Political suppression and real freedom
Much of the world is not really free to choose what sort of society they want, despite experimentation with radically different politico-economic systems.
We have had various political systems since we formed civilisations, though most have relied upon significant numbers of slaves or indentured servants who did not get to decide much about their lives at all. Even the so-called democracy of Athens had a third to a half of its population as slaves, with half of those remaining being disenfranchised because of their gender, and many others because they did not have property. It is easier for those in charge to make decisions about their society when many are forced to do its dirty or dangerous jobs without concern for their welfare.
Most civilisations have been dominated by self-appointed monarchs who ruled by force, until they were overthrown or powerful factions forced limits on the monarchs, such as when the barons brought King John to heel at the battle of Hastings in 1215. This led to the document called the Magna Carta, which has become a pivotal instrument in the development of democracy among English-speaking nations, as it gave precedent to emerging powerful groups in societies to have an influence on their governments.
Many monarchies have been overthrown by popular revolutions that, while starting as being representative of their nations' peoples, often drifted towards being taken over by determined individuals who pushed aside challengers to take power and basically ruled like monarchs. These nations' people accepted much political suppression in return for societal stability, despite large numbers of people being tortured and killed for their opposition.
With the rise of companies becoming challengers to nations in the last few hundred years, political systems transformed into having to take economics into consideration as those companies vied for influence over governments, such as the British East India Company with government support selling opium to China and suppressing rebellions there, all to pay for their tea ventures in India. In the last century or so, economics has become the basis for all political systems, with neoliberalism becoming dominant, with its emphasis on business health over citizens' health.
While communism and socialism purport to be about more equity for citizens, their foundational principles are about economic activity, which is why they are easily subverted by those who want to accumulate wealth and power.
Jean Jacques Rousseau opened his 1762 Social Contract with Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.
, a lament of how we are born to a world of opportunities, but we have imposed limits on freedom by our choices of how we are ruled. However, it is more accurate to say that a few have forced or manipulated the many of us to accept that we are not free to make such choices. Even in our so-called democracies, we are limited to choices between those who are favourable to the powerful in that they will not challenge their privileged status in our societies. We may have improved economic status, but our opportunities to join the ranks of the powerful are severely limited.[1]
Perhaps in our defence, we have developed a dependence upon being told what our options are over many millennia, making it difficult for the great majority of us to think of ourselves as having the agency to make up a more equitable society and overthrow the yoke of the few. Even when we have managed to overthrow monarchies, we have fallen back into a pattern of acquiescence to those who are willing to use force to make themselves despots. We have to break those self-deprecating belief patterns if we are to really take control of our lives. We are our own saviours, not some self-promoted hero.
But what are the real alternatives to our money-based systems? Certainly, the tokenisation of our value by using money has allowed us to be more socially mobile, but by manipulation by those who have wealth, the extra mobility has resulted in us being more able to be pushed into different working lives at their behest. We are not really free to choose where in society we want to be, just because the opportunities are not defined by us. Our lives are largely framed by the jobs we are allowed to have.
We have a dearth of ideas about what a utopian society would really be like. We have difficultly seeing such futures as little more than some dreamy lives of perpetual blandness, so we retreat to our lives of perpetual struggle to seem like we have purpose and something to strive for, even if it is the false hopes perpetuated by those who seek to exploit us. We avoid looking within ourselves for what we really need to be doing as if suffering is better than the unknown of our inner being.
As we may ask ourselves what our own life is for, so we must ask what our societies are really for. For too long, we have defaulted to those who purported to know what we need, but who really are taking advantage of us for themselves, without presenting a real vision of what our societies can be. Perhaps we need to answer both questions together as we and our societies are inextricably linked anyway. Pretending that they are independent is fallacy, just because our societies often make it difficult for us to plot our own path.
Conversely, many try to make out that we must serve our societies, like command economies have tried to impose. However, we know that their leaders' so-called vision of their societies is really just an extension of their lust for power and wealth, wrapped up in half-baked platitudinal pseudo-profundities, as they plummet into grandiose delusional self-indulgence while making their citizens into puppets on their stage. Individual aspirations are channeled into centring around the wants and wishes of their leaders who have placed themselves on huge pedestals for adoration and worship.
All those who want to shape the world in their way have tried to stop us from seeking the answers to our questions within. Those who have taken over religions have so wrapped us up in dogma and ritual that the freedom of our inner is blind to us, making us have no other way to navigate in the world other than what is imposed upon us. Schools are set up to train us to accept random authority if it's natural, and then program us to see our lives as being worthwhile only if we serve those who have designed a world that exploits us for their benefit.
Inner worlds△
We do have a choice, but we have to start the journey within, just because it is the only place where we can truly find freedom.
Unfortunately, most religions have programmed us to see ourselves in the inner as servants in a world where we are just as unimportant as we are here on earth. The inner worlds they portray have just the same type of people in charge and who rule over everyone else, deciding our fates as if we have as little agency as we have on earth. They have created pantheons that imitate their worldview so that they can claim ownership of our paths to that inner freedom.
Fortunately, the inner worlds are not populated by rampant autocrats but a range of beings of different levels of consciousness who evolve as they learn more about how to create, and who cooperate to help those of lesser consciousness evolve as well. Many are those we have known as people who have shaped our thinking, but they are not the static caricatures that religions have fed us.
Their power is not decided by how much violence they can muster but by how much they can control their energies and the strength of their wisdom. There is no money because there is no need to have tokens to represent their worth, as their worth is visible by their radiance. Our inner already lives among them, not as their servants or minions, but we share the world as cocreators as we evolve together, each bringing consciousness in our own way to the mass of creation.
Our personalities are extensions of that inner consciousness, but we are given free will to find our own place in this world, with the goal of us finding the connection back to our inner by our own choice. But, contrary to what many religions teach us about our lives on earth being full of sin or that we must aim to get back to some sort of heaven, we are here to explore this earth and learn how to bring our inner understanding into how we act upon earth. We are not here to be exploited, but to build a world that runs more like the inner worlds.
That means that we respect the planet that is sacrificing itself for our learning, despite how much we damage what it has provided us with. We have the opportunity for each of us to live a life driven by what we perceive of our inner, not for ours or other's aggrandisement, but for the expansion of our consciousness through understanding these lower levels of creation. In this way we bring consciousness into this world of matter. We become curators of the earth, finding ways for billions of human consciousnesses to evolve individually and collectively.
Through this cooperation between us and our inners, we spiritualise the planet. That means that we need to let go of selfishness, but not our individuality, which is our path to being a centre of creativity, making us better participants in the cooperative creation and evolution of life because we know what we each need to do, and have the control of our resources enough to make that a reality.
We have to let go of notions of power over others, as that is an illusion that is based upon threats of violence, and usually results in us actually becoming weaker and more dependent as we become addicted to it. When we evolve our consciousness, we gain true power because we have increased will from that expanded consciousness. In the inner, others can see it directly, so we don't need to impose it. As we become more aligned with our inner, we are not as clouded in our thinking because we see the world as it is, and not as the projection of our delusions and desires.
Guided by our inner, we get to see which opportunities for expanding our consciousness and learning are appropriate. A world full of such people is not bland but made richly dynamic by the interplay of enthusiastic pursuits. Our inner also provides us with an understanding of the right measure of effort, so that instead of using up excess resources in aggrandising ourselves, we use just what we need to learn or what is sufficient for our tasks. We each need to cooperate to maintain our societies, but we won't need to gather more than we need, enabling all to have the same freedom.
We may still use money, but not as the basis of our worth, but as a convenience in our interactions as we negotiate what we need. This is the big change from our current societies, and will need the most cooperative engineering to ween ourselves off the aggressive competitiveness that we have taken on to survive up until now. It is the realising that competitiveness is driven by a fear of not having enough to survive, and is only eliminated by structuring our societies so that everyone does have enough. We don't need fear for our prosperity, contrary to our current neoliberal programming.
The fact is we don't really need a lot at all, and it has only been the programming to fear not having enough that has driven us to crave so much more than we need. Forget all the fake challenges that many foist upon us as a distraction, and challenge ourselves to let go of pointless ambitions and possessions. We can live lives in peace because that peace starts in us, and the more that we can manifest that peace, the more it is proved as a viable alternative to the fake stresses assumed to be a requirement of modern life, influencing others to also step off their stress treadmills.