I have not been very happy these last few days, not sure how to explain why, and so, i have not been feeling very creative either...don't feel much like writing. But I have been visiting my favorite blogs, and I wanted to share (with his permission) some postings from WCH (who has a big ol' brain...
here is a link to his blogSo check out what he has to say, he says it better than i ever could. Then go over and tell him hi, cause we all like comments.
authority and helplessnessWe are, all of us — from the least-educated street kid to the ivy league double-major physcian/attorney — products of educational, political and economic systems designed to do one thing: turn out docile human beings, compliant to hierarchical authority and anxious to live in a world in which we are willing to trade freedom for safety. These systems, whether in the guise of economic groupings like captialism, communism, socialism or unionism; political parties of all stripes or institutional religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, work really quite well.
The newest innovation to these various forms of authoritarian education is called marketing. As a skillful means for authoritarian control, it has been around for less than three hundred years. It is a major innovation, improving our compliance to authority and our willingness to be dominated at low cost. Marketing, in its simple form, channels whatever remaining impulses toward freedom we might have into an endless desire for things: cars, alcohol, meat, movies. As the effectiveness of marketing as a tool for creating authority-compliant personality became clear, it was used more and more to create certain kinds of thought: voting for a certain political party, contributing to a particular religion, inculcating certain enemy images. It has shown itself remarkably useful in this realm as an remarkable means for diminishing the human capability to experience the world directly and take meaningful action as a result.
Authoritarian systems maintain power through three additional, simple mechanisms. As long as humans are compliant, it rewards them, Skinnerian style, to believe two things: you can get to the top of the hierarchy and you can get what you want. When humans are not compliant, it punishes them with marginalization, cuts off their access to resources or simply imprisons or kill them. Finally, it encourages the creation of little hierarchies, all the way down to the family unit. These typically have very little real power, except locally, but implement reward and punishment mechanisms quite effectively. Look to your family, the schools you attended, the clubs of which you are a member and your spiritual community for examples.
Between the workings of the larger authoritarian system and the prevalence of its smaller versions, it is not surprising the humans really believe that hierarchies are the only way that humans can be together. We have been very effectively trained to not see anything else.
the natural order of hierarchyAuthoritarian power structures have been with us, according to writers like Paul Shepard and Walter Wink, for eight to ten thousand years. They were, in their infancy, only one of many different ways humans organized when they began grouping. Hierarchy was a successful strategy, particularly in developing agricultural societies, for many reasons. Even today, many groups of indigenous people organize quite successfully in other ways, so it was not the only choice. But today, for reasons that I have already mentioned, most humans believe that hierarchy, especially in its most authoritarian forms, is the apex of human organization.
The apologia for authoritarian organizations typically run in three grooves: genetics, efficiency and inertia. The last, inertia, is the simplest: We have always done it this way. It works well enough. Why change it? The second, genetics, is the argument often advanced as pure science (and therefore infallible), as in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, or philosophy, as in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. In this view, hierarchy is encoded in our DNA and we are powerless to change it, except at the margins. Moreover, when faced with crisis, we naturally regress to authoritarian hierarchies. These arguments are encoded in phrases like Darwinian economics and destroying our way of life. The third argument, efficiency, is a combination of the first two: authoritarian hierarchy is the best because it causes the trains to run on time. Therefore it must be the victor in a competition for efficiency and, by implication, the result of natural selection.
When apologists for authoritarian educational, political, religious or economic systems are asked to consider the evidence that, under some circumstances, hierarchy may not be universally inevitable, natural or efficient, they are likely to challenge the intelligence, rationality, character or motives of the questioner rather than address the potential validity of the question. This type of response is most often seen when the widespread acceptance of a premise is largely dependent on maintenance of beliefs with little or no factual basis.
freedom and authorityVery successful implementations of hierarchy are not only resistant to dismantling, they have done such an excellent job at shaping human perception in certain ways that they can, without much risk to their existence, promote a wide range of activities that they call freedoms or rights but which are, in the end, nothing of the sort if by such terms ones means actions that result in neither punishment nor reward. These range from the simplest like television programming, to the most complex, such as multiple party political systems and free market treaties. While from a purely economic perspective offering activities of this sort might seem to be poor investments, from a hierarchical view they are actually quite rational, and low cost ways, of maintaining the status quo. These investments channel energy that might otherwise be devoted to exploring dangerous questions or challenges to the hierarchy into harmless activities like following a sports team, getting a MBA or voting for political candidates.
One can perform a simple test to determine whether an activity is should be considered a freedom or a channel for diverting energy from questioning the hierarchy into harmless outlets. If, for example, a unbalanced flow of wealth between two countries does not change after the execution of a free trade treaty, is the new trade really free? In the same way, if a community’s leadership is passed back and forth between between blood relations or two poltical parties again and again, does having the vote really matter?
Simply enough, the appearance of so-called rights and freedoms in a community is not in itself a indication that it is not subject to hierarchical rule but only that its rulers have learned the high value and low cost of offering “freedom” in harmelss forms.
at the top of the heapThose that run hierarchies, by the way, are no less trained to believe in their inevitability than those who are not. They are, in fact, probably more sure than anyone else about hierarchy as the natural order of things and, given that they are on top, more dedicated to its maintenance. After all, if you are at the at the pinnacle of the system that you have been trained to believe is the only way that your society can survive, why would you consider, let alone encourage, other ways of thinking?
Once we begin to see that there might be other ways to organize, remembering this is incredibly important. It reminds us that, in fact, the ones on top do not see reality as it truly is and sell the rest of us a lie called hierarchy. They are actually see hierarchy just like us. The hard truth is that they are doing what we would do if we were in their position. We have, as Pogo says, met the enemy and he is, most assuredly, us. We can’t get away from that fact. Understanding this, we lose the option of seeing those that maintain hierarchy as evil incarnate:
* there is no grand conspiracy of them,
* they are not inherently evil exploiters of the uneducated masses,
* they are not cynically manipulating reality to keep the rest of us down,
In fact, they are more or less luckier versions of the rest of us and so ended up on top and they really truly believe, maybe even more than the rest of us, that hierarchy is the best system we could have.
And here we are, under them and realizing that them is no different from us but for the simple fact that we know that hierarchies, whatever their value in particular circumstances might be, are not a natural, inevitable or universal organizing principle.
But what can we do about it?
step out (a conversation with myself)If, as I have asserted, authoritarian structures are so pervasive as to be unavoidable, if we have replicated them in every organization from the smallest to the largest, why would we feel anything but helpless and hopeless? Why would we think that we can live or be any other way?
Well, maybe because there is another option.
Step out.
Understanding that authoritarian hierarchy is a human construct, an idea, allow yourself to consider a different one. Step out of the language and thinking that propagates domination and, for you, domination will end.
Step out. Choose to see the difference between your experience of the world and your opinions of it. Choose not to reward and punish yourself or others. Choose to take responsibility for your decision to be whatever part of the system you are. Acknoweldge that, like everyone else from the richest political leader to the fifteen year old strapping on a suicide belt, you participate because you believe it to be in your best interest to do so.
Then ask yourself whether this is really true or it is just what you think and act accordingly.
Choose not to use labels to diminish yourself and others, not to present your opinions or preferences as facts, not to see an enemy even when he or she seems intent on trying to harm you. Use guns or bombs or words to protect yourself if you feel you must but don’t blame the other for “forcing” violence upon you. You are making a choice. Take straightforward responsibility for it: I am trying to hurt you because I can’t think of another way to survive myself.
Consider that, perhaps, your labels are not helping you. Experiment. Try not seeing yourself as an opressor or as the oppressed. What happens when you stop calling someone else a victim or perpetrator? Is it possible that you do not need these labels to make decisions about how you are going to deal with the suffering and joy of your life and the choices you? That they don’t really add anything to the quality of your life? What happens when you try ot make your choices, not based upon your labels or opinions, but on what you experience and value? What happens if you accept responsibility for your choices, whatever they are, rather than imagine that they are forced upon you somehow?
Is it possible that helplessness is a strategy for making yourself comfortable? That you don’t have to change the system or other peoplem, but only yourself, to bring an end to authoritarian control in your life? That you only have to decide that you are going to do something different and then begin doing it?
Step out. 
OK People, I will now tell you what to watch...
