The Free Radical

Freedom. Peace. Love. Truth.

I’m going with those four words as representing the cornerstones of the revolution. “What revolution?” Okay, the shift. “What shift?” You know, the foundation of the New Earth. “New Earth?” Oh dear.

Okay, Joe Average, I hear ya. There’s still a paucity of evidence in the wider world that anything at all out of the ordinary is occurring; it’s pretty much business as usual, except business sucks more than ever… And yet millions of bloggers and internet commentators keep issuing daily reports about extraordinary events taking place within.

Can we win the war if we can’t find the battlefield? “What war?” Simply, the fight for a better world. “Who are we fighting?” Exactly!

We are so habituated to looking outside of ourselves for every kind of validation that the real battlefield lies abandoned– cue crickets chirping. Our freedoms were taken somewhere out there in the wider world, right? Maybe in the body politic; peace can’t exist because there’s wars going on in foreign nations, eh? No! Fuck no! Our problems amass in the external world because we refuse to deal with them the only place we effectively can: internally. Let’s break this down.

Let’s look at peace. A few well-intentioned activists are busting their asses out there fighting for world peace; they’ve been at it for decades… centuries? I don’t know. But what do you suppose might happen if they were to succeed? I mean, one day people all over the world– a nice percentage of us– finally say “Hey baby, let’s give peace a chance… Yo Leaders, we’d like to try this peace thingy now.” Those in positions of “power and authority” get busy drawing up the most kick-ass peace treaties, social contracts and foreign policies to finally impose peace on the world… And what?… magically every badass with anger issues, every control freak and bully, every deeply disturbed individual in the world will be instantaneously and miraculously relieved of their antagonism because we’ve finally implemented the correct policies for peace? Really? Is that how it works?

Peace is about relationships. It’s personal. Come to think of it, freedom is about relationships too. And love, well duh, that’s gotta be about relationships. How about truth? Each and every one of us has a uniquely different perspective on truth… and that sounds like a relationship to me. So it’s all about relationships, and it’s all very personal.

“But Niels, it’s not me and my friends or my family who are stirring up all the shit. Surely we’re not to blame for the craziness of the world!” First, I have no interest in assigning blame; it does nothing toward finding solutions. Secondly, yes, yes you are stirring up all the shit– constantly. We– every damn one of us– are continuously perpetrating violence against one another… and we’ve learned very well how not to see it.

How much of our social interactions are about controlling/manipulating/influencing the behaviours of others? Damn near all of it! It is widely accepted that controlling and curtailing the boisterous behaviours of our children is considered good parenting. You gotta keep the little bastards in line, right? We begin to learn this subtle form of violence from a very young age.

Who has not heard some child at some point say “Do such-and-such or I won’t be your friend”? As adults we easily recognize the hypocrisy in such a statement. Obviously, anyone who would utter such a boldly manipulative statement is clearly not your friend, either by simple choice or by simple ignorance of what “friendship” actually means. We would all do well to consider carefully what “love, peace” and “freedom” actually mean.

Johnny grows up a bit and develops a crush (gotta love that word “crush”) on a girl at school. He spends two months’ allowance on a bouquet of flowers, gives them to her, and asks her out on a date. They hadn’t had much interaction prior and she answers “Sorry… Johnny is it? Yeah, sorry I’m really not interested. But thanks for the flowers anyway.” Johnny is heart-broken and honestly, a little pissed off. But by what right?

“Here, I will do this nice thing for you… because I expect something nice from you in return.” That’s not coming from a place of love; that’s commerce, kind of like a binding contract. “And if you don’t reasonably meet my expectations… I’m gonna put a hate on you!” Does this not happen countless times a day, every day? “Yes Niels, it’s called normal.”

If normal means “what everybody is doing,” then yes, it is normal. But is it right? What if the person we are being nice to doesn’t really like us because they’ve figured out that there’s no real basis for a relationship? Our expectations are denying their truth and disallowing them any freedom in the matter. “Be nice to me, or else!” There is nothing peaceful or loving in serving up such ultimatums… But we all do it constantly!

I fully realize that what I am saying here basically goes against everything we’ve been taught to believe for lifetimes. But check it: love does not act conditionally; peace does not demand compliance; freedom cannot impose expectations; and truth is what we finally get to deal with once we’ve fully understood and assimilated the previous three statements. What do we want? Change? Then we have to change!

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Intellectually, we’ve convinced ourselves that we understand what the Mahatma was saying… but have we? The transformation of the world lies in the countless details of our moment-to-moment interactions. All of us– every damn one of us– can re-examine those interactions again and again until we see the subtle violence therein contained… and then finally eliminate it.

We currently operate from a competitive, commerce-driven mindset; that’s what we bring to our exchanges, our interactions, our relationships… And the world around us perfectly reflects this. Our kindness needs to be compensated, paid for. We very rarely do things simply because they are the right thing to do. Our first consideration is “What’s in it for me?”

Can you begin to see how different a mindset stemming from freedom, peace, love and truth must be? This transformation is no small thing! And yet, it is only a shift in the details of our interactions. Johnny, can you just give the girl the flowers because she’s even prettier when she’s holding them? And expect nothing in return? Isn’t that what love does? Allow her the freedom to discover and express her unique truth… and be at peace with it because– dammit– it’s the truth!

But what if her mother is sitting beside her through it all? “Oh, be polite dear. You could go on one date.” Being polite is just more politics… and politics eases commerce… and then contracts get fulfilled with lies. And the lie won’t help Johnny one bit in the long run. On the contrary, he’ll likely be out a lot more than just two months’ allowance before his heart really gets crushed. This is the pattern we’ve been playing out for millennia.

If we were living from a mindset (heart-set) based truly in love, peace and freedom, we would never have to remember to be polite. In fact, the word “polite” would cease to exist altogether! Our competitive, commerce-driven paradigm makes us insecure and guarded in our personal interactions. We are afraid of being taken advantage of… of being a chump. The examples of our miserly conduct in everyday affairs is nearly endless… until we end it.

So I humbly ask each and everyone who reads this to consider keeping an eye out for those examples, those instances where we’re trying to manipulate others so we can get what we want. Watch for those moments when we enter a social scene with expectations of how others should act towards us… And then drop it. Stop manipulating; stop formulating secret expectations which others have little hope of consistently fulfilling; stop demanding your “rightful” share. When you act out of love to do the right thing, it is its own reward… after all, you have just made the world a better place… instead of merely balancing the scales of “commerce” where the world remains ugly, unchanged.

Can you imagine acting from generosity? We teach our children to learn how to share, convincing them that it’s the right thing to do… Then why do so many grown-ups have such tremendous difficulty sharing themselves? Perhaps you don’t have much, nothing to spare? We can all share a bit of affection– without demanding anything in return. It costs us nothing… and by just a tiny little bit, it improves everything! That’s a damn good deal.

As we take a good hard look at ourselves and begin to really root out the unreasonable demands we’ve subtly laid upon each other moment-to-moment, day-after-day for a near eternity, and we finally abandon the “equitable trade contracts” which represent our stunted relationships to adopt a carefree stance of unabashed generosity, then everything in our lives will be completely different… and the world will be thoroughly transformed– unrecognizable, beautiful. The onus is on you, as it always has been, as it always will be. You are the battlefield playing field; let’s play!