The idea of dividing the human condition into two categories is never a smart thing to do. There are infinite variables that influence what life philosophy each person subscribes to and in 99.99% of the cases, a person follows some combination of any number of philosophies concurrently. Having said that, I will tap into my "Marxist side" and boldly assign all people into one of two camps; Independents and Co-Dependents.
Each of these types have two subsets within them. The Independents are made up of Leaders and Supporters. The Leaders are those in the Independent society who have been successful in their particular goal. They serve as examples and inspiration to those individuals (Supporters) who are in the process of goal pursuit. The benefits between the relationship of Leaders and Supporters go both directions. The Supporters provide the Leaders the much needed aspect to all individuals who want to continue to grow, that being competition. The Old Pro always relishes the challenge from the Young Up and Comer.
Though Leaders are people who have proven their talents and succeeded in their field, the Independent society believes all people need to be pushed to their limits the span of one's lifetime. No person in an Independent society rests on their laurels. In fact, any one individual can serve as Leader and Supporter any number of times within their life, making each person's experience perpetually in flux while putting the entire society continually headed in a forward momentum. Such a society promotes the freedom of all to pursue the goals of their choice with no guarantee of success or failure rather focusing on the actual pursuit as the source of an individual's true fulfillment.
For an Independent society, Capitalism as it's economic model, is a reasonably good fit when matched with a small central government, a larger local government, both answering to the people they serve. This society promotes the concept of risk, allowing for a continuum of innovation and advancements like no other economic strategy can.
The possibility of devastating failures exist but time and time again, some of the biggest failures in history resulted in the most magnificent successes. Thomas Edison is a perfect example. As a boy, he was deemed too stupid to learn anything by his teacher. Because Edison was a true individual who refused to let anyone determine his success but himself, he conducted over 9,000 experiments before finally creating the first working lightbulb. By the end of his life he had 1,093 U.S. patents held in his name. This sort of success through successive failure can only take place in a society where the individual is free to pursue their God-given visions.
America use to be an Independent society. For several decades we have been drifting from this. And only recently the drift became full speed away from the Independent concept. We have betrayed our founding ideals. We have handed over the reins to a Co-Dependent model rendering us closer to serfs than citizens. In fact, due to an ever-encroaching Federal Government, a college drop-out by the name of Bill Gates, could never start up a little software company called Microsoft in today's Big Government environment. Think about that!
In today's America, we are now subjects of the Co-Dependent model. Depending on what sort of person you are, this is either a dream come true or a sheet-soaking nightmare. Where we use to have two classes in our Independent society, we still have two in our Co-Dependent but the functions are profoundly different. In a Co-Dependent environment one is either a Keeper or a Pet. The Keepers are a relative handful of self-appointed intellectual elites whose role is to control and maintain the existence of all the world's Pets. Pets are people who expect their Keepers to provide food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare, and at the very least, a pretense of a job.
Keepers are self-evaluated and are suppose to provide all Pets with equal provisions. Of course, though they hate to admit it, Keepers are human. They inevitably have their "favorite" Pets. These Pets will receive higher quality provisions which, on the surface seems to be quite a nice existence. There is a down side. Once a Pet is favored by a Keeper, that Pet is monitored closer and held to higher standards of Keeper loyalty than the rest of the Pets kept in the normal kennel runs.
At the end of the day though, the people who are Pets, much like the protesters in Greece and now the students in England, expect their Keepers to KEEP. Unfortunately, though the Keepers say otherwise, they are not GOD and can not drop manna from heaven no matter how many academic degrees or Nobel Peace Prizes they have. Sadly, the current generation of Pets have no desire to break free and take responsibility for their own existence. The very fact they were not aborted in their minds means they are entitled to Government care from cradle to grave. The key word being "grave".
The Keepers have a love hate relationship with their Pets. They need the Pets in order to justify the role of Keeper in the first place but though a Keeper may feel pity for a Pet, a Pet is and always will be inferior to the Keeper. A Keeper craves total control, often initially under the guise of "knowing what is best" for the ignorant Pets. Economically, the Keepers have all rights to any pay the Pet's generate. In return, the Keepers provide the Pets all the things the Keepers think the Pets need to live. The incentive to make a good living diminishes since all Pets are given the same regardless of performance. Besides, the less you work, the less of yours gets taken by the Keepers but the more free stuff you get. Not good stuff but still, it's free. Free stuff just no freedom.
Though the Keepers claim open-mindedness, a Keeper's total control over his/her Pets require the scrubbing out of any "GOD" concept in the Keeper/Pet Society. In such a society, the threat of any religion other than the worship of the Keeper, is toxic, even lethal to the Keeper. Though most Pets happily subscribe to a "God is Myth" philosophy when times are good, in economically troubled times, the concept of God becomes the biggest threat to Keeper domination. That's why it is important in a Co-Dependent society to get them young, educate them in purely secular, progressive thought and remind them time and time and time again, Keepers are the Key to Getting Stuff FREE.
In contrast, the Independent society actually invites the worship of a Creator though belief in such is not at all required. Since there is no "supreme" Leader who has the responsibility over the welfare or control of others in the society, the concept of God holds no threat to Independent Leaders. Worship of God within an Independent society serves the individual as a means of inspiration to dig deep into one's source of talents and grow, especially after times of personal failure. Personal belief is a personal affair. In fact, the atheist in an Independent society has the excellent motivation of this life being the one and only shot at living out his/her personal aspirations and doing so with the fruits of labor spent however one wishes. It is true, the atheist mindset finds its greatest chance at success within the structure of Independent societies not the NO GOD ZONE of Co-Dependency.
Though atheism in a Co-Dependent society is touted as intellectually superior, ironically, the atheist Pet is perhaps the most limited human being within the Co-Dependent society. An atheist Pet has no mental concept to engage when all hope and dignity are stripped from them. It's one thing to fail in an Independent society where your failure is yours to deal with, your business to pick yourself up from but to be Godless living in a society capable of taking your identity, diminishing your self worth and assigning you your fate, that's about as low as a human can exist. Conversely, the Pet who harbors notions of a power beyond this reality can retain some level of dignity that no Keeper can touch. If a Pet with no God falls out of favor with their Keeper, all I can say is, God help them.
To be fair, there certainly can be good Keepers with happy Pets. This is the model all Co-Dependent societies work from though none have lived up to. The Co-Dependent model does have its place. As a matter of fact, within the Independent society, mini Co-Dependent units exist with the actual blessing of the Independent society as a whole. These mini C-D units are called "families". On this scale the Co-Dependent set-up has its best chance at succeeding due to a brilliant safety valve built in called adult emancipation. Obviously, parents are the Keepers in the power structure, children the Pets but in this case, there comes a day when the Keepers end their rule, setting the Pets free to fully engage in the realm of Independence, to sink or swim on their own.
Parents, like Keepers, can be good or they can suck, regardless emancipation insures no one remains a Pet forever, especially under a bad Keeper. Unfortunately, less and less individuals are taking advantage of an Independent society's emancipation. When a 26 year-old is guaranteed coverage under his/her PARENT'S health insurance, there's a demeaning force at work planting the seeds for arrested development far into one's lifetime. TWENTY-SIX? I had my first gray hairs by 26! For Pete's sake, have some pride!
While the family unit can be a successful example of Co-Dependent success in an Independent society, much like God, the family unit in a full-blown Co-Dependent society is a real threat. Again, it provides a Pet with the possibility of aligning with a pack based on blood ties. In a Co-Dependent society, blood ties are frowned upon, with packs formed under the guidance of the Keeper alone. Careful temperament screenings are made to make sure any pack formed will not have the dynamics to turn on the Keeper. Got it? All breeding and social interaction are directed and monitored by the Keeper, period.
The brilliance of the Co-Dependent society comes in the causes initially promoted. It champions the perceived "victims" of an Independent society, highlighting how unfair Independence is to the weak. If a person is a racial minority, a female, uneducated, personally defined by their sexual orientation, lazy, pre-disposed to a life of crime, a low-paid worker, or actor, the Co-Dependent Keepers will promise the moon. Like the case of the atheist, these "victims" are the first round recruits to Pethood in a Co-Dependent society. However, the fact is, their odds of achieving their highest capabilities greatly diminish when kept as Pets. Even criminals fair better in an Independent society where the number of wealthy people with stuff worth stealing always far exceeds the measly handful of wealthy Keepers in a Co-Dependent society. And Lord knows the stuff your fellow Pets have isn't worth the trouble.
So why not let the Independent minded people try their society unimpeded in one sliver of the planet and give the rest of the globe over to the Keepers and Pets? Well, this sorta happened, once for a short period of time. It was called the United States of America and it lasted about 100 years. Then word got out to way too many Pets. Pets began leaving their Keepers in droves. Something had to be done! And so characters like Marx and his intellectual elite set began the new campaign. The Independent experiment had to end before it became too powerful and screwed up the gig for all the Keepers.
If the Keepers were so smart, why not start their own Independent society and flourish there? Why not come to America and see how and why it is good to give man the right to form his own destiny? Some Keepers did and because many are actually smart, they succeeded and flourished. But ultimately, the only way these sorts of individuals are fulfilled is when they control not just their own destiny, but the destiny of other men. If Independence caught on globally, GOOD BYE KEEPERS.
As technology advanced and communication became possible from one end of the earth to the other at the push of a button, the message HAD to be accelerated to take down the Independent movement. Co-Dependent Keepers rely on class warfare to demonize Independents instead of being intellectually honest and comparing the poor of an Independent society to the conditions of people living as the poorest Pets in Co-Dependent societies. There is no question which society does a better job. The Independent, pro-human, self-destiny-driven experiment that promotes authentic free-thought trumps the false sympathies and empty promises of the Co-Dependent society every time.
Cut to the Keeper in the corner with his hand over his ears singing "lah-lah-lah-lah-lah, I can't hear you, lah-lah-lah-LAH!
Regardless of the times, there will always be the man who believes the abilities of the individual are to be unfettered for his and society's benefit. There will always be the man who believes fettered masses benefit more when saved from themselves. If history holds any answers, we're due some serious fettering soon. America's government officials pit man against man as they shamelessly proclaim that not raising taxes on the rich is taking money from the Government. Who earned the money, Ms. Pelosi? Who employs workers, Ms. Pelosi? Not you, Madame! But clearly, in one way or another, you are certainly a KEEPER. When this is the mindset spoken on public airwaves as fact, you know Big Government and dark days are ahead for the spirit of Independence.
Some say trying to fight forces like the ones currently on the hunt for the last remnants of the Independent ideal is folly. It's like trying to stop winter from following autumn. Then again, some individuals do head for Florida this time of year! Where there's a will...you'll find an Independent.
God bless the Independents and all those Pets thinking about losing their muzzle and collar for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment