CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN. BREAKING THE CHAIN.

This chapter is dedicated to Simon Bolivar, one of the greatest heroes of democracy and freedom. He is the person most responsible for demonstrating to the the victims of colonial aggression in  South America the power of a free people.

I would like to make a modest proposal for a new model of consensus reality. Let us start to think of the American government as truly being of the people, by the people and for the people. If we all accept this as reality, it is self-evident that it will become so. The biggest problem in trying to reform the government is that so many of us who cry out for justice and freedom do not believe that it is possible, unless it is through violence. It is the thesis of this book that violence is self-defeating. Nonviolent, democratic change is the only path among our various possible futures to the new reality we are constructing together.To create this new world together we must free ourselves from the chains of thought that bind us to ways of thinking that keep us enslaved.

As Kurt Vonnegut postulated in his penetrating psychological treatise Mother Night, we become what we pretend to be. I propose that we all pretend that we live in a true democratic Republic and act as if our democratic institutions are already intact until such time as we restore democracy. If the people of America can evolve to the point that it is taken for granted that each of us is entitled to the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then the Revolution will be complete. There is no reason for free people to fight among themselves for the common wealth when they understand that what is good for the individual must be good for society. The battle between the Revolutionary patriots and the counter-Revolutionaries who cloak themselves in the mantle of “conservatism” will be over.

The key to transforming our national consciousness is to realize that each of us plays a part in molding consensus reality. In taking responsibility for consciously choosing the reality we see individually, we will share in shaping the common understanding that will become consensus reality in the new world. It is not necessary in a pure democracy that consensus be unanimity. As long as the rights of minorities are respected, all that is required is for all men and women of good will to decide how things ought to be, and it will be so. As America is a representative democracy, we must collectively decide that we will not continue to elect men and women who choose to put the interests of the few over those of the many. To achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, we must remember that we have to respect, love, and nurture the least among us. When we put aside our own narrow self-interest, a utopian world society is not only possible but inevitable.

There are those so frightened of the loss of their individual autonomy that they are willing to elect representatives who knowingly and willingly trample on the rights of the average citizen in the name of “free” market capitalism. Through deceitful campaigns in the corporate media, they convince voters that they can bring home more bacon paid for by all of us than other Senators and Representatives. If we accept that politics is a game of trying to beat our own countrymen in a competition for our shared resources, the people will continue to lose. We must all grow up fast if we are to end this silly game of Monopoly in time to save the planet and get back to the more serious business of building a better life for ourselves and our children.

There are those who would argue that what I am proposing is a dream, with no chance of becoming reality. To them, I say that I regard with scorn the American tendency to accept the self-fulfilling prophesy as dictating our common fate. We might as well believe that Armageddon is a prediction, not a warning. If we accept that proposition then there is not much point to existence, for it would imply that there is no such thing as free will. If we choose to save ourselves, we will. The power is truly in the people. Good is stronger than evil, if such a thing exists, and all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men and women to do nothing.

It not hard to spread the ease of viral wellness. This virus is spread easily by close contact. I is time that we all moved away from our computers, talk to our friends and neighbors and get them to join us in the streets, where the corporate media cannot forever ignore us. All it takes is to love each other as we would want to be loved ourselves and treat one another with the respect and charity that we would like to expect from others, if we believed it possible. The change begins within us.

In the words of Michael MacDonald:

You don’t know me but I’m your brother.

I was raised here in this living hell.

You don’t know my kind in your world.

Fairly soon the time will tell.

You, telling me the things you’re gonna do for me.

I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see.

Takin’ it to the streets,

Takin’ it to the streets,

Takin’ it to the streets,

Takin’ it to the streets.

Take this message to my brother.

You will find him everywhere.

Wherever people live together

tied in poverty’s despair.

You, telling me the things you’re gonna do for me.

I ain’t blind and I don’t like what I think I see.

Takin’ it to the streets,

Takin’ it to the streets,

Takin’ it to the streets,

Takin’ it to the streets.

Rick Staggenborg, MD

Coos Bay, OR