the evolution of belief has us going from a
“universal” belief in god and angels and demons
and the devil, heaven and hell…
today, few have a real belief in any of those things…
reading about the enlightenment is the point that the
enlightenment was about freeing us from myths, habits,
prejudices and superstitions of the time…for each time
has its own myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions…
one of our myths is that we live in a democracy… we don’t…
another habit/myth is we are that the U.S is the freest country on earth…
another myth/habit is that we even have freedom, we don’t…
sure you are free to select your car and your cereal and the shoes
you wear, but so what? freedom of this type is limited because
you have only 4 companies making all that cereal on the shelf’s
and you only have 5 companies making all those models of car’s…
the freedom to buy merchandise is not freedom… just crass materialism…
true freedom is the ability to make choices, choices
of who we are and what are our possibilities?..to believe we are free
to choose god is simply not true because you have one choice,
pick god or spend eternity in hell… and that is not a choice, but a threat…
you do not have choice politically because we have no choices politically…
one might claim we can vote out our politicians but the fact is, most
politicians are lock into their positions by gerrymandering…the politicians
choose their voters and not the voters choosing the politicians…
gerrymandering is one of the greatest threats to democracy that exists…
and as long as gerrymandering exists, we shall not have a viable democracy…
another myth/habit is the idea that the politicians are working for us…
how can they be, when they get millions of dollars from corporations and
individuals? Politicians simply follow the money and do the bidding of
those who pay for their influence…
so we have several myths and habits that plague us, we live in a
democracy and that we have economic freedom, because we don’t…
if you only have one choice, you don’t have a choice… and if we only have
capitalism as our only choice, then we don’t have a choice…
so we exists in a two part tyranny,
both political (lack of democracy and our representatives being bought and sold)
and economic (lack of economic choices and the tyranny of the profit margin/the pursuit
of profit which is nihilism)
the path to freedom, real political and economic freedom must be
our goal, our destination…how are we to free ourselves of these
tyrannies, economic and political?
the path into the future is really a path into real and true freedom,
which means real and immediate freedom of choice… not just a pretend
economic or political fantasy about our freedom of choices…we have
no choice if we only have one choice…
the choices available must also includes choices that we don’t even
approve of… choices must include all choices, not just ones
we happen to approve of…
politically, today we have two and only two choices…
pretend democracies or dictatorships like Putin’s Russia…
those aren’t choices if you only have one choice,
the pretend democracy or the dictatorship…
and as both of them are fundamentally flawed, it doesn’t leave us
much choice, now does it?
so how do we escape our dilemma?
by first becoming aware of our situation and then second,
understanding what our possibilities are…what are our choices?
indeed, what our are choices?
Kropotkin