themselves are the enemy. The problem is that the leaders are more glued to each other than they are to the People. I will never understand why people feel the need to go around saying, “I hate Bush.” If your focus is on hating Bush, then you have bought the ticket to the magic show, folks.

Many of the learned claim that agriculture was the start of the problem. They hark back to the past, exclaiming that are hunting and gathering ancestors did not have the social woes of today. Everyone was fed and there was relative equality. Agriculture, ownership of land and animals, and the need to maintain control are the parents of the present starvation, inequality, and war. Maybe it is my ignorance showing, but I disagree. Ownership is irrelevant without Power. Our present woes are not only the result of, but the natural evolution of hunting and gathering culture, a culture of isolation, zero dissent, in which the solution to problem folk was to either murder or exile them. To call such a culture egalitarian is facetious. They were all slaves to an invisible lord. Ownership of power belonged to the culture and not the people. The people were enslave by the norms to which they were enculturated. Slavery, by definition, excludes labels such as “egalitarian.” Hunting and gathering culture could not evolve into peaceful larger populations because it engendered a mindset that expected simple, quick and permanent solutions to problems. There was little violence, yes, but that violence was murder, and it was the standard answer to noncooperation or inability to cooperate for generations of humans. People from that type of culture are not going to “play well with others.” In that type of culture, only the people you know have the capacity of good. The others are almost always evil and untrustworthy (incubate fascist nationalism?). When the mainstays of conflict resolution are murder and exile, what hope is there of dealing with larger populations, juxtaposition of differing populations, ample food supply, more babies, and the conflicts that arise from those things? None. The development of agriculture provided the landscape for the illumination of the defective psychology of hunting and gathering culture. Isolation combined with lack of dissent is not peace, and it certainly is not freedom. I think they call it, um, fascism. Let us see – intolerance of individualism, complete subservience of individuality to the invisible Culture Lord, a black and white world, death and exile as punishment. Yep, I think they call that F-A-S-C-I-S-M. Humbug to the whole learned, shallow-minded lot. Shenanigans! Shenanigans!

I welcome my true birth as a Sticky one. I embrace the flexibility of stickiness. I embrace conflict negotiation, acceptance of individualism, and an end to cultural enslavement whether by normative standards or dictator. I understand that true peace results from personal control multiplied. I embrace spiritedness and calm reflection. I want more than a magical mirror of freedom. I want more than trains that run on time. I want more than a belly that does not know hunger. I want FREEDOM, the other F-word. Power to People and all that Jazz. I say I want an Evolution. I say I want to STICK. Stay Truly Individual, Conscious, & Kind. Do it; do it; do it; do it, now.

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