Love as a threat to the world order

Today I would like to talk about the way children are being raised, and what this does the dynamics of their souls. I would like to talk about materialism, happiness, and the subversive potential of true love.

Perhaps I will start by mentioning a post I read on Facebook yesterday. It was an extremely long post, but I read it all the way, because it was well written and was certainly not absurd. The author mentioned his lessons in high school about the Roman empire, and how it was a very suppressive state which used a philosophy of appeasing the people so it could go about its questionable business as a state.

It gave the people bread and spectacles, and this was done in the supprising insight that a people who were distracted by everyday business did not care about their true and collective well being and prosperity.

The author wanted to draw a parallel between the empire of the Romans and the current state of affairs in his home country, the United States. He claimed the States could just as well, by any standards of imperialism and wealth, be called an empire, which uses the same philosophy as the ancient Romans did, to keep its people diverted from official business, and to keep them subued, passive, sedated, harmless and obedient.

High importance is given to professional sports, and materialism has probably never soared so high. He said it was somewhat controversial, to recognize this in your own contemporary home country, much more difficult to acknowledge than when we analyze some ancient and long gone civilization. It is easy to see the faults from a distance, but when we have our noses pressed to our reality, we can not see or observe our state of affairs quite so independently.

I thought the author made a very good case, and found the article a critical eye opener and a well placed word of caution raising awareness.

Just now, I was thinking about the last years of my life, following a discussion I had with my mother yesterday when she said she would have been much tougher on me had my father not been there to withold her from being more severe. I was angry at her, because she seemed to believe that repression and harshness was the only way to change a person, and I tried to make her see that you cannot change every person in a military fashion, by forcing them to look this way or that way, to dress this way or that way, to behave this way or that way.

It was a shock, to me as a therapist who believes in love and letting things go their natural way, helping to bring the soul of the person into the light of day through patience and understanding, that she was so brutal and rough, and so radically hostile to my views of accepting people as they are for their own benefit and healing.

I was thinking just now about the punishments I received as a child. I remember a lot of yelling, hitting, a lot of hell and upheaval, and I remember growing into a fearful and withdrawn person, I think a lot because of this.

I do not say it is the absolute and ultimate objective truth, but I think my parents are quite rational people. They demand order and strictness, they demand obedience and docility. So they were quite tough in their attempts to raise children who obeyed them and payed attention to their wishes, principles and demands.

I guess most people expect their children to listen, and all but maybe one or two use physical punishment to achieve this, beating their children in the face and on their butts, yelling and shaking them, terrifying them and making them feel scared, hurt and without an exit, help or salvation.

I have noticed that in my case, this led to some behavior of avoiding my parents. I was most relaxed when I was reading for long hours in my bedroom, being on my own and being left alone. I enjoyed mostly going out on trips with my grandfather, riding our bicycle to see some distant aunt, going for a swim or heading to the class of the judo. I loved my grandfather most, because he always gave me a place and time away from home.

My parents, as I said, were like most people. They were very conscientious of their children and wanted to raise them to become exemplary and obedient citizens. They also wanted to be exemplary citizens and parents themselves, and they did provide us with a lot of toys to play with.

So I was trying to get to my feeling just now, about being taken on in such a harsh way, always being critisized and broken down, while at the same time being given a lot of material things to keep myself occupied with. I now feel sorry for my parents, that they seemed to believe in such a life, a life that is harsh and displays a scarcity of love, but is rich in diversions and superficial distractions. It is not a life of love they know, it is a life of deep lack of fulfillment, compensated in a way by tons of self comforting with this and that posession.

It is growing skewed in a way, it is not fulfilling, and it does not lead to joy. It leads to stubbornness and a deeply disturbed clinging to superficial values, which are upheld in a deeply rooted unrational way. It is a second choice life, it is being content with what we have, but not feeling good about who we are. It is not celebrating spirit, but filling up that empty space inside with endless objects from the outside world.

It has made me angry in ways I didn’t understand before. It has left me in a deep separation from my parents, seeking out people with values that were more essential. I tried to find an answer to the way they raised me, by breaking up all contact and going to live a life of poverty among people with more love and a more positive and accepting and celebrating spirit. Living in what you could call a kind of modest commune of hippies in some backstreets in our capital, I found more love, though materially I was very poor.

To make a long story short, I did go back to my parents when the poverty became to deep. I balanced between these two poles, going for love and not posessions, then returning to a life of more luxury paired with a greater isolation, and moving away from it again to the former way of life.

For the moment, I am still a person who lives not enough in acceptance of himself, and who finds too much security in a few material posessions. I am still hesitant to be who I am, and the things around me still compensate too often for the lack of pride I feel inside.

So why am I telling you all this, where is this leading to ?

Well, just like the person who wrote that you can often not see clearly the things that are too close, so did I fail to see clearly the bread and distractions that have kept me appeased in the face of the pedadogic politics of my childhood days. And I think that we can feel that dissatisfaction with the material standard, I think many of us can identify with the feeling that it is not all this superficial wealth that is making a person happy.

So that’s why I say that love is a threat to the capitalist order. Love is what we need, and the inner voice of love that is never silenced in our heart, will keep looking for truth and joy, happiness and fulfillment, through all of the ways we are trying to keep our hunger dead. For some people it is truly a hunger. They may overeat, or oversatisfy themselves with luxuries that say: well, I have a pretty good life. But if you need the food, if you need the luxury, then it must not be there spontaneously and by itself.

Perhaps there are peole, who focus more on the love and the acceptance in the way they raise a child. Perhaps they don’t make their children cry every other second, perhaps they don’t hate their children that much, perhaps they love them and cherish them and celebrate them. And perhaps their children will grow up differently from the common Western child. Perhaps these children will in their turn love other people very much, and will feel good about themselves and not be so hesitant and reluctant, so doubtful to share themselves and be with others. Perhaps these children will live lives of freedom and fulfillment, that is not measured by how much they posess, but by how happy they are just being alive.

Being loved for the first time can make us feel what we were missing, it can make us aware of our misery and our true quest for peace. That is why love is a danger to this world. Love can be unwanted, love can be feared by the politicians of bread and superficial plays, love can be a stranger in the States. Love is a force that pushes the seeds within our hearts through the concrete layers of materialism, and a power that sparks the light of true spirit and inspiration. Love can make us change our lives, love can ignite the deepest struggle, the struggle for authentic celebration of who we are, and love can make us freedom fighters for eternity.

Because love is truth, and truth is deep.

Love goes a long way. Truth goes a long way.

And no matter how you kill it time and again, you can never dispose of the faithful beating of your heart.

So a lot of people are seeking out different values in our current state of capitalism. A lot of people turn to the inner side, to a spiritual life, to a quest for ayahuasca and the death of self, to a path of meditation and the compassion they seek from the Buddha. Like in the sixties, a lot of people are hearing their hearts and getting in touch with truth, and they are for the most part erased from the collective consciousness. They are ridiculed or in more severe cases, beaten down and locked away.

Love is threat for sure in a world of politricks preoccupied with killing truth and silencing the heart.

May love rule, and may material domination not forever be such a killer.

It is not wrong of course for a happy person to have the things he likes, but it is just a fact that having the things we like, does not simply make us that happy person. There is more to this, than simply acquiring wealth. And if acquiring wealth is killing us, why not would we in the end of times be so courageous as to give our hearts a chance as well.

For in the end, life will win, and death I believe, will be no more.