Facing what have we been afraid of

"We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive."  

Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior 

It's been a journey around the world to find that often we come right back to what we were afraid of all along.  There have been so many arrows of fear shot through us, at times, wondering deep inside what was it?  When you sit down and actually make a list of all of those things, it all seems to go right back to our responses to things.  Some people fear being needed.  For others, it has been about who is trying to have control over their lives, their thoughts, feelings, and self expression.  For others, the fear of having to move on with their careers, jobs, relationships, homes, cars, and cares. 

For many, just the thought of trying to hold on to what they have has caused their worlds to collapse all around them.  They consider the tool of money to be the most important thing in their life, giving all of their power over to a tool to make it some sort of 'god' in their life.  The mortgages, taxes, tuition, tolls, and consumer mentality to buy 'happiness'.  The more money you have, the happier you are supposed to be.  When money is given such status in society, in lives, friendships, religions (tithes and offerings anyone?), governments (taxations), and the bling of life, what does that really say about society? 

There are people who just want to see it all burn.  A lot of people who want to see a change but feel powerless to do anything about it. There are people who wonder if it ever was worth it all to begin with because they wanted to place their trust in systems that seemed to repeatedly fail them.  Yes, all negative and dark and gloomy for the moment.  We could look at it this way or we could look at it another way. If all of these systems are collapsing all around us, isn't this really an opportunity for people all over the world to create systems that work instead of recreating the same thing?  Many of my friends have talked to me about writing pieces about creating systems that actually don't use money.  It is a scary thing because of the things that have been used around the world, money systems seem to be a measure of exchange that rise up and fall down.  However, they never seem to be 'fair'.  If we look at what is happening all over the world, we see people who have played by the rules.

They did:  Invest, Save, Plan, Take Care of their Families, Give (Look at all of the non-profits that exist), and followed the advice of many experts (look at all of the books, programs, and money gurus that are out there!) that told people where they should put all of their money.  

Many people lost everything they had.  They went according to plan and were wiped out.  Yet, we have this spirit of optimism that somehow it will all work out.  I looked at a movie that was inspired by Orsen Welles, a black comedy of death, by Charlie Chaplin.  No other comedian has ever made such social commentary about things such as poverty, starvation, and dictatorships as Charlie did.  The poor celebrated him because he spoke up and made the invisible people visible to the rest of society that viewed the poor as sheep.  They were caught in a trap of just wanting.  

A friend of mine had written about how America had 'abused the maid' and it was 'time for her to go down'.  He wrote about defending her to his European friends for 30-plus years and now, he was giving up and staying in Europe.  Last time I looked, the world had become a global economy.  A careful domino effect of where we all need each other and currency markets change all of the time because they all rely on one thing and one thing alone.  BELIEF.  We have to believe in these systems.  We have to TRUST in them for them to exist.  Belief, trust and faith are words associated with religions and gods. 

Money was never meant to be an 'entity' as Suze Orman has called money.  The very words of "In God We Trust" is embedded as a statement of fact to support Suze Orman's claim.  There is a lot of anger right now over the hurt of losing everything.  Yet, there are those who are out there creating alternatives and feeding their energy into finally doing what they have wanted to do with their lives.  

So how do we get over our belief?  What ever happened to valuing people?  Whatever happened to the spirit that we had for each other in the west?  I am not trying to simplify things, but it really is telling when we see people gradually get handed their pink slips and see jobs get outsourced all around the world and hear of the exploitation of others, when we fail to realize our own history.  Exploitation of people that happened in Europe and America with the Industrial Revolution where we, had poor people routinely exploited in our factories and mills.  When we, as the people, rose up and demanded that children as young as 5 not be sold into the slavery system of the factories, and the hours and the conditions of our factories grew unbearable, because we had grown used to having 'jobs' to support our lives in previous generations.  We were developing and being studied to improve production and profits and disspirited lives.  The elite studied our ancestors and came up with diagrams to plan out fates and calculations for how long useful workers would last.  Eventually both European nations and America became consumer nations sending factories to South America, Asian countries, Africa, Pacific Island nations and the middle east.  As laws in our countries didn't apply there.  Our ancestors died and history was altered and not taught about this crucial time.

Yes, the system of work will make you free.  Freedom of the human spirit to actually come into one's own.  The dreams of most are simple.  A home, a family and good health.  We have seen all of those attacked on various fronts, and in a weird twist, it is like seeing Aldus Huxley's Brave New World come to life with the amount of Pharma traffic that has come out, not in the name of wellness, but in profit.  I knew many of my friends that had gone into Pharma sales and all they spoke of was how much money they were making.  This concerned me, because I began to see people that needed pills to avoid the pains of life.  I personally rebelled on several occasions preferring the thoughts in my own head when I had to deal with pain rather than to have them masked.  I grew stronger instead of weaker.  I saw peoples bloated from steroids; dazed from mood altering anti-depressants; and all sorts of cocktails for wide spread cancer treatments.  I had never seen so many sick people who never smoked or drank in their lives.  I have had my own dances with death and preferred to take source medications from nature, possessing enough knowledge and friends to help me when I had my own encounters.  To see that the body can and does heal itself, I became distrustful of hospitals that seemed more interest in finding illnesses and keeping people sick than actually curing them.  The oaths that doctors take are seldom referred to anymore, because that would mean that people would have to come first.  

I was shocked by the outrage over universal healthcare in America.  People saw it as a challenge to freedom and shouted about cost.  In all equations to our universal progress, cost continues to become the ONLY obstacle to ending poverty, clean energy, health, and shelter for all.  We have given money so much power that the rich cling to it and the poor ignore a meal that is handed to them and would rather have the sound of clicking coins in a beggar's bowl (never mind the fact that the meal is worth more than the coins).  

We all know these things instinctively.  We know we can't continue on this way so we have been looking for that mythical 'someone' that has all of the answers.  We don't dare look in the mirror.  We can't stand our own reflection because we think of all of the small businesses we put out of business by going to the mass produced outlets we all know and have frequented because of their low prices.  The thought of paying little for much filled us with greed and we started to accumulate 'stuff'.  Most of the 'stuff' we purchased was not in cash.  No, the 'stuff' was anything and everything we wanted on our shiny plastic credit cards.  The tools were expanded like a long rope that many started to hang themselves with.  Emergency funds and savings accounts shrank, and a new phenomena started to happen, debt living.  Debt living is where people actually were so used to living on credit that their incomes were used to pay their credit cards, utilities, mortgages, and so very little money actually even existed.  We all have sinned.  Debtor clubs rose up trying to deal with this problem that seemingly everyone had.  School loans, just never seemed to be paid down enough.  Again that was called good debt.  

Debt is debt.  Good debt is having no debt.  We forgot the rules of our high school economic courses and slowly but surely the people began to all drink the water.  If everyone is doing it, it becomes the social norm.  Banks were making profits, the economy was artificial, but no one was complaining and it didn't seem like it was going to change any time soon.  

I won't rehash my hatred of numbers, because accountants turned turn coat against many peoples of the world with 'creative' accounting that seemed to spread like a cancer into all sectors.  The lies got bigger, the slush funds fatter and the cats were licking their whiskers as they looked at all of those heavy pension fund accounts.  Greed set into the psyche of our wonderful caretakers.  Argentina was sucked up with it when their accounts went public and people were given personalized accounts to track their individual value.  Citigroup was a huge offender of that public's trust.  Argentina is recovering and it has taken them a long time to get out of the poor house.  

Citigroup advisors have flaunted to their elite investors about how all they had to fear was one lowly problem with the people.  This one problem that at first people didn't understand.  The power of the vote.  Well, what good was the vote anymore if politicians were being placed in power by corporations?  The people scratched their heads.  What power?  The vote?  Why should any corporation be afraid of the people?  

A few years ago, I had mentioned that the American constitution could allow us to break from our union.  People were afraid.  They called me 'unAmerican'.  They were kind of looking at me like I was crazy.  I smiled and said, "Really? How on earth is that crazy?"  Eyes glazed over because we like to have faith in our systems and as time passed more people rose up to spout off about all of these legal injustices without realizing they could end this at anytime they wanted to.

At anytime.

With the succession votes going on around the country, I would say this.  It is about being free again, but also it is a notice for us to really sit down and look at what needs to be created as a unified force and not one of division.  Many good people work for corporations and this is an obstacle of fear.  The more that unemployed rolls rise, the more that they realize they have an actual reason now to fear the people.  Oil companies would lose their power over us at last and we might actually be able to start reconciliation and peaceful programs of exchange globally.  We wouldn't have to be worried about micro-chipping, and we actually might get things included like equality for all.  We would have to look at what makes a citizen.  We would have to identify our strengths, weaknesses, fears, hopes and dreams.  We would have to look at the intentions of laws and perhaps, maybe, just maybe we could stop suing each other, killing each other, using each other for our own self interests.  Perhaps governments would stop taking children from homes.  Perhaps we might actually look at ways to stop being afraid of our neighbors.  Perhaps we would form a more 'perfect' union.  Remembering always that perfection is never a destination, but a journey along the way.

I know some people might view this as radical.  I am not going to lie.  It is radical to take down a god we have all served, because if truth is told.  The idea of what America could be kind of died when credit cards were born.  Tools are meant to be used, not abused.

The people are responsible for their government.  We have to step up and BE the people and responsible for the government now.  To abolish this existing federal government to CHANGE it is precisely what we the people were tasked with if you have watched President Obama's speeches and saw how his actions went counter his words.  There is a difference.  Obama was placed in office by the people.  FOR CHANGE.  President Obama is trying, but he can only do so much.  The Federal Reserve is ABOVE the law.  We can't abolish the Federal Reserve.  We have to abolish the federal government and recreate it in order to create our system.  A system that is of the people, for the people and BY the people.  We have that RIGHT.  

To be afraid to talk about it is to IGNORE our Constitution.  Non violently, we can do this all together. We don't have to have target practice on politicians!!  We don't have to accept that monies from the Federal Reserve are drained into foreign held interests.  We all know this but remain silent waiting for Paul Revere to tell us the British are coming.  Well, we once again have to say that we need and want our freedom.  That is the first step.  Sorting out our economic redevelopment is our next step to restore our people.

Now, here is the great fear.  The great fear is that we will revert to being fat, lazy, dumb Americans.  Well, look in the mirror and actually think about it.  We have got to get our act together because when we HAD prosperity what did we do with it?  Who did we emulate?  Pop stars?  Television stars?  Reality moments?  Game shows?  We gave away our imaginations and decided we just couldn't compete with what was already produced for us on television.  Turn the damn thing off already!  Yes, it is also a tool, but when you just watch and don't create anything, you find yourself having a beer or 12.  (Thank you for that Prisoner moment).  

I think we all have been awake for sometime.  Even if my words are only read by a handful of people, I am NOT the first NOR will I be the last to say these words.  Slavery does not know an age, gender, religion or creed.  Slavery can be anyone and it is simple to see that many will tie this into even America's past use of  slaves.  America is not alone.  Egypt, Isreal, Africa, China, Russia, Europe, South America and it goes on where the wealthy have always employed the use of slavery.  You can be a servant in the house or in the slave quarters.  Slavery is slavery and has always been with humanity.

What we decide to do as a people has to largely depend on the following:

Our love for each other and NOT self interest.

Our belief that we will not abuse our power as a people.

Our unity to realize that we will all have our individual pursuits of happiness, freedom and belief systems which means that in all reality, religions do not serve us, but our individual beliefs are our right.  We should never force our beliefs on any other human.  We all have them and some people are willing to die for what they believe in.  However, we have to acknowledge the fact that not all people will force their beliefs on others.

NOTE:  Having lived in China for the past year, I witnessed NO religious persecution.  Which means people were free to believe whatever they wanted individually, but NOT free to broadcast their beliefs to others to recruit them for whatever purpose there was.  In other words NO Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Christians or Buddhists were persecuted for what they believed.  And NO televised evangelism existed in the nation, which meant that the only thing that was illegal was to try to force your belief system on someone else.  In order to protect religious freedom, a sect has to acknowledge how much blood has been shed over trying to control society.  Freedom is not about control.  People should be able to be free to believe in whatever they like, mythologies do contain lessons along the way, however one size does not fit all.  Our intolerance basically incites the belief that only one perception is the correct one.

The people ultimately have to decide and it takes us all to just look and engage our leadership in a positive way to ask questions about how to have the leadership of all of our states come together.  The people will need to be involved with the process from top to bottom and decide what they want on ALL issues.  

War.  Is it over?  Can we forgive and move on like many other nations are ABLE to?

Nuclear weapons.  How do we deal with them so we can prevent proliferation like Russia had after the wall came down?

Currency.  What do we base it on and how do we get people restored?  

Banking systems.

Farming.

Environment

Handling corporations so we do not wind up with another system where corporate interests takes control of our government ever again and pick us apart like they have been doing.

We have to be ready to do this and fill in our OWN objective or SOMEONE else will do it for us.  We have to refine what the American Dream is.  

Other countries have already taken the lead.  Sudan is just one example.

We have to say this as a people.  We are BIG enough to reorganize a system where the reset button MUST be collectively pushed together.  

Please realize we do have the power and we are in new territory where we actually are in a situation where we are backed into a corner.  Will there be a day when we do not HAVE this right?  Well, if the corporations will have their way, they would rather us engage each other in a civil war and have us kill our OWN people off.  

Don't think its possible?  Germany.  Brundi.  Rwanda.  All nations with differing stories.  In all cases, hate and division were used against the population to starve, divide, and rule and in all cases a piece of paper, called money was used.  So what kind of peaceful future do we want?  What kind of courage does it take to say we need a new beginning?

Well, I have been reading a lot of comments from all over the world and it is a collective need.  It is saner than acting like animals and killing each other.  Can the union be held together?  Now that will be up to all of us to decide.  We also may have to realize there may be some who just can't let go of an old system.  To them, we will have to say, we have to let go.  Each state may have to make a choice OR the states collectively as a UNION could come together and all at once by one popular vote so each voice counted to say, together that we are the people and we need it changed.

It is our country.  This is what liberty and freedom is all about.  Courage.  The courage to act bloodlessly.  The courage to create something better.  Haven't we seen enough of the American nightmare?  We, as a people, have to decide what we need to do.  

Remember, it was the idle words of Marie Antoinette (true or not) that were spread to the masses of, "Let them eat cake." that stirred a public into a blood thirsty mob.  We had better pay attention and listen to the world all around us and to change for the cause of humanity while we can through our rights as defined in our constitutions.