If I only knew then – Me, Paul, and Dad

(Concluded from Part 1, yesterday.)

I’m feeling reflective at Xmastime. Happens every year.

I’ve been looking at leadership lately because the Reval approaches. It’s going to be quite a shock to the system to be suddenly rich and I want to do everything I can to lessen the impact of want and oppression on us.

Our leadership needs to depart from old paradigms; hence I’m thinking about the old paradigms we need to depart from right now.

***

The antithesis of freedom, which is the new paradigm, is domination. Dictators dominate.

What makes a dictator is how far a person is willing to take things. The Night of the Long Knives, when Hitler murdered the opposition? Pouring copious quantities of mineral oil down the throats of his enemies like Mussolini? A suitcase nuclear bomb?

Every step that Hitler took, including his invasion of Russia, saw a well-prepared, technologically-advanced nation overpower an unprepared, undeveloped, smaller nation. Finally it awoke a couple of industrial giants who stopped and overwhelmed it.

How far was Hitler prepared to go? He was prepared to exterminate his “enemies “- Jews, communists, gypsies, Russian soldiers, the disabled, slave labor, etc.

Draw a great big line under here.

On this side of the line lie two features: First, impulses driven by the baser desires, emanating from the self-serving thought-structure we call the “ego,” and, second, a set of beliefs that leaves the person and their groups in control of the situation: social Darwinism, racial supremacy, gender domination, whatever can be used to ensure control.

On this other side of the line lie two features as well: First, the tug of conscience beginning to be felt to the extent that it affects choice and, second, the recognition dawning through whatever means that each individual, barring medical, biological, legal, or other circumstances (like a baby’s age or incarceration for murder), has freedom of choice.

Never mind where this sense comes from; they recognize freedom of choice as an inalienable right short of harming another and see it as a defensible principle and stand.

I don’t want to exaggerate but, in coming back from being the policeman of the world at 28 while studying karate, to where I am now is an example of following this social-maturation pattern.

I suppose that’s how I know it, from seeing it in my own life.

A wave of love sweeps up from my heart and I think: If I only knew then what I know now….