***UPDATE – a slightly more polished and beautifully type-set version is part of the SYSTEMICS book.
(made available to read online for free once-in-a-while or generally with a donation based password.)
[written for FLUX magazine, issue 69: ‘ideas that could change the world’]
¶
LIKE A SALT-CRYSTAL, or a colony of ants, every framework has its structure. The structure of our human journey has been the societal network of Rank and Status. We spend our lives mainly chasing illusory promises and dreams within this structure, ultimately moulding ourselves into the Persona / Profile / Stereotype which our parental, cultural and sociological programmes compel us to become. These mechanisms are what game theory utilises. A loophole of human consciousness. We’re predictable. We’re not free at all. The Paradigm of Outside-answers, Outside-blame, runs through most of our Human Endeavours. We can ‘do whatever we want’ (capitalist piss-take freedom) as long as we’re not looking Inside, discover ‘something’ (Truth) Inside of ourselves, lest the ultimate punishment of social segregation is awaiting.
That there is an actual human dilemma becomes clear only when we experience the sadness that all we see and all we want from each other are only the social advantages that come from affiliation with Rank and Status. Nobody can truly see each other (and even if we can, we’re not really supposed to). We might as well exist only virtually, through Google, Facebook, Twitter and e-mailed CV’s. We might as well entirely wrap ourselves in stickers of systemic ‘achievements’, rub shoulders (and what not) with anything rich and apparently sexy (Rolex, Nikeswoosh, Bankers, Celebrities). But at no time explore the actual Reality that lies within the Mysteries of our own Selves and other Human Beings. Except sometimes scratching the surface with our favourite pastime game Relationships (i.e. emotional scripts ‘saving us’ from the lurking prospects of loneliness and boredom).
So why can we not truly be free? Is it fear? That our vital systemic environment might deteriorate into anarchy and chaos? That we might in the end face the fact that we’re not as free as we’d like to believe – never will be? That we don’t actually know how to interact with each other except through those game-playing routines we consider ‘normal’ exchanges of thoughts and emotions? Or are we just being kept as sheep and actually ‘innocent’ victims of much higher agendas? Are we perhaps just born into a prison and the perfected illusion of freedom is what we now call the ‘civilised world’?
Psychologically speaking, we can see other Selves only inasmuch as we can see our own Selves properly. Only understanding our inner workings and our true place within the Universal Whole enable us to approach and interact with others authentically and confidently. We’re ultimately chained through our System of Beliefs on the one hand and our Experience of Intimacy on the other and only the Autonomy thereof form the basis of what we like to contemplate as our human capacity of Free Will.
Replacing the current Paradigm of self-prohibition and emotional disenfranchise, a more organic structure, based on individual Core Truths and Insights, might as well bring about a more beautiful human framework in the future. In there, we’ll be able to embrace every other genuine Self from the bottom of our hearts, with all their differences, mysteries, frailties and treasures – and there will surely be a societal place we afford to each other, though rather qualifiedly than quantifiably.
Whilst at no point will we be looking back to the fake-comfort of our conditioned responses to ranks, roles and power games as they’re played-out – and hyped – today.
¶
London, May 2009
© 2009, all rights reserved
communication. introspection. mobility. kindness.
integrity. interaction. modesty. virtue.
openmindedness. beauty. interest. insight.
reenfranchising. reconcilement. renegotiation. reconstitution.
anger-management. time-management.
transparency. truth. reempowerment.
agenda-loss. belief-reflection. reinvestigation.
healing. perseverance. forgiveness. solitude. merging.
headspace-reclamation.
¶
London, May 2009
© 2009, all rights reserved