It's not every day I get out of bed and have an insight, or what passes for insight for me these days, however small. But over my morning coffee, this came to mind. I would appreciate if any readers cared to share their responses, critical or otherwise.
As Americans, we have each done all the wrong things. Ruined the planet, crashed our own economy and perhaps the world's, created a meaningless society and abandoned the civil common good. Why? All for no other reason than that the society around us told us that as individuals, we'd be better off if we went along with the program. We were further reinforced in our behavior because we were the best at it.
Of course corporations and the state understand that you win by not going along with the program, but by exploiting those who do. Thus, wherever there is unquestioned obedience to mass behavior, there is power for the state over individual freedom and profits to be made by the few who understand the value of public obedience. Consequently, the natural cooperative social nature of ordinary people guarantees that there will always be despots, authoritarian states and the few exploiting the many.
The purpose of revolutions is to periodically correct the course of human events toward balance, not because fairness is the natural order of nature or the universe, but simply because the human mind has a built-in element that seeks justice. And justice in the human mind is associated with balance.
There are probably larger biological and evolutionary reasons behind our behavior. But if we are not simply to die like so many bugs on this degraded, rapidly rotting melon called earth, then we must first start begin applying ourselves materially to that inner sense of justice with which every American, Palestinian, Jew, Latin American, Chinese, Eskimo and Zulu is born.
We will not get there by looking to "leaders," or any other type of dominant ape for instructions or guidance. That's not what revolutions, either of culture or nations, are about. Revolution is about consciousness, about rebelling against one's own state conditioned consciousness in favor of the unique one bequeathed us by the very evolutionary process that gave us the killer ape gene, which has proven so handy a tool in the hands of the state.
A revolution within and against the self as we have been taught to know it, and have unquestioningly accepted, is a true revolution. A revolution in consciousness. Otherwise known as freedom in every civilized society. Other than our rapaciousness, this is possibly the only other quality that illuminates us as a social species. While it is true that nature, and indeed the universe, conspires toward balance, our only access to the same is through the highest forms of justice.
Like I said, I would appreciate any reader response on the subject.
In art and labor,
Joe
Email: joebageant@joebageant.com
