Drinking the Kool Aid

We drink the Kool Aid when our first fealty is not to ourselves.

Man as conformist

Institutional violence kills vastly more people than criminals do. War is conceived and executed by the sane and sober, by institutions whose chief feature is conformity.

Is there anything more dispiriting than sameness?

Slave mind

A slave mind seeks to please and placate other minds. It is conformed, domesticated and adulterated, sensitized to reward and punishment. It is “going down into Egypt” and eking out a half-life in the shadow of someone else’s granaries.

“Unless you become again as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Little children have free minds. Look at them! They know what they want and they do it.

Little patriot

For as long as we thrive on competition, we thrive on violence.

What did school teach me? How to fear failure. How to conform.

Education is derived from the word for “drawing out.”

 

Man as disciple

Discipline has nothing to do with subjugation, suppression or standing at attention. It does not mean replacing one pattern of behaviour with another. It means “to learn.”

We must be completely free in order to learn. Freedom begins with the realization of how trapped we are.

The least free are the most conventional.