Are We Really Independent?
Happy Independence Day to those in the USA. I began considering “independence,” which caused me to re-read a page from one of my books, WHAT ARE WE THINKING? IT MATTERS.
And on page 26, this is what I read . . . “We’ve learned everything we know and what we know becomes patterns over a lifetime; imprints. It’s the same for all humans.
Just consider for a moment that everything you know has been taught to you — everything. Even taking an online course is a self-taught method in which new information becomes understood. From birth to now, we’ve absorbed canyons of information.
. . . Warlords and how they target children age six, for their armies, was being discussed on a National Public Radio show. I listened intently. The expert explained, “They prefer them at that age because children so young, 1) are empty of thoughts, 2) seek to please, and 3) are fearless, and therefore easier to fill, to program.” To pattern, mirror . . . to kill?
Brilliant thinking and how horrific as hell that kind of thinking was. Yet, as a mother of two sons, I considered how I filled them with information daily. Then they went off to school and were further “filled.” They watched TV programs, movies and read books that continued filling them with information. Their friends filled them, as did their friend’s parents. They were filled by the experience of the environment, family, economics, culture, religion, etc. The same thing happened to the rest of us. And, according to where we lived, was the information with which we were filled. The proof of being filled, is what’s there in your brain/mind right now and in mine, and his and her’s, and all over the Internet and the news, from the brain/minds of others.
. . . You don’t need to research anything to know that between the ages of birth and six years (in utero too?), we’re filled with foundational information, and all of that information may become knowledge and perhaps later wisdom or, . . . a detriment to our time here?
Sally Kempton, author and spiritual teacher, summed up several of my random thoughts perfectly, ‘It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.’”
So I wondered how truly “independent” we all are, on this July 4th, 2020, and how absolutely dependent on our “inner” content, we all really are . . . Humans are a species that must be trained, educated, taught—to imitate? To mirror? And depending on how we were, and are, trained, and how we train others, is how “independent” it seems we will all be . . .
What are we thinking? How have we been trained? It does matter. Knowing may be the beginning of true independence.
[Excerpt: WHAT ARE WE THINKING? IT MATTERS. (2019, Amazon).]