I have commented on myths, habits, prejudices and superstitions as
being chains which tie us down because those myths, habits, prejudices
and superstitions are left over from our childhood training and those
chains prevent us from leading authentic lives because those myths,
and habits are someone else’s myths and someone else’s habit and someone
else prejudice and someone else’s superstition… they are chains upon
our idea’s, our thought, our beliefs, our feelings…
what other chains do we have?
that America is the greatest country on earth…
that we are the freest people on earth… that capitalism is the only economic
system of value… that we have a democracy… there is a god…there
is a heaven and hell and angels and the devil…
myths, habits, prejudices and superstitions… all of them…
how do we become free of these chains that tie us to the past…
that tie us to live an inauthentic life because they aren’t
real or true beliefs… those chains are simply holdovers from
our childhood and are best left behind in childhood with our beliefs
in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy…
modern myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions exist
today, just as they have always existed… and we must fight them to
become… we must engage with those myths and habits and prejudices
to become more human… to fight the lower level/animal side of the
human existence… to become who we are, we must leave behind
those myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions that
tie us down, that chain us to our childhood, that prevent us from
living our true lives… we are adults and it is time to leave
our childhood myths and habits behind… to be free, to be truly
free means we must break our chains, our myths and prejudices…
and to do so means we must become aware of those chains to our
childhood… the myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions…
to ask, is America the greatest country on earth? is to engage in
one of the myths of our time…
a better question is to ask, if I want to become human, fully human…
what must I do? the path into the future lies first, in becoming
aware of our collective, social and personal myths and lies and habits and prejudices
and superstitions… the chains that tie one down into the society at large…
and after we become aware, then we must engage with those myths and habits
and decide, is that truly who I am, is that who I want to be… is that a place
that I want to exist in…questions one must ask if one is truly to be free of
the chains of habits and myths…
who are you? are you the collection of myths and habits and prejudices and
superstitions that society tells you or are you something free of, engage with
the search for the truth…
now this truth, this truth becomes the new myths and habits and prejudices
and superstition both personally and collectively… we are never free of our chains…
the best we can do is understand the chains exists and this is by becoming aware…
the battle to become human is to free ourselves of our chains…
and then build truer, more honest chains… chains that match the reality that
exists, not the chains of the past which reflect the understanding of reality back then…
we live in different times and so we need a different understanding of the universe…
and that becomes the new reality until the situation changes and we need a
another new understanding of reality and when that time comes and people are
still stuck in the old reality, they are chained by the myths and habits and prejudices
and superstition we created and that they need to update…
this is how it works… every generation creates a new understanding of the world
and that understanding is how the universe works until it doesn’t understand anymore…
and then we must change our understanding… and with each new understanding,
people get left behind, stuck in the old understandings, the old myths and the old
habits and the old prejudices and the old superstitions…we must change our theories
with the changing environment and if we don’t change our theories with the new changing
evolving environment, we become stuck in the old, past understanding of our environment…
those are chains because they don’t help us understand our new, current environment…
those chains are meant for the last understanding of the universe… they are not up to date…
and behind our current understanding of how the universe works and who we are…
those who get stuck in and caught by the chains of the past understandings of the universe
are dinosaurs and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs…
we do not understand our role in the universe with the hunter/gatherer method
of economics and the political, with their myths and habits and prejudices and
superstitions, but why not? why can’t we understand the universe with the idea’s and thoughts of the
the hunter/gatherer? because that environment/that time period, no longer exists…
we cannot go back… we can only go forward… into new myths and habits and
prejudices and superstitions that fit our ever changing environment and new environment…
we must adapt, not only physically, but with new idea’s and thoughts and technologies
that fit our new and changing environment…
that is why the chains of childhood must be broken… to fit into the new and changing
environment…
Kropotkin