Authoritarianism….. Welcome Refugees!

Human Beings are weak.

We are weak because of one thing. Buddha called it attachment, I call it ….need.

Other than food, air, water, shelter, and the need to reproduce, other than and greater than….is our need to be loved.

That is all humans want, to be loved. Every human everywhere shares that need. It is the very core of the human condition. It is what drives us all. It is what drives every single thing that we do, from the best of us to the worst of our behaviors. Give me an example, any example of human behavior and i will trace it back to that human acting, sometimes in simply incredibly “illogical” and horrendous ways, back to the very root of all of humanity. The deep undeniable and driving need to be loved.

It is, in my opinion, (and I qualify that only because I don’t want to alienate anyone….and thus take the chance that they may not love me) because we are separate.

Some would say we are separate from the collective unconscious, some would say we are separate from the stars galaxies and the universe, that we are individual evolved life forms and thus can never really know true union with anything but ourselves…..some would say it is because we are separate from God or Goddess.

But we are separate and we…all of us…seek not to be.

Some of us seek union through religion or spirituality. Some of us seek union through love and marriage. Some of us….MOST of us also seeek union through belonging. To something. To anything. And very few of us, proportionately, seek union by overcoming the need to seek union.

But we are all seeking, and nearly all of us need to belong. To something. To anything.

We seek to complete the separation we feel, and so we join things, marriages, groups, political parties….blogs. We then begin to compete. We are not really competing against each other, though that is how it ends up being expressed. Damn that evolutionary biological imperative for competitive reproduction that colors all of our behavior! As we seek to fulfill our need. But we are not really competing against anyone or anything. We are competing, underneath it all FOR something. We are competing for love.

When we combine that….with the biological compulsion programmed into our DNA….there are stronger and weaker competitors that emerge. Evolution may dictate that the ‘best’ candidate ‘wins.’ But society doesn’t. The winners in societal competition are not the best, merely the strongest. The most mighty. And might, much to the chagrin of all those who are not mighty, makes right.

The strongest, some would say the most ruthless, become our leaders. And because we want to be loved, we follow them.

Below the leaders are the strongest of the followers. they become strong because they sense that being closer to the leader will make them more loved.

They become more loved by the leader (whose love is obviously the most valuable, because IT is presumably the strongest love) and to retain that love, enforce the leaders will. Or….what they believe the leaders will to be. Which just coincidentally, corresponds to what their will wants.

They then enforce this dynamic. They enforce it through the one thing that humans fear….the lack of love, or even worse, the public demonstration that they are unworthy of love. They are shunned.

This brands them and signals to the rest of the society that if you choose to love this person, who is deemed unworthy of societies love, that you risk losing love too. And there is NOTHING worse than that. Nothing.

The history of humanity is in a way, a way that is very important to all of those here, the history of the powerless banding together to create a might greater than the might of the strong leader, and the strong followers.

It is the history of banding together in smaller groups than the greater societal group dominated by the Leader, the Authority, and fighting against the dynamic of Might Makes Right.

It is fighting against the tyranny of Authority for the Rights of the individual. The Right of the individual, above all else….to be loved. Even if they don’t obey the Authority.

We, or we wouldn’t be here, believe that we have the right to be loved, to love each other, and to seek love. We believe that each individual has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of love and happiness…..despite what the societal authorities say.

We believe that no one size of love fits all, that societal love or the love of The State earned by compliance…is not the only love that matters, and that dammit, we will look for OUR love, where and how we please. And we believe that to maintain our right to do that, we must fight for, pass laws about, and Stand. The. Fuck. Up. for each individuals Right to seek love wherever and however that individual thinks s/he can find it.

We believe that there is love to be found outside of The State, outside of the conventions of society. Some of us believe that there is a greater love to be found than the love of our fellow humans. some of us are told that there are fellow humans we are not allowed to love because they are the same sex or have different coloring. Some of us believe that we shouldn’t have to be dependent on anyone or anything in our pursuit to love ourselves.

All of those examples and more indicate that a certain percentage of humans will always be looking for love outside of the context that society and Authoritarians dictate that we may.

IF…if…if, all of us could ever band together into a coalition….then, hahahaha…..WE could become the new Authority. And undoubtedly abuse our authority as we see Authority abusing the rest of us, the rest of the powerless, every goddam day.

But I digress.

Right now, we have just seen such a phenomenon. A group of the powerless, under the Laws and the Constitution of a nation that was founded in the fight against tyranny by men who wanted to love and be loved in a different way than the State said they could be loved, DID band together. In revolt against a tyrant. A tyrant and his Strong Followers who used their political and physical might to dictate what was right.

An Authoritarian who abused his authority so thoroughly that even the Weak followers of societal Authority turned against him, turned against Authority. For a moment.

We elected someone who very powerfully and eloquently spoke against the abuses of that Authority…and those Strong Followers (The Ruling Class) who took advantage of that Authority to grow richer and more powerful under it. We rebelled.

As much as we could, as much as we dared to, only as much as would not get us shunned. And for a bright shining moment, we hoped that this rebellion would be permanent. Alas. We gained, for a moment. We gained the love of working together for a common cause. We gained the Hope of love. We gained some Change in how we are allowed to love and be loved.

And some of those gains will be permanent. But now that moment is nearly over. The hand of Authority, the Authority that grants love…..in the small, cold form of mere comfort from not being shunned….is again closing it’s pale hand around the throat of the society. The status quo is enveloping Change, and choking it back down to a size that is……comfortable. To the status quo.

Only the paradigm has changed, as was, despite our Hopes, all that could really be expected. Human nature did not Change. We are now to be allowed to love and be loved a little more. Love is no longer outlawed, but just discouraged. This is despite its relative smallness…Progress.

And in this long historic fight of love against Authority, each and every small bit of Progress MUST be celebrated.

But, and my were we foolish to Hope for this Change, even for a moment….the vast majority of humans will still look to Authority for the small form of love it can grant. In the form of the comfort of belonging, of not being shunned. Instead of looking for actual love, of allowing themselves to actually be loved. Instead of saying fuck authority and loving each other.

The small love that Authority and Authoritarian society provides, the smallest love of not being actively shunned is, apparently, still more valued.

And of course, the best way to ensure that YOU are not shunned….is to preemptively shun another.

And thus does love die. Thus is it diminished for us all.

For though we do not know it, apparently, whatever Authority we hew to, whatever other groups we may belong to, we belong to one group above all….Humanity.

But …

When one member of the group of humanity suffers, we all suffer. When one member of the group is deprived of love, we are all deprived. When one member of the group is shunned, a piece of all of us is shunned. When one member of the group is tortured, we are all tortured. As long as one member of the group of humanity is in chains, we are all in chains.

Whether we know it or not. Because we are all one in our separation. We are all one in our need to be loved.

And Authority never really loves us. It only loves itself.

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And so this long historic human fight continues. As it always has. As it always will. Until….

I guess….

We all evolve to where love is more important than not being shunned. Until we are all loved. Until we all love each other.

But then, at that moment, we won’t really still be what we now call ‘humans,’ will we?

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We are ALL separate. We ALL want only one thing, above all else, to be loved.

And just as with politics, just as with Change…..only WE can do that. And we can only do it for each other, to each other…..with each other. NO one can do that for us.

And in the end, the love you take….is equal to the love, you make.