On Freedom and Rights…

 

“All men are by nature free; you have therefore an undoubted liberty to depart whenever you please, but will have many and great difficulties to encounter in passing the frontiers.”
― Voltaire

 

I have begun to winch a little bit every time I hear about someone trying to get equal rights from their government. They do not understand what they are doing. What they in fact are doing is asking and / or demanding recognition of their rights. NO ONE has to ask for rights that are inherent to us by the universe. As soon as we ask permission from the government or anyone else to be allowed to do anything than we are affirming our subservience to that government and allowing one more infringement on our freedom.

I find it a bit sad how easily we are willing to give up our freedom. We do it by asking for permission to be ourselves and we do it when someone fails to recognize our rights and we turn ourselves into their victims.

 

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

– Sigmund Freud.

 

I find it a bit sad how easily we are willing to give up our freedom. We do it by asking for permission to be ourselves and we do it when someone fails to recognize our rights and we turn ourselves into their victims. It seems that this lack of ability to recognize and take responsibility for the freedom of another is the fundamental illness that individuals and societies fall prey to.

Blessings, G

 

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Energy RisingEnergy Rising by G A Rosenberg

 

Conjured AbstractionsConjured Abstractions by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 19 2012

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. ”
–Sigmund Freud

Fear of responsibility has been one of the biggest blocks in my life. I used to believe that taking on responsibility not only meant that I might be failing others but would also seriously limit my freedom.
Luckily since then I have gained much more of an idea of what both words mean.
It sounds cliche but none of us can have true freedom without helping as many others as possible find it as well. True freedom is self-actualization. Part of reaching our full potential is developing our compassion and realizing how interconnected we all our. In other words our responsibility to ourselves is interconnected to that of others.
Somewhere along the line too many of us have been taught that freedom comes mainly with money. If we earn enough we can be free to do whatever we want. Let’s see how that works. It seems far too many have done what they wanted distancing themselves more and more not only from other the suffering of others but from the suffering of the planet as well. Still, they find that they don’t have enough. They are not happy. They don’t feel free. But then how can you be free if you have locked away every bit of your true self? To Be Continued …
Blessings, G

 

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Stonehenge Visions by G A Rosenberg

I got some amazing pictures of Stonehenge today and the above picture came from a bit of play with one

Quote of the Day – February 26 2012

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

Now there’s a quote that gives me chills. Edward L. Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and in many ways could be considered a godfather of modern culture. He was definitely the father of public relations. As a young man he worked for the Committee on Public Relations which helped sell American involvement in WWI to Europeans. He came back home to the United States with the idea that the propaganda model he learned could have peace time applications and so became the first public relations representative.
Among other things that he was responsible for was:

  • Making it publicly respectable for women to smoke in public (by selling the concept as ‘torches of freedom’

  • product placement in movies

  • the first celebrity endorsement of politicians

  • focusing not on selling people what they need but on what they desire and speaking to those unconscious desires thus helping to create consumer culture

These are just some of the reasons why I describe him as a ‘godfather’ of modern culture. Those interested can find out a lot more about Edward Bernays, and other influential members of his family by watching Adam Curtis’s fascinating four part BBC documentary, The Century of the Self. You can download and watch this documentary at
While I dislike most of what he stood for (almost all of it) and many of the applications of it, I have to point out on reflection, that without the idea of being able of merchandising culture, most modern ways of communication and entertainment wouldn’t exist including things like Face Book>

My question would be how do we use these techniques to empower people, to help promote taking responsibility for our own decisions and actions and evolution and promote the ideas of love and compassion rather than greed? For a very long time, we’ve had some pretty destructive memes floating around out there. Can we find healthy ones that promote self-actualization and start propagating them? What do you think they would be?
Blessings, G

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Mind Field by G A Rosenberg

Sky Dragon by G A Rosenberg