Pot of Servitude

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

George Bernard Shaw in his 1903 work, Man and Superman lifts a mental shade from our social thoughts, and we begin to see the power we have inside of us. Personal responsibility is the key to responsible political behavior. That seems like an understated solution to our social and political debacle, but in this reality the only change that produces a change in our social and political system is a change in our belief structure. We expand our beliefs about physical truths constantly, but overlook that fact due to our educated ignorance about the nature of consciousness. We are caught in a dual party political web that hinders us from seeing anything, but that web.

Shaw also said:
As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.

We are forever moving towards a better understanding of the political and economic structure we created in our image. We create pockets of separation between our innate awareness of political and economic improprieties in order to experience the contrast that stimulates personal expansion. Contrast is the tool we used to better understand the nature of the self as well as the political system we helped create. Within these pockets are bundled up wrappers of self-righteousness, which infects our social expansion. These wrappers of human half-truths vacillate in a man-made pot of servitude.

Our elected political leaders use that pot to control our expansion, and shade our innate responsibility to be united in our diversity. When we vote for a particular party and candidate, we give those leaders much more than our responsibility, and then expect them to give us what we want in return. What they give us is head shaking empty expectations that are filled with the system’s sameness.

Our political leaders say and do the same thing at election time, and expect us to conform in this pot of servitude by voting for change. Change is the battle cry of each candidate, and we buy into it because we believe that they are acting responsible, but they lack the tools to effect the change they believe they want to achieve. They live in a separated world of drama and name calling, which is fuel by the greedy system. They give up their responsibility and ours to a system that fosters half-truths and misconceptions.

Political leaders live in a false state of utopia where sameness is the measuring stick for acceptance. They don’t know how to unite the country in the spirit of true change because the system is ridged in terms of beliefs.

Ronald Aronson in his 1995 book Beyond Marxism wrote:

As recent students of utopia have articulated, vigorous utopian thinking sketches models of a peaceable kingdom, points us toward society’s repressed possibilities, enables us to see more clearly actual tendencies, both positive and negative, strengthens our grounds for rejecting existing social forms, reactivates lost dreams and longings, and encourages political action.

Political utopia is not a stationary place where perfection rules― it is an ever-changing state of mind where personal and social responsibility fuels the kingdom. That means voting for true reform not just voting along party lines. Parties were established to accent separation in a time when conflict was the norm. That norm is not our norm.

The main ingredient in establishing political utopia is electing representatives that want to instigate social reform and revamp the system, rather than becoming part of the empty political and economic machine that is fueled by this broken system.

The book, Living Behind The Beauty Shop describes a utopian type system that represents the meaning of a people’s commonwealth.

Living Behind The Beauty Shop is about a Middle Tennessee boy who understands that greater reality where the psyche is able to communicate with the self that is experiencing other dimensions. The boy, Mase Russell, is living with Down syndrome. He is considered disabled in our normal reality, but he is far more enabled and connected than we are to that stream of consciousness that flows through all of us. He is able to communicate with other aspects of the self while dreaming, and he accepts his dream experiences as real. He is even able to remember those experiences and express them in his own way. His family begins to sense that his disability is a challenging gift not a sentence of suffering.

His family is like any other family. They experience the typical dramas that we all create in our waking reality. His grandfather, Warren Russell is a wealthy business man that lives on his family’s 2000 acre farm in Leipers Fork, Tennessee. The farm was a land grant given to his triple great-grandfather after the American Revolution. Warren and his wife Claire considered the farm their rite of passage until they both experienced a near-death experience on a trip to Florida in their Cessna. After the accident Warren decides to donate 1000 acres to a non-profit foundation he formed called Perception Farms. Perception Farms is a self-sufficient community off the grid that gives the homeless a fresh start.

His daughter Cindy realizes that she’s gay after she marries her college sweetheart. She returns home from California and finds an ex-nun, who is now called Margie, at one of Perception Farm’s fundraisers. Margie discovered her true sexuality when she was in the convent. They become partners and decide to have a child using the sperm of their friend Alan Sutton, a well-educated and athletic individual who works in the shoe business. Baby Mase is born with DS and the story follows his life and the experiences of the family as he becomes an accomplished poet and artist.

Years later, Mase finds Mischa Eddington who is another Down syndrome artist, in a local college art class, and they develop a close relationship. Together they watch members of the family experience the pains of getting older. They offer the family another perspective about that aging process. The family realizes that Mase and Mischa chose to be born with Down syndrome in order to help others see that there are no boundaries or limits in physical life unless we put them there through our beliefs and perceptions. They show us that other realities are just as real as our waking reality.

When we consider that consciousness does not have a beginning or an end in the non-physical world we can better understand that the people we call disabled or homeless are actually teachers who choose to experience life in extraordinary ways. They teach us that putting limits, judgments, and sterilized beliefs in action is the art of separating one aspect of the self from other elements of the psyche.

When that happens, we find ourselves living in the beauty shop of life, which is filled with exterior self-serving nothingness.