I’d like to continue my discussion of the notion of human rights and related subjects, if you’d permit me. I think the discussion important, perhaps more so than ordinarily because of the period of history we’re in.
I’m not sure why this discussion is coming up now and why I feel a need to write on it today, but I do want to follow my inner guidance on a matter such as this.
In a service-to-self (or self-serving) society, we tend to remember our rights and forget our constraints. We also tend to forget others’ rights and remember their constraints. I (and others) call this the “self-serving bias.”
In a service-to-others (or other-serving) society, we’ll probably find ourselves focussing on the rights of others and on our own constraints. I’d imagine that we’ll wish others as little constrained as possible while showing maximum restraint ourselves, out of our love for others.
Exactly the kind of impact that things like the self-serving bias have on us make it necessary to have rules and laws in a self-serving society. The self-serving bias is sometimes very hard to see. Operating self-servingly brings on feelings which can be deceptively seductive.
Arrogance, for instance, as long as we don’t incur a penalty for it, is quite acceptable and even pleasurable. But its countervailing experience of shame is unacceptable and unpleasurable. Enough shame and we tend to value arrogance less, which I think is a natural corrective. We talk about “healthy” shame and tend to value its rise – as long as it’s in another’s field of experience and not ours.
A self-serving society uses a zero-sum estimation of the value of outcomes. We believe that not everyone can win. If someone wins, another loses and we determine not to be the one who loses. I was amused to hear the Boss (AAM) say the other day that the society we’re headed for is “win/win/win/win/win.”
If we were in that blissful, Fifth-Dimensional state, none of what we’re discussing here would be necessary. Like NESARA (the abundance program), it’s only necessary during the interim and perhaps to assist us to get there.
In a service-to-other society, we wouldn’t hurl charges at each other, use spin, insinuate things about each other, backbite, accuse, etc. But in a society that we envision as extremely dangerous, where people are seen as competitors for scarce resources, where victory is seen as going to the strongest, which is how we look at things in deep Third Density, all of these ways of being are seen simply as survival skills. We “look out for number one” and want to be the winner.
Without a knowledge of the fact that we live eternally, thinking this one life is all we have, without a knowledge of the natural law, thinking that everything is permissible providing we’re not caught, we make a lot of “bad” and “wrong” choices.
And our argumentation is simply designed to see us win or cover up our failings, defeats and mistakes. That’s the society that we’re emerging from. And to a large extent, at least socially, perhaps not personally, emerging from it requires our restraint.
It requires us to stop. It would be far better if, out of love, we wouldn’t think of harming another, but it’s enough to simply stop.
We in fact do live many lives and within a social order that is governed by natural laws, the ones of most importance to us being karma, freewill, and attraction. If we, as protesters wanting a new and equitable social order:
- behave in ways that invoke the law of karma to educate us, we can lose that which we gain by less than civil and compassionate means.
- behave in ways that don’t honor another’s free will, providing that the other is not harming or injuring us, what we build will be overturned, especially as the energies rise across this planet.
- behave in ways that promote sorrow, fear and anxiety, then sorrow, fear and anxiety are what we attract to ourselves.
This is not a time in our history to behave in small ways with each other. Instead it’s a time to examine everything we do and say and ensure that we’re contributing to the desired outcome and not detracting from it.
It’s not a time to go for the small victory, the cheap shot, the easy flick of the finger. If that could be said about any time, it can be said about this time now.
What is called for is such a great deal of restraint from us all in the area of social relationships that only an act of faith will call it forth. Looking around us, at the serious inequality we see, at the suffering visible in seniors, the sick, the disabled, and the poor, we tend to forget the road that will lead to the desired outcome: a world that works for everyone. (1)
We tend to want instead the instant gratification that comes from hurling an insult, throwing a rock, or striking back. But speaking truth to authority, declaring our opposition, and refusing to cooperate is what we need to focus on and, I think, will prove enough – more than enough.
Our old ways will no longer serve us. Not this time. Not in this era. We have to be willing to be among the first to go a different route to get to the place we all desire.
Footnotes
(1) The phrase originates with Werner Erhard:
“Each of us has the opportunity, the privilege, to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us.” (Werner Erhard, A World That Works, 1980, cited at https://www.worldthatworks.org/.)
“Transformation does not negate what has gone before it; rather, it fulfills it. Creating the context of a world that works for everyone is not just another step forward in human history; it is the context out of which our history will begin to make sense.” (Werner Erhard – A Shot Heard Round the World: A World that Works for Everyone at https://www.scribd.com/doc/143329822/Werner-Erhard-A-Shot-Heard-Round-the-World-A-World-that-Works-for-Everyone
See also Werner Erhard, The Hunger Project: The End of Starvation. Creating an Idea Whose Time has Come. San Francisco: Hunger Project, n.d., p. 3.