From the king to the dictator

The pharmaceutical industry as much as the political status quo, are eager to make all psychosomatic conditions into things it can cure and justify so that instead of questioning our lives and make decisions that can change the conditions, we take pills and conform with it. Every single institution from kinder-garden on, is designed to condition people into accepting someone else’s authority on things that directly affects them.

The fact that psychopathic brains are different to those of other people does not prove that they are genetically developed; the possibility that they became such after performing a certain way throughout their lives is equally affirmable or it would be fairly easy to scan baby’s brains and know who is a psychopath before they are allowed to go to kinder-garden.  I've come across more than a few psychopaths in my life and there are a few aspects worth exploring. Those that I’ve come across have been in good, strong, power or economic positions but if we are to look at people what prism are we looking at them with? What would be the objective prism worth using?  “Humaneness”?  but to be able to understand what we mean by that we would have to agree on so very many things before. Since this is no place for such extensive study, let’s be aware that this is just a spontaneous, superficial look at the question.

One of the most fundamental aspects of being human is the fact that we are social beings. There once existed the “community”, the clan, the legitimate king/queen held the consciousness of the whole and his/her role was to represent and protect it. He/She, as legitimate authority, took the ultimate decision on critical matters and the rest willingly supported it. The legendary monarch inspires us today because he or she upheld the principles of integrity that all “noble” beings were to stand up for and people were made nobles when their acts merited such title. A “visionary”, the monarch set the conscious foundations of a civilization and determined the direction for his people for centuries. Not only the physical foundations were put in place, the laws and principles and how they were to be carried out in their actual lives were set in motion.   

One of the questions worth posing is whether, while in the democratic process authority has gradually shifted from the king to the individual, goods and “authority” itself has been appropriated by many without the consciousness of the whole. Consciousness of the “whole” seems to have disappeared with the Monarch and yet, the individual in political or economic power has become “dictator” of his little kingdom. Wouldn’t dictatorship in fact be the other side of the coin of the King? Illegitimate power exercised through force for the benefit of a few? The “owner” has become the king of the corporation but doesn’t even show up for the funeral. The “owners” of multinational corporations are the head behind the politicians and, like today’s kings, never face the crowd on what they are responsible for. The people making decisions in our times are fairly “invisible”, although that is certainly changing with the internet, that is, with the possibility of “transparency”, in which anyone can access the whole.

Today power is held by people with economic superiority but without awareness of the whole, that is: integrity. The wealth that belongs to the whole is concentrated in a few hands. A form of “Humaneness” is experienced within the particular clans, races, nations, classes, groups but with the same hierarchic structures within each that tend to hold to the recognized patterns in which a few in the top echelon take the decisions that the many are to submit to. Decision making is precisely the main characteristic of authority and legitimate authority is “being”. How individuals actualize their authority or their lack of it, determines their life. Charming, hard working workaholics, running the whole mile to keep the status quo alive but killing life as they go by is the profile of today’s authorities.

An individual cannot be disconnected from the whole of society or from the whole of mankind because their life moves within that whole directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. The family is to the individual what the womb is to the fetus; society is to the family what the body is to the womb and mankind is to a society what the family is to the individual.    

As technology progresses, being aware of what is happening everywhere in the world is a fact and “deciding” on individuals as much as nation’s destiny, whether they live in one’s neighbourhood or in Iran, has become a reality. Direct connection with the woman who is about to die stoned by the crowd is as available as how people are killed and then peed on or cut to pieces and kept as trophies by the military in command. Mankind is witnessing its life in a way that had never before been witnessed and huge masses of individuals are now capable of inclining authorities in the decision making one way or the other.

Having the means to make decisions does not mean having the consciousness to make them and the seizure between the means and the consciousness, is precisely what we are witnessing today with legions of people in power who don’t have the consciousness but hold the means to decide on what affects the whole. Like animals, they are conscious of the physical world and how much of it can be appropriated for their personal benefit or that of their class, but not of life and its scope.