# Prisoners of Time



## dreamtime (Jul 3, 2022)

*dreamtime*: This is a translation of an article from our German forum, originally written by member "Ruhiger Wolf".

Translated from: Gefangene der Zeit







_"Time comes from the future, which does not exist, into the present, which has no duration, and goes into the past, which has ceased to exist. So, what is time? If no one asks me about it, I know, but if I want to explain it to someone who asks, I don't know."_
*- *Augustinus​


In the past, when there was no possibility of recording on data media, or even on paper, one had to rely on people called the "Keepers of History" for extensive information. In the language of the Zulu, a people in South Africa, a person who performs this task is called a "sangoma" and is held in the highest esteem. In our culture, it has long been customary to be able to keep records on paper. Therefore, we may have to think our way into this situation at first. Why is such respect shown to a sangoma? Well, first of all, it is important to realize that human beings have a limited ability to preserve the past. For one thing, there is the function of human memory. We all know how easy it is to simply forget things. Nor does what we forget always have to do with the importance of an event. Of course, we probably forget unimportant things more easily than things that are important to us. Nevertheless, forgetting is also a kind of protective mechanism. And so we sometimes "forget" even drastic events, simply because it would be too painful to remember them.

Remembering is a function of learning. In our memory database we deposit experiences we have made. We use the resulting knowledge to have a head start in future events. Things that we currently experience have to be evaluated. We have to analyze them and sometimes even try out a certain course of action in a situation. This is both a slow process and a risky one. Being able to retrieve data from our memory ensures that we can recognize the situation while it is still developing and develop a way of dealing with it early on that has a high chance of success in remaining unscaled. This is also called survival mechanism. A person's survival is even more likely the more attentively he stores and sorts of experiences once they have been made and has them quickly available as a reaction in other situations.

From the psychological perspective one would have to add that reactions are the fastest, but not always the most effective behaviors, because situations are sometimes similar, but do not have to be identical. Therefore, there are also situations in which reactive behaviors are available quickly and should protect the person, but sometimes there is no actual danger, because the core of the situation is completely different. As an example, one can visualize the experience of holding one's finger in a candle flame. Surely it is clear to everyone that a single experience is enough and that one does not have to hold one's finger into the candle flame for the repeated time in order to know that a flame is hot. The ability of generalization enables a person to transfer this experience to all other "flames". Anything that even looks similar to a flame or has similar characteristics will henceforth be considered a "flame" and the person will be correspondingly careful with it. Another example would be the first relationship with the opposite sex. The girlfriend or boyfriend has blond hair. We all know that a first relationship, a first great love, can be a very formative experience. If this relationship now comes to a painful end (which is often the case) people may generalize experiences from this situation. Every woman or man with blond hair reminds us of these past experiences and controls our contact with other people. Of course, we know that hair color alone says nothing about a person's character, but at the level at which these kinds of experiences are stored, they primarily serve our survival and initially have nothing at all to do with quality. Survival in this case would mean protection from another negative experience within a relationship. Quality would include the chance to get to know a person who also has blond hair but is nevertheless a completely different person. Perhaps such an experience would even have the potential to balance out old negative experiences. Nevertheless, for humans, survival is initially more important than quality. What is immediately obvious if one imagines how difficult it is to still be able to make new experiences when not surviving.

This should be enough for us to realize that the ability to generalize is an important survival function and at the same time can be an obstacle to make new experiences. Even then, if a possible new experience would actually be positive for the development of man, it is not said that man will open himself to this experience. In fact, it is far more likely that he will choose to survive. Thus, effectiveness in the sense of whether an action is actually appropriate to the situation does not have to do with the person's stored experience but is always situational. Every situation, in which despite memory material is not reacted, but is acted directly situationally, is stressful, because the person does not know whether a once made painful experience will not repeat itself. Accordingly, human survival always comes first.

In the question of how we humans are integrated in time, however, not only individual experiences play a role, but also the experiences of other people. We are all, despite being individuals, also all a part of a group. In psychology, the term "collective" is understood differently than in other circles. Here it does not have the negative character of placing the individual hierarchically behind the collective, as is the case in socialism, for example, but is available as a complementary factor for the maturation of the human being. In this sense, it is even absolutely necessary for the maturation of an individual to include the knowledge of the collective. We all do well to include the experiences of other individuals of our group in our wealth of experience. In C.G. Jungian psychology, the concept of the collective goes beyond other present individuals to include the experiences of our ancestors. Although according to C.G. Jung this kind of experience is also available on other levels, only the actual handed down knowledge of our fellow human beings and our ancestors plays a role in this consideration. We include the stories that our parents and grandparents tell us in our wealth of experience. It is even so that partially experiences of other humans, who are very close to us, are stored as our own experiences. On the reactive level, there is then no longer the question of who had the experience, but only that this very experience exists in our memory database and that we can refer to it in terms of a greater chance of survival.

Now we have an idea of how important it is to preserve experiences. When experiences beyond the life of one person affect the survival of a larger group, it is absolutely necessary to maintain a database that does not end with the death of one person. Furthermore, it is important that there is no longer an emphasis on the individual experiences of the person who records and manages this knowledge, but that sorting is done in terms of maximum effectiveness for the collective. The survival of the collective is even more important than the survival of an individual. This "primal knowledge" stems from the fact that we all "know" that we cannot survive without a group. The "keeper of history", the Sangoma, as I have called him above, has therefore an extremely important function with regard to the survival of a people. Not only does he have the task of recording the knowledge of all, but also of sorting it in the sense of effectiveness. He carries the responsibility for the survival of his people. He is not only the keeper of the history, but the guardian of the knowledge, which made the survival possible for the people up to now. And this is the reason why these people are treated with such extraordinary respect. Similar to the warriors, these people bear an extraordinary responsibility with regard to the survival of their people. In a certain sense - and this will concern us in the following - they are even more important than the warriors, because the "keepers of history" can sometimes even prevent wars.

In our time, the historians would probably be most comparable to the Sangoma. Even in our time it is important to be aware of the experiences of the group and the experiences of the ancestors. But what if this knowledge is distorted? What happens to a people that is cut off from its own history? The answer is it is condemned to relive certain experiences over and over again. This is not only a painful process, as I have explained above, but also one that directly affects the survival of the group. Why - we may now ask ourselves - should such a thing happen? Who or what would have an interest in cutting off an entire people from their experiences?

To approach the answer to this question, it is useful to first consider the implications of such an event. A people cut off from its experience, much like an individual who remembers nothing, is condemned to commit the same mistakes over and over again. If there is no way to access experiences once made, only the particular moment remains. From the point of view of survival, a highly explosive situation. From the psychological point of view, man is under high stress and is now extremely susceptible to whispers of all kinds. If someone else were to promise man protection from the unknown at this point, there is a high probability that he will take them up on this offer, even if it costs him a high price. This is also the answer to the question of why people are more likely to choose safety and sacrifice their freedom for it. Freedom is less important than survival in this context. A philosophical approach may lead us to a different conclusion, but on a psychological level, survival has a higher value than freedom. There is always the possibility of regaining one's freedom, but a person's possibilities of survival end the moment his life comes to an end. The penalty of going outside the cultural thought pattern is very real. In ancient times, expulsion from the protective group meant certain death, but even today the discrimination that accompanies it is hard to bear for those affected, and quite a few break. It is a harsh punishment, the harshest there is. It is even harsher than death because the suffering is prolonged once again.

Thus, in the Roman Empire, an interdict (Latin: interdictum) was considered a punishment to enforce or forbid an action. There were whole treatises on various forms of threat through exclusion. Thus, exclusion from the community as a threatening element and means of exerting coercion on people has long been used by rulers and is an inherent element of the construct of the state. Also, the manipulated people have always been happy to participate in the exclusions. Rulers have their henchmen who, along with compliant aides, press the people to form a mass or majority behind which the individual is supposed to lose its value. The truth, however, is that the rights of the people are not limited either by the generality or by a supposed majority. A group cannot have more rights than an individual. From where should it also have obtained this right? A person cannot acquire new rights by joining a group, nor can he lose rights he already possesses. As Ayn Rand said, _"The principle of individual rights is the only moral basis of all groups and organizations. Any group that does not recognize this principle is not an organization, but a gang of criminals." _

The statement, "The common good comes before self-interest" and the implication that the rights of an individual would weigh less than the rights of the general public is simply a lie. The fact that you have been told this lie over and over again does not make a lie a truth.


*Ban on Thinking*

So it is important to be aware of your past. If we do not have access to the knowledge of the community, we are prisoners of time and condemned to relive events over and over again, without the opportunity to process and store the experiences that come with them. We prevent not only ourselves from continuing our development, but also the people with whom we have contact as well as the group of which we are a part. It is an almost closed system, because not only is access to knowledge closed to us, but it also makes it impossible for us to process experiences. Neither can we pass on our experiences to our children or people in our group, nor can we feed our experiences into the group consciousness. Each individual - but also the whole group - remains so much longer than necessary on a lower level of development. However, when unfettered access to experienced knowledge is available, we learn quickly and develop effective ways of dealing with situations. Jeremy Locke, author of the book "The End of Evil," puts it in the following words: _"The crucial key to understanding our world is to understand the nature of evil. Evil attacks the value of human beings in denying them the opportunity to make their own choices; in denying them the opportunity to grow through learning and understanding."_

Free access to experienced knowledge is thus elementally important. We cannot make decisions unless knowledge is available to us. Certain knowledge is deliberately withheld from us so that we cannot take pending developmental steps. We cannot free ourselves from domination because the strategies of domination are hidden from us. The rulers themselves have an interest in hiding these mechanisms from us, because otherwise we would realize that ultimately domination is the real evil, because it prevents us from following our path of development. Jeremy Locke goes on to say: _"Concealment is the distortion of principles. Obfuscation is the creation of false ideas to hide the truth. Sometimes this is done by simply adding ideas to the actual truth to disguise the nature of the original truth. Evil uses concealment to confuse the minds of people. Obfuscation distorts principles so that people are unable to learn. Evil uses concealment so that you are unable to gain knowledge. Evil does this to deprive you of your freedom."_

So we are urged to examine very carefully what knowledge is being withheld from us. Evil hides knowledge in many ways. By concealment and distortion but also by erasure. Important elements are simply omitted and deleted from the historical consciousness of humans. The resulting gaps are then filled with false information mostly makeshift. Because it is difficult to falsify historical events by erasure, since the used lies naturally have errors, an investigation of these areas is mostly made more difficult by prohibitions. The very areas you are not allowed to investigate are very likely to contain important building blocks for understanding the principles of evil. It is very likely that important elements lie buried under prohibitions of thought. Truths do not need prohibitions on thinking. Only lies need to hide by concealing or distorting what is actually happening.

Let's continue listening to Jeremy Locke: _"There are people who want to destroy your freedom. They want to control you so that you cannot become the person you want to be. To control you, they take away by force the freedom you were born with. Culture knows that people discover fewer truths when they have to deal with artificial entanglements. If we are not free to try ourselves, we cannot learn and we cannot grow. Love, prosperity, and knowledge are all things that are possible only with freedom. As a human being, the degree of freedom you need is unlimited. Freedom is of infinite value to human beings. If evil destroys freedom in any area of your life, it limits your wisdom, your love, and your joy."_

So we can be almost certain: prohibitions show us the way. In other areas, too, we now know that prohibitions often serve not our safety, but the safety of the rulers. Promised security and control by the rulers are two inseparable instruments of the rulers. That which is forbidden to you thus shows you the way. Rulers have to hide behind prohibitions, because otherwise the evil in it would be right in front of people's eyes. Man, himself does not need any prohibitions, because he is naturally equipped with ethical and moral basic principles. The fact that there are always admonishing voices that spread the opinion that people would go wild over each other without the regulating hand of the state is only the passing on of a consciously built-up distortion of reality in order to maintain the justification that there must be a state and a ruler. In truth, it is precisely the state and the element of domination that is inseparably connected with it, which makes people become ravening beasts.

These truths are immediately before your eyes, as soon as you let fall the shyness and look behind the facade of the knowledge taught to you in the school and in the parental home. With large probability a wrong reality was also already conveyed to your parents. Prohibitions to think are not always accompanied by actual punishments according to a law constructed for this purpose. A very well working strategy is to produce a social exclusion should a person move outside the desired framework. In Jeremy Locke's words, culture pays careful attention to what may and may not be thought. Prohibitions of thinking therefore do not always come from the state and are punishable by arbitrary laws, but also come from your neighbors, teachers and fellow men and are laid in your cradle, so to speak, by your parents. Always remember: The end does NOT justify the means. Freedom can never come from coercion. An immoral action does not become a moral one, even if it is supposedly appropriate or declared as necessary to achieve something moral in the future. Freedom can never be achieved through a supposedly legitimate process of unfreedom. There are no necessary intermediate stages to freedom. Freedom is a universal, inalienable and indivisible human right.

Artificial changes of language, are instruments of power. You shall obey! That is what it is all about. The attempt to gain control over language - called "political correctness" - is an attempt to gain control over people's behavior. Political correctness is constructed slavery. Rulers try to ensure that language cannot flow freely by creating a grid of manipulation and defining what is "decent" language. They want to determine what can and cannot be said, and ultimately, they want to change the way people think. According to Jeremy Locke, _"The attempt to gain control over people's speech and thinking is evil incarnate, controlling vast amounts of human emotion, labor, thought, and speech. This control has been and continues to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds and hundreds of millions of people and the enslavement of almost every being that has ever lived. Because these demands are backed by coercion, they destroy freedom and enslave people. Because man is coerced, he must neglect his own thought, speech and actions and obey a doctrine, a precept, a grid." _

This is the exact opposite of freedom. Language is the most powerful tool of mankind. Therefore, we humans must protect our language so that everyone can develop, communicate, and write their thoughts.

Rulers have the absurd opinion that they can grant rights through permissions and restrict rights that people naturally have through prohibitions. Since people instinctively react to the restrictions of their freedom with rejection, the restriction of freedom is possible only through coercion, through the exercise of power. But power is a strange weapon. It works only when people allow power to be exercised over them. Power exists only when people concede it to others. If people do not give power to others, power would not exist. As long as people acknowledge a ruler, there will be someone to rule them. Even in democracy, people give power to a ruler. Even though this system gives people the apparent choice of electing a new ruler every four years, they continue to be ruled and degrade themselves into slaves. There are rulers only as long as people believe they need a ruler. There are rulers only as long as people believe to be a slave themselves. The ruling system "democracy" is the enforced "we", in which coercion is always directed against a minority and legalizes robbery and violence against this minority. In terms of majority rule, it is always like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. In truth, rights cannot be limited by the general public or by a supposed majority.

Democracy can be described as another variety of monarchy. Democracy nonetheless involves the hierarchy of a class system, which divides into "ruling" and "being ruled." It is more difficult to recognize as a system of domination because the ruler no longer comes along as one person but, in a group, using the apparent legitimacy of a "majority" to oppress and rob people. Yet, beneath the surface, this system is just as parasitic. Community can never be created through egalitarianism of a forced "we". Incidentally, the term "constitutional state" is an oxymoron. The terms "law" and "state" do not go together. Likewise, the whole clamor of politicians that the "rule of law" is in danger is a joke. It becomes particularly absurd when the term "freedom" is used in the form "liberal-democratic basic order". "Rule of law" and "democracy" have nothing to do with freedom, and the only "order" meant here revolves around the politicians' retention of power.

The king has his guard. The state has its police chief. The commander the military police. It always revolves around exerting physical coercion on others. The people are governed under the threat of force. But the more a leader uses this force, the less actual power he has. It is an admission of a regime's failure. A failing regime shows its failure by using only the means of exercising rule by force. When, within democracy, politicians increasingly lose the support of a large part of the people, their power dwindles. From this moment on, the inherent nature of democracy as a form of rule becomes visible. From now on, it is just another form of tyranny.

Your principles as a human being are to be confused by these constructs of the rulers, so that you recognize rule. Democracy is THE means to limit your freedom by supposedly superior rights of a majority or the general public. When the state claims it must protect or strengthen democracy, what it really means is that it wants to limit your inalienable right to freedom. Every free person threatens democracy simply because he rejects domination.


*The treasure of knowledge*

An individual developing in freedom finds community within himself. Humans do not need "external" laws, otherwise they would not even be able to discover the natural laws inherent in humans. Who could create "external" laws if there is no one higher than others? The monarch decides and sends out his henchmen to enforce his will. Nothing else happens in a democracy. Here it is a "party" that decides. And it inevitably always decides for itself, for its own "survival," since it lives on the energy of the ruled. It secures its survival by splitting. But "right" cannot be divided into "public right" and "private right". Every divided right is injustice. No one has more rights than others. No one can divide "right" or make "laws" that include this division. It is an injustice system and not sustainable.

Man is capable of another form of living together. By coercion freedom can never arise, the right is not divisible. Man does not need "leadership". We do not need politicians who decide "for us". They do not do this anyway, even if they promise it again and again. Every ruler, every politician always decides for himself.

Freedom takes place where people recognize their part in the survival of the system and withdraw support from it by returning from a forced "we" to the "I" and coming together in communities with other individuals. In such communities, not everyone is equal, but everyone is of equal value. Freedom is the ultimate and highest good. The alpha and the omega. Without freedom, growth and development is not possible.

At the beginning of our life we are dependent on someone accepting us as belonging to him and so it remains throughout our life - even if later we are no longer unilaterally dependent on another person, but at the same time also play an active role in the "care system", one of the psychologically most devastating threats is not to be able to maintain the care. Of course, it is not - or probably least of all, in fact - the denial of food, but the denial of closeness to others. The denial of the warmth that comes with not being alone. Ultimately, behind the fear of death is also the fear of falling out of the world and no longer belonging to it. Because humans are social beings, they become physically and/or psychologically ill when they no longer have contact with other living beings. And here a nurturing, a supportive contact is meant and not one that lies in constant rejection or conflict with otherness.

So today, when we find ourselves in a society where people are excluded from the community because they have a different opinion or because they point out to others something that is not wanted, it is a punishment that is basically even worse than death and is exercised in full awareness of this harshness. Once again, we can discover inhumanity in the hypocritical do-gooderism. The "judges" surround themselves with the beautiful appearance of "political correctness" and are nevertheless nothing else than executioners.

People who have shed their scruples about using this knowledge of psychological function to their own advantage have greatly refined their tactics over time. The fundamental knowledge that fear is an excellent catalyst for manipulating people is the basis of today's politicians. And based on this is the subtle control of people's behaviors down to the smallest details of their lives. Most people are far too unconscious to even notice this control. Garnished still with the imposed assumption that they would not be influenceable as humans, they are particularly easy victims. And this cannot be made clear enough: It is precisely the assumption that humans would not be manipulable that makes them easy victims. It is not crazy to think that humans would be easily manipulated by media like television or words and pictures, but the assumption that they would not be.

One factor why many people cannot free themselves from this trap is that they are cut off from their past. They are prisoners of time and condemned to go through certain situations over and over again without ever being able to store the experience that goes with them or to pass it on to other people in their group or their descendants. Historians in this period are usually unaware of their responsibility and so willingly pass on distorted knowledge. Not only the erasure, i.e. the erasing of empirical values in the past, but also the distortion of the past is a falsification. To present things differently than they actually were is, besides the disappearance of certain events, the common method to let people be prisoners of time. Historians are mostly employed by the state through colleges and universities and are directly alimented by it. It is quickly determined which "knowledge" is desired and which is not. If the person in question continues to poke around in areas of the past that contain forbidden knowledge, it will either be quickly made clear to him by superiors, or he will lose his job. In addition, this person is usually already a victim of a falsified or erased past and therefore no longer in a position to actually see the consequences of his behavior. Should someone at this point actually be conscious enough to want to reappraise old knowledge and make it available to people, she finds herself in the greatest danger. Either she will be discredited very quickly and branded as a "conspiracy theorist," or the person will be destroyed altogether.

So for an individual, it is important to be aware of his past. For a people, or even the collective of people, it is equally important, and in a sense even more important, because the survival of the individual depends directly on his group. The history of a people is its guarantee of survival. It is a real treasure that needs to be well guarded. It must be open to all people, safe from any falsification, so that the community of people can advance rapidly in its development. Rulers, however, have an absolute interest in people not progressing. Thus, whenever records are considered sacrosanct and questioning them is even defined as a punishable offense, there is almost certainly an agenda behind it. Inherent in the development of humans is that they do not need a ruler. Whenever people take the developmental step to this realization, the position of a ruler is without any function. Rulers are not only superfluous but are recognized for what they are: as absolutely evil elements who willfully and consciously prevent human development in order to gain their own advantage from it. Creatures guilty of this offense of depriving people of their freedom, of manipulating them in order to hinder their development and to parasitically feed on them, do not deserve the name human being, since these acts are carried out out of pure self-interest and without any morals and ethics from the character image of psychopathy. There is no excuse for this act. This act is abysmally evil.


*Liberation*

The last question that remains is whether it is possible to control people's knowledge over all time. What we can say so far is that all hindrances to human development have not been enough to make all humans prisoners of time for all time. Nature itself seems to have an interest in development going forward. In fact, at the level of systems theory, it is considered certain that supposed impediments to evolving systems, are always seen as part of a larger evolving overall system. Development is something inherent in a system at any level. If we apply this to our situation - which indeed we can because we are particularly sophisticated systems consisting of very many interlocking subsystems - we can make the case that we will continue to evolve despite any attempts by the rulers to influence us. It seems as if it is simply not possible to stop us on our path of development. However, this thesis does not allow us to draw any conclusion about how long the period of oppression will last. What we can say with all certainty, however, is that it is worthwhile in any case to become aware of our history. To dedicate ourselves to the stories of our ancestors and to recognize who we are - integrated in time - as individuals and collective beings.

Remembering who we are means recognizing that we are more than a person. We are always also part of a community, part of a people, and we bear responsibility not only for our own development, but also for that of our children and all the people who come after us.

For nature, it only plays a minor role whether an individual survives. From this point of view, it is only important that we as a community, as a people, as a collective continue on our path of development towards freedom.

From this we can conclude that the time of the rulers will end. I personally believe that it has already ended. We are living in a time in which we are witnessing the last rebellion of the rulers. The awakening of the people will be connected with great sacrifices. Experience shows that the more people become aware of their true nature, the stronger the violence of the rulers will become. But this, too, will eventually flow into the collective of people as experience and ensure that we will never allow a ruler again and fight every element of oppression with all consistency. We are free people, born in freedom. When we remember who we are, when we become aware of our history, we are no longer prisoners of time, but travelers in time.

This should now bring us closer to the answer to the question of why people find it so difficult to develop and turn to new things even in the face of great crises. Someone who has already internalized the principle of change is per se already a threat to unconscious people. It doesn't even have to be something written or said that awakens resistance in the other person, just the presence of someone who has recognized the mechanisms of the rulers is enough. The expressed resistance will also in the vast majority of cases not refer to the details of his communications, but to the person of the one who assumes the role of transmitter. Since the truth cannot remain hidden, the bearer of the truth must be destroyed. A person who sees the connections can no longer be lied to. Influences and attempts of manipulation bounce off him. The downside of this is sometimes the inability to communicate it to others. Not because it is a matter of communicative inadequacies, but because the resistance in that other person prevents understanding. When it is only a matter of individuals turning away from that person, it has a different dimension than when someone experiences the rejection of the masses, but it is still no less painful.

At all times, there have been people who mustered the courage and, as pioneers of freedom, unearthed important knowledge. Even if these people had to endure severe suffering in their attempt and not infrequently even lost their lives, they left us a gift. Every single one of them was a pioneer. Each and every one of them deserves thanks for making it easier for us to set out on our journey today. Throughout time, it is like an outstretched hand that we need only grasp to set out on the path as well. Development in this context is built on your own initiative. Your path will probably not be an easy one either.

In systems theory, we assume channeled paths of change. Similar to a drop of water running down the slope of a dune in the desert and having to find a path, it equally paves the way for further drops to follow. With each successive drop, the path becomes not only easier to walk, but also easier to find. The path becomes wider and is marked out, so to speak. Subsequent drops of water simply have to follow the path, which becomes more and more clearly visible. With every time a person throws off the shackles of culture and realizes truth that he was born to be free, to develop and grow in freedom, it becomes easier for following people and generations. Your way prepares the way for other people.

We humans live in this area of tension, on the one hand to want to belong and on the other hand to move away from the masses and the "protection of the community" through knowledge. In the consideration of the metaphor of the "choice" between the red and the blue pill in the movie Matrix, it is about the touch of the human basic fear of being different and therefore also of being excluded.

We are outsiders who carry the natural desire to belong. We are strong lone wolves, with a soft and bleeding heart that has been wounded by outcasting. We are scattered individuals in loose communities. We no longer belong, nor do we want to, yet we want nothing more than the comforting protection of like-minded people. It is a realm of paradoxes into which we have been thrust. A realm of knowledge, progress and development and at the same time a realm of loneliness and a deep desire for companions.

We live in a time when more and more people are calling for freedom. A milestone of realization is that in order to preserve freedom, it is indispensable to leave domination behind. Freedom is our birthright. Domination excludes freedom. Equipped with the knowledge of this principle, of this truth, you cannot go wrong. You will have to suffer. You will be lonely. But you are not alone! People from everywhere reach out to you through time. Reach out to them and you will find the community of people that is free from all domination.


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## Whitewave (Jul 4, 2022)

The concept of the divine right of kings is a strange idea. Britannica defines it as "In European history, a political doctrine in defense of monarchical absolutism, which asserted that kings derived their authority from God and could not therefore be held accountable for their actions by any earthly authority such as a parliament. This radical centralization of government power required a philosophical foundation to justify it. *Jacques Bossuet*, a Catholic bishop who was Louis XIV's court preacher, provided this foundation in Politics Derived from Sacred Scripture, in which he laid out the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings."

The idea has been around a lot longer than Louis XIV's time. Pharaohs believed they were descendants of the "gods" and were innately destined to rule.

As for a "divine right" to rule, God made himself pretty clear when the Israelites clamored for a king to rule over them. He warned them, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[b] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”  (I Samuel 4:8-22)

Basically, according to biblical principles, there is no "divine right of kings". God was supposed to be our ruler, not any man. And for the new testament admonishment "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God", I have 2 thoughts: 1) Written by Paul so automatically suspect and 2) I internally translate that verse as "you made your bed now lie in it".  As an example of what I mean, think back to when Obama, during his initial campaign, told the American people, "If you elect me you'll get the government you deserve". I looked around and people were cheering but I thought, "did that man just threaten us?"

This is the philosophical stance I tried to convey in my thread entitled Human Resources. We need no one to rule over us or to "nanny" us. We have an innate sense of right and wrong, cultural differences not withstanding. If we strive to be the best version of ourselves it is enough.
Random House Websters defines authority thus: Control, influence. Denotes a power or right to direct the actions or thoughts of others.

The phenomenon called authority is at once more ancient and more fundamental than the phenomenon called state; the natural ascendancy of some men over others is the principle of all human organizations and all human advances.
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

Only children and the mentally infirm are in need of "authority". Those of us who recognize our own worth and value the worth in others have no need of a keeper. By subjecting ourselves to authority, we relinquish our innate sovereignty and subject ourselves to the rule of strangers whose values we don't even know much less share. Collectively, we as a society have determined that the opinions and maturity level of strangers are more valuable and advanced than our own. Or we have been usurped?

We've all heard the saying that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one". This is a horribly offensive statement to me.
One who values all life would surely want to save as many lives as possible but not all of living is reduced to life-boat ethic choices.

The individual is the microcosm of the macrocosmic "many". What is an ocean if we don't value (or recognize) the drops of water that comprise it's vastness? When dealing with humanity the whole is not greater than the sum of it's parts. Even as a teeming mass of population we are referred to as a unit: the crowd. Humanity is a singular term. "We" are not plural. We are unique as snowflakes.

If the needs of the individual are subjugated to the needs of the many, all are diminished. And who is this "many" for whom the one must be sacrificed? Just other "ones".

To rejoice in the one is to uplift the many. Were we not all elevated when one man walked on the moon? (Allegedly) Were we not all diminished when one man ordered the extermination of an entire race? (Supposedly) How we view and value the one sets the standard for the collective self-image. We are not "us" and "them". We are you and me. You, singular; me, the individual. To say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one is to say "you" are not as valuable as "me". Christ already made a sacrifice for all. We can quit sacrificing each other to the gluttonous collective.
A few excerpts from Divinity And Unity In The New Year: He [Man] is unable to appreciate the significance of his legacy. Of all the powers in the world, human power is the greatest. Man assigns value to everything in this world, but he is unable to recognize his own value.
link

All of us on this site are the sangoma/keepers of history. We need our history in order to be the best version of ourselves.


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## Frits (Aug 5, 2022)

Short books:
Jeremy Locke - End of all Evil
Jeremy Locke - Het einde van al het kwaad


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