personal power

Sun 4.24.22

      Personal power is attained through the conquest of fear.  One’s ability to do that is dependent on how many stressers impinge on one’s life.  But then again, what stresses me may not be of any consequence to you.  Presently, Ukrainians are stressed, many severely.  It will take many years for this fear of deprivation, either at the forefront, or in the background, nagging, for them to regain their personal power.  Many are homeless, food insecure, physically weakened, at risk.  Yet others in the same situation are making connections, finding ways to move forward, make do; they are able to achieve stability.

      Human beings have evolved from their animal state, and please don’t look at that as some kind of advancement because most animals have more dignity, more love, purpose, respect, intelligence than we do.  We have as yet to find a way to live with each other, to respect our Earth home, to develop a mutually enhancing relationship with it.  Every country lives in fear that the planet’s resources will be depleted and it will all go dark.  That fear is the horror they inflict on us all.

      On my clipboard are names of two different peoples that I have had up there for many years now.  The Tasadays and the Ibos or Igbo, the first named is a tribe in the Amazon Rainforest.  These people have all their needs met by the rain forest.  When they were first discovered in their isolated world, what most impressed the anthropologists, to such a degree that they refused to introduce them to the the outside world, was these people’s love for one another.

      The Ibo people live in Northern Africa, the Sahara Desert.  Someone made a documentary of these nomadic people at a time of severe drought.  They were not nice people.  One sees a mother stealing her child’s food when it looks away.  The old people who cannot keep up are left behind when the tribe moves on having depleted present area.  They are a harsh and brutal people.

      And what of us, the modern world?  We are much closer to the Ibos; the threat at bottom is always drought, depletion of resources.  All kinds of murder and mayhem is committed globally by the powers that be to acquire their neighbor’s share of resources, their wealth.  The concept of love and respect for one’s fellow human beings is not something any peoples in the modern world aspire to.  Governments see their “subjects” as fodder to enrich their country, as soldiers at their bidding, that take from others, as units of commerce that produce value, develop resources.  These “subjects” need to be frightened by the very real possibility of drought, a depletion of their resources, to perform the necessary disagreeable work to keep the drought/fear dynamics functioning. It’s a self-fulfilling wheel.

      Presently, the world’s monetary system is collapsing because, quite frankly, it was a ponzi scheme.  Russia with all its great resources is beginning to look like a delightful morsel, and so it is being surrounded, licking our chops.  Do we get to figure out like the Tasadays to live in harmony?  There is really enough resources for all of us, but you see first we have to defang the one behind the curtain with its pretensions, and at bottom, its insecurities, fears.