(Concluded from Part 1, yesterday.)

Imagine if my wife had told me how to make my decisions? Imagine if my friends over coffee disagreed with me and pressured me to agree with them?

How would I remain independent in my decision-making in the face of such pressure?

Most Members ended up socializing with each other. Most of us lost our friends and contacts. But the experience and the training were worth it.

Has anyone ever seen Nazi judge Roland Freisler screaming at defendents after their failed assassination attempt on Hitler?

That’s the worst example I’ve ever seen of a judge influenced by external sources. How could a whole nation have come to that point?

Germany saw a massive failure of society to honor free will, independent decision-making – on the part of the regime towards everyone.  That is where things lead when the right of all of us to be free and independent is not protected.

***

In my opinion, our relationships are failing because we don’t honor each other’s free will. We tread upon it and then suggest to the other that we’re just trying to help or doing it because we love them. And love dies under such treatment.

In my case, it’ll be imperative for me to be independent in my decision-making, even if I lose some friends over it.

Michael is quite strict in requiring it of me (1) and I face the task of having to explain to everyone around me why it’s important, why it’s not personal, etc.

I already know why it’s important. My IRB training showed it to me in crystal clarity. That system worked: It provided impartial justice to the claimant.

The systems I create after the Reval (the expanded Golden Age of Gaia, the Michaelangelo Fund, the Gender Equality Project, etc.) will handle such a flow of information and resources that the decision-makers at the center of the operation must be independent, as must I.

The new system still relies on our having integrity but it gives us maximum help in maintaining it.

But you know, having lived in a “collegial” world for eight years, which at that time was a bubble instead of a way of life, I wouldn’t want to live any other way if one has agreed to play a leadership role. (2)

***

The moral of the story – the wider application – is that we as a global society need to make a conscientious effort as individuals to respect the free will and independence of others.

The shift that’s needed in our society is to honor every individual’s right to be an independent decision-maker, not just impartial court officials.

If everyone had the right to make their own decisions, unimpeded and uninfluenced, there wouldn’t be a refugee standing there in front of me.

Free will means just that and the society that fails to defend it, whether at the political level or the level of relationship, suffers in the end.

Allowing others freedom of choice has to become a matter of honor with us and something we feel proud of for the shift from controlling to allowing to stick.

Whether we suffer in loveless, controlling relationships or a whole nation submits to the iron hand of a dictator, societies thrive only when the free will of all their citizens is respected. (3)

Footnotes

(1) No family member or influential friend can work for any organization that I’m head of. No nepotism. No confictual situations. Michael requires it.

As a result of this, because Kathleen and I recently entered into sacred partnership, she has agreed to return to her blog, in accordance with Michael’s requirements.

(2) A collegial world is one where colleagues treat each other with the same fairness they dispense to the claimant.

Colleagues were to respect the independence of their fellows and not discuss their cases with each other or with the decision-maker. It could only be discussed with the Legal Dept. or our common supervisor.

This “collegiality” allowed us to make the difficult decisions which otherwise we might be criticized for.

(3) Obviously no one has right to harm another. My right to free will stops at the point where I abuse, attack, or in other ways harm another. The free will of one requires protecting if the free-will act of another threatens to harm them.  Hence the legal and justice systems.

I originally said “rigorously respected” because in the beginning of a change in social and individual behavior, a degree of rigor may be required to make the shift. Afterwards it becomes a new behavior pattern or habit and rigor is not required.