Our institutions have failed us. Our government does not
represent us, our media lie to us, our corporations care only about their short
term profits.
That is to be expected.
Institutions in time become their own entity. They begin to look
out for the institution’s interests rather than the interests of the people
they were created to help. It happens inevitably. And then the institution
begins to tell those who are part of it that they should behave in ways different
than a human would, that common sense and morality no longer apply within the
confines of the institution. The commandment “Thou Shall Not Kill” does not apply
to those in the military. The ethic of not evicting a widow from her home does
not apply if you work in the banking industry, the idea of setting a good
example for children is not in the interest of the entertainment industry, nor
is justice a primary concern of the politician or the lawyer. Institutions have
their own requirements and seek to bend humans to their will.
We humans have created human values over the millennia and
when practiced they work quite well. They are the laws and values handed down
by the great religions, by moral and spiritual leaders. But religions have
warped such teachings in ways that promote their own well-being. They place the
individual at their disposal rather than seeing their main function as being to
serve the individuals. They place themselves between God and man, interpret the
words of the prophets and set them down into rigid codes and laws rather than
allowing humans to interact directly with them and have a direct communication
with them.
Our political parties too place themselves in between
individuals and the government they are supposed to control. We are no longer
in control of choosing our fate but are instead played upon by one party or the
other that insists on blaming the other for all that is bad in the nation. They
both realize our instinctual fear of the big institutions, the conservatives
playing upon our fear of big government, the liberals playing on our fear of
big business. And each is right to a degree, but neither is interested in
revealing the bigger picture. Few are the politicians from either party willing
to admit that it is the parties and their donors whose interests are being
served rather than the interests of the citizens.
Institutions create secrets. They hide away all the truths
they do not wish you to see. Few of us are shown the factory farms and
processing plants that treat animals the way no society would if they were more
fully aware. If the greater populace were to see what life in prison was like
we would transform them into places that helped cure prisoners rather than
creating new diseases for them to suffer. The harm our system of doing business
is doing to our environment is seldom shown on television, we see only what is
done in our little part of the world, and then only when we step outside and
away from our televisions.
If we give them the opportunity, our institutions will crush
us individually. Individuals matter little to institutions, they are so much
larger than us. But institutions cannot crush humanity, not if we commit to
human values rather than conforming to the values of institutions. We don’t
need religions to explain to us what “Thou shall not kill” means, nor “Love
your neighbor as yourself”. We don’t need our government to tell us what
country is our enemy, nor do we need corporations telling us what we need to
have in order to be happy. We, human beings, must be masters of the machines we
create, not their slaves. We must decide upon a morality that works independent
of the needs of our institutions, that like to distort our most basic truths.
And the most basic human value is that we are all brothers
and sisters, all members of the same family. Institutions are always seeking to
make us forget that, to emphasize our differences rather than our shared
beliefs and needs. Institutions create the lie of the “other”, the “not us”,
the “them”.
Institutions create fear and doubt, and when we fear and
doubt, we seek protection and safety. Institutions, after evoking our fears to
begin with, offer us protection from what they have caused us to fear. They
offer us a unity that we as humans are always striving for, but it is not the
natural unity but a selective one. It is a partial unity at the expense of the
greater unity, a promise that something is better than nothing. It is the kind
of unity that requires an enemy, the kind that promises peace and security but
only gives us war and a perpetual sense of fear and distrust.
Do not allow yourself to belong to any institution at the
expense of your humanity. Do not put your country above the needs of the planet.
Do not put the company you work for above your need to do what you feel is
right. Do not place your religion above God, nor your political party above the
nation it is supposed to represent. Institutions are useful and often necessary
tools, but we must never let them become more than that. Instead, be a human.
Trust yourself, be yourself. Trust your human qualities. Trust what you know
and feel and believe in as well as the examples of those who have sacrificed to
put humanity above the interests of institutions that would belittle both the individual
and the entirety of humanity of which each of us are a part.
You are a human being and that is a beautiful thing. You are
a part of humanity, and that is even more beautiful still.
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