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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 45 Sowing and Reaping by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR December 17, 2007 We
go where our vision is. ~
Joseph Murphy As
ye sow, so shall ye reap. - 1 - Fundamentals The
most important fundamentals of
life, beyond the purely physical, are the connected qualities of love and
freedom. Whatever enhances love and freedom in our lives is a blessing;
whatever diminishes these qualities is a curse. Significant and lasting
harm to love or freedom is the worst disaster that can befall us,
especially if the problem begins early in life. The
harm caused by major damage to love or freedom is not time-limited to the
immediate event but instead echoes forward in time, reverberating
throughout the victims' lives. Damage incurred during childhood, infancy,
and even in the womb is
especially powerful and changes the tone and texture of a person's
life, often creating new damage along the way both to the original victim
and to those affected by him or her. On
a personal level, the result of significant early trauma is neurosis
– the repression of feeling and experience, with resulting
misperceptions and misbehaviors – which can dim all the rest of one's
days, and which has a powerful effect on others in one's life, including
especially upon children, who can be traumatized enough by their parents'
or others' neurosis to become neurotic themselves. This transmission of
neurosis across generations is one of two major and ancient sorrows to
afflict the human race. Furthermore, neurosis is nonessential; the natural
conditions that required us to develop such a bizarre ability are no
longer an unavoidable part of life.* Because
love and freedom are linked in human life, it is no surprise that the other overwhelming sorrow of our kind is political oppression by the State and by its analogs (e.g., by some
forms of organized religion). This systematic use of coercion is even more
needless than is neurosis today, since it was never necessary in the first
place. Neurosis is an evil that at least once saved mankind from difficult
conditions; the State cannot claim even that. A
lack of love and freedom has been the curse of mankind since before
written history began. The two problems reinforce and feed upon each
other: harm either love or freedom and you diminish the other. The
reverse is also true: what truly benefits love also benefits freedom, and
whatever strengthens freedom provides support for love and for love's more
prosaic cousin, respect. - 2 - More Basic and Important than
Wealth The
benefits of love and freedom do not require great wealth or even much
wealth at all. After all, love and freedom exist in the wild; they came
into being long before humankind existed, as your dog or cat will explain
if you listen carefully enough. Love kept human babies fed and kept
families and clan groups together for tens of thousands of years, through
ice ages and warmer epochs, as endless generations of hunter-gatherers
lived and reproduced and grew old and died. Most of our time on Earth, so
far, has passed in this manner. Love nourished and protected our ancient
ancestors through good times and bad, through long summers and
thousand-year winters. Our ancestors had freedom from the State as well.
Their freedom was profound yet invisible as the air they breathed, because
no State yet existed. Like the sun and the rain, love and freedom simply were. Loving
Hands: The Traditional Art of Baby Massage
by Dr. Frederick Leboyer (and, for that matter, his
other books) is an almost breathtaking reminder of how basic
love is and how independent it is from the neurotically materialistic
lifestyle so many of us think necessary today. Here's a look at the book's
back
cover to provide a sense of the content. Leboyer photographed the
book's subjects – a young mother named Shantala and her baby – in one
of the poorest neighborhoods of
For
another lesson in how freedom and love can blossom in a setting of limited
monetary wealth, consider A. S. Neill's The
lesson that love is independent of
wealth – and that freedom is, also – is especially worth
reflecting upon given our current situation. The American central
government (in league with its co-conspirator the privately-owned Federal
Reserve, and with the central governments and central banks of other
nations around the world) has created a looming
financial crisis of apocalyptic
magnitude – one that some think may dwarf
the Great Depression of the 1930s. Not
a cheerful thought, I know. But probably true, and worth thinking about
(and preparing for) ahead of time. - 3 - Giving is Receiving As
human beings, our job is to make the most of our brief time in this world,
regardless of prevailing conditions. A storm is headed our way, but that
doesn't mean you have to give up on either love or freedom. Grab all you
can; nothing else matters so much, and life is short. How
to increase the love and freedom in your own life? One way is to help
others increase theirs. Unlike material
wealth, giving love and freedom to others does not diminish your own stock
– quite the opposite. One
practical and important method of helping others with love and freedom is
to support educational efforts on behalf of those qualities – all the
better when such efforts have as an immediate goal
the actual reduction of tyranny or of cruelty. The Ron
Paul campaign for President offers both
– Paul wants to end the income tax and the IRS (and the Fed, among other
things), has voted against the Iraq war from Day One, and has promised to
end the war immediately – and to begin
bringing our troops home from not only Iraq but from every other
foreign nation they are stationed in. Paul
is a small-government libertarian, not a no-government voluntaryist or
abolitionist. But as I keep pointing out: you never get where you want to
go unless you at least start moving
in the right direction. Judged
by numbers of people reached
with the message, the
Paul campaign is in a class by itself – his non-centralized,
free-acting supporters keep coming up with cash and marketing
stunts and volunteer-paid
advertising and sheer hard work to put the message of love and freedom
before an audience of millions. Paul is the GOP front-runner by a country
mile when judged by online polls, by fundraising,
and by caucus
wins. The power-elite-owned Old Media continues its desperate, dishonest
drumbeat that "Paul can't win" and slights the man and his
supporters at every opportunity, but Paul's following continues growing
dramatically – and not only in Furthermore,
the Paul campaign is showing that large numbers of people understand the connection
between freedom and love; the most popular bit of signage for the
campaign is the "R3VOLution" logo with a red, reverse-text
"LOVE" stamped into the middle of the word:
Whatever you do to foster love and freedom in this world, I wish you success and satisfaction in your efforts. May we all reap the rewards of a focus on what really matters in life. -
- - - - Notes: *
Our ability to become neurotic – to repress massive trauma rather than
to experience it, and to continue functioning despite that repression –
was widely necessary at one time when the natural environment caused
enough trauma that no other solution then available allowed for continued
human life. Those days are over (for now, at least) in most of the
developed world and in much of the less-developed world as well; neurosis
today serves no purpose for mankind. Neurosis merely self-perpetuates
because neurosis in parents and others is traumatic enough to the young to
create neurosis in them. ** Pp. 129 - 131 of the out-of-print 1978 Alfred A. Knopf edition. Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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