Demand More

Freedom is more than a political goal. It is a psychological state, as well as a spiritual quest.

When we are born, we arrive into a world where there is little freedom. It is true that the laws of many countries guarantee freedom. But it is also true that such laws are given little respect. If you read the law books of many countries today, you would think that the entire world exists in a paradise, such are the promises bestowed by the state.

The problem of freedom is not a problem of law. A good law is worthless if it is never implemented, if it is never followed, if it is never respected. The problem of freedom is a psychological problem, a spiritual problem.

You see, slavery still exists today, but it has taken on different forms. It used to be the case that slavery was a form of physical servitude. You were shackled and then bought and sold in a market and owned by a master. This form of slavery is close to extinction. People became disgusted with this form of slavery, because they realized that it was inhuman to purchase another person, that it was against nature, against civilization, against justice. So it was gotten rid of.

But slavery still exists today, except that its nature is different. Slavery went into a cocoon and emerged in a different form. Now, more than ever, slavery remains as a mental state.

It is important to understand that slavery has existed on this planet for thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. Throughout history, there have been rebellions against this slavery — spirited, inspiring rebellions that have lashed out against the mental conformity that exists on this planet. Nations have rebelled against their masters, both foreign and domestic, and called for societies based on liberty and equality. People held in bondage have taken up the sword and rebelled against their shackles. There is no difference between the rebellions of Spartacus and the rebellions of Washington, Kosciusko, and Louverture — all these leaders were rebels, motivated by higher principles than the ones shoved down their throats by their oppressors.

But these political leaders stand in the shadows of the great rebels who have brought psychological and spiritual freedom. The Mahaviras, the Christs, the Mohammeds, the Krishnas, the Buddhas — those individuals who have taught that freedom exists here and now, that life can be experienced with joy instead of sorrow, that we are all creative masters of the future — those individuals who have laid the groundwork for a greater evolution in human consciousness and thought: they are the true rebels. And it is the duty of every freedom-seeker to aspire to the greatness of these truly free souls.

When we talk about rebellion, we should not think of picking up a gun. History teaches that every great revolution committed with violence, no matter how noble the cause, has never brought real freedom. The degree of oppression may change, and may even be lightened; but oppression, remains, nonetheless. The grand rhetoric of the American Revolution produced great freedom, but also kept millions enslaved and killed millions of indigenous people as well. The lofty ideals of the French Revolution laid the groundwork for Napoleon and the deaths of millions in Europe. And these are the “good revolutions” recorded by history — how much more dark and terrifying those revolutions committed in the name of tyranny!

Rebellion is a spiritual goal, a psychological goal. Rebellion means to de-program, to examine all of this brainwashing that we have been given and which has been instilled since Day One of existence and discard that which is harmful, that which is oppressive, that which is enslaving. Rebellion means to question everything we have been taught and to accept those ideas, and only those ideas, which lead to joy and happiness.

When you are happy, you are never static. Happiness is always on the move, always pushing forward. When a fish stops swimming, it will die because it will not be able to move the water through its gills, and thus will not be able to breathe. Happiness is always on the move as well, always searching for an expansion of human consciousness, for new ideas, for new creative outlets. When you are happy, you become like that fish that is always swimming in the stream of life, moving from one moment to another in a state of contentment.

We really need to be aware of how much indoctrination we have received concerning how we should behave, act, and think. We are truly brainwashed in so many ways, trained to act as slaves in so many ways. This is the basic reality of society today: the social conditioning we act out on a daily basis, and the conditioning we instill in our children.

Consider just a few examples. Consider our attitudes toward debt. When you are in debt, that means that you owe something to another, that someone possesses power over you. Yet look around and see how many messages there are on how important it is to purchase a home (which requires going into debt), or purchase a fancy car, or have credit cards. To be in debt is to make yourself a slave to someone else, to be under their control. Yet people affirmatively make the choice to be in servitude — this is a strange thing, yet so many millions decide that this is a good idea, every year.

We are told that you must be married. When you are married, that means that you owe someone else your loyalty for the rest of your life. Now, if you are truly in a loving relationship that will last a lifetime, that is a wonderful thing, a great blessing from the universe. But it is a rare thing, as well. Think back over your life and see how many friends and lovers you have had, how impermanent life is, how you have changed over the years. To make a choice to live with someone else, to love someone else, for the rest of one’s life — indeed, to make a commitment that is binding under the law — is a very large choice to make, one that is filled with difficulty. Yet so many millions make this choice every year, never understanding the choice they are really making, never understanding if they will be true to themselves in the process.

It is so important that people consider their religious beliefs. This is a very sensitive topic, but it is unfortunately the case that there is a great deal of slavery in religion. This is because there is so much power and wealth that goes into the institutions behind those religions. When you are a priest, or a head of a religion, you possess power over others, you can make people think anything you want. Such positions, by their nature, attract people who want to have control other people. You think that the power to tell people what to think and believe — indeed, to control the deepest and most precious beliefs of life — is not attractive to weak-minded individuals? Some of the biggest purveyors of hatred today are the priests and the imams who occupy positions of power all over the world.

Now, please understand me, I am not disparaging all priests or all religious leaders, for there are many who are genuinely spiritual and loving people as well. But that is true of every profession: there are good and bad lawyers, good and bad doctors, good and bad teachers. The difference is that religious leaders hold power over others, and such power by its nature is tempting, is corrupting, is enslaving.

And look at all the people who cling so desperately to the dogma of religion. See how filled they are with fear, how they have to follow every rule or else go to Hell, how they live their life based on archaic rules made thousands of years ago. The Earth belongs to the living, does it not? Yet the rules of the dead hold sway over these individuals. Some people will not even associate with other people who believe in different gods, so afraid they are of breaking the rules. Look at the fear of these people. This fear then becomes the seedling of future hatred and ill-will — the seedling of future slavery on this planet.

It is OK to have a religious belief that is not tied to any particular creed or dogma, to conceptualize the universe and God in a way different from others. There is nothing wrong with this.

What is needed now is rebellion. Not the rebellion of a gun, for that will not accomplish anything lasting, but a rebellion of psychology, a rebellion of spirituality. It is a rebellion that calls for people to simply examine what it is they hold true, and why. There is so much that is so beautiful in this world, that is so precious, but too often we fail to see it because it falls outside of our focus. We are too busy enslaving ourselves to certain mindsets or looking for ways to get into debt to see the real beauty of life, the real joy in life.

The greatest gift that nature has bestowed to human beings is the capacity to be free. Liberty is the defining characteristic of humanity. Do we not then have a duty as humans to exercise this liberty? To question what we have been taught? To determine for ourselves what is true, and what is not?

One of the hardest things to realize about slavery is that slavery is an attractive option for many people. In a world of slaves, to be free is a difficult thing. Many people choose the quick and easy path precisely because it is quick and easy, no matter how obvious the shackles. You cannot wake up someone who is pretending to be asleep; and you cannot make someone be free when they’d prefer to be a slave.

But it is also true that as history proceeds, as human consciousness evolves, slavery becomes ever more a thing of the past. There will be a day when all of humanity can exist in a state of true freedom. And we can catalyze this future by instituting an inner rebellion in our own lives. When we exercise freedom in our own lives, then we shine like a beacon onto the world, informing others that it is possible to live another way, to think different things, to act in a manner that is true to ourselves and not to the laws of the oppressor. It is possible to lead by example and show others that freedom is possible, indeed, inevitable, if you only want it.

This is what is meant by rebellion.

Depending on who you ask, anywhere from one quarter to one half of Americans — anywhere from 75 to 150 million people — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder.

If we are to believe these statistics, there are literally tens of millions of people today, or even hundreds of millions of people, who have trouble finding happiness.

America today is filled with so many alienated, struggling people. There is so much loneliness. Even in crowded places, people feel alone.

And there is so much hardship. You have to work very hard in America today if you want any chance of bettering yourself. If you want to have basic necessities such as food and health care, you must pay for those things; they are not provided. If you want to have a stimulating job with good career opportunities, you must take out a loan for many hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a diploma that will get you such a job. If you want to own a home, you have to go to areas with little development, places like the desert, to find an affordable piece of real estate.

In what time period has a civilization ever flourished in a desert? This is where America finds itself today.

Why so much hardship and suffering? America suffers because America is no longer free. It is no longer free because America is an empire.

People forget that there are great costs associated with maintaining an empire. An empire needs taxes to fund the military. An empire needs strong police powers — powers such as indefinite detentions and general warrants — if it is to control dissent and maintain authority.

But there is also a psychological cost associated with an empire — the cost of lies. An empire must lie. It must lie continually, to the rest of the world and to its citizens.

For example, an empire has to lie about its reasons for war. Typically, it has to say that invading another country is an act of self-defense, even when this isn’t true. Somehow, the American government convinced its people that the invasion of Iraq was an act of self-defense, despite the fact that Iraq had no economy and no army to speak of. This was a tremendous lie. Even the Nazis claimed that invading Poland was an act of self-defense.

Then there are the lies that come from the atrocities committed by the empire — torture, rape, summary executions. All empires commit such atrocities, and all empires deny they are taking place. Teenage boys and girls fresh out of high school suddenly find themselves armed with the tools of a grand inquisitor.

There are numerous lies in an empire. The government lies, the president lies, the media lies, the politicians lie. There are lies about the state of the economy, the state of the war, the state of the country in general. There is a great cost in having to listen to the lies and determine for yourself what you believe and what you don’t believe. It gets very tiring to have to piece through all the lies.

And when you are constantly surrounded by so many lies, you stop believing other people. You stop seeing the world as a place that is beautiful, because lies are not beautiful. Lies are very ugly. And when you have to go through all this ugliness all the time, everything in life starts to seem ugly.

Is it any surprise that so many people today are so unhappy, and suffering? How can anyone possibly be happy when they must work so hard for so little while being told nothing but lies, over and over? This is a hell I describe, yet this is the reality.

There is no greater joy in living than the joy of freedom. I mean freedom in a spiritual and psychological sense — the two are related. When you are free, you have complete liberty in your thoughts and your actions. You can choose for yourself what you want to do, what you want to feel, what you want to think. There is a great beauty in feeling this sense of control over your life, knowing that the future is yours to mold as you see fit.

This joy is absent today, for millions of people. It is absent because freedom is no longer the concern of America. And this is a great tragedy, because freedom was supposedly one of the main purposes for why America was founded in the first place.

When you look around and you see so many people unhappy today, so many people who cannot live in joy, who have to medicate themselves so that they can get up in the morning, what you are witnessing is a land that is bereft of its freedom, that is swimming in lies and mired in debt.

Today, Americans suffer from their empire. It is difficult to see this, but this is the truth. They suffer from high taxes, they suffer from oppressive government, and they suffer the psychological burdens that must weigh on them as a result of the aggression committed in their name.

I know that the instinct for liberty and joy is so pervasive in humanity that if people could just see the burdens they must go through in their everyday lives to sustain the barbarity of their military government, they would immediately reject all participation with it. But there is a lot of brainwashing that must be done away with if this is to happen.  We have all been so brainwashed since birth to follow authority, to worship the government and the churches and the various noble families who find themselves placed into power over and over again, we have forgotten our instinct to just exist in simple joy.

There will come a point when the hardships are so tremendous, and the suffering so total, that even the most hardened adherents of the status quo will raise their hands to an emotionless heaven and ask for assistance. But assistance will not come from the skies; assistance will only come when that person looks deep down inside and sees how totally used they have been, taken advantage of by the powerful so as to sustain a monument of falsehoods — a monument to empire.

We can seek freedom now, here, at this very moment. Freedom requires nothing more than the realization that we are in control of our lives at every second. When we accept responsibility for that control, we exist in a state of joy because we become the authors of the future.

It is possible for America to be happy again, to throw out the pills and get up from the therapist’s chair and live in joy. It is possible for the entire society to live in this joy. But it will only happen when Americans, individually, take responsibility for their freedom. And it will only happen when Americans end their empire.

If you went to a zoo, and went to the lion exhibit and saw the lions cowering in fear and baaing like sheep, you would think something was terribly wrong.

You would wonder why the lions, with their fierce growls, their sharp claws and their cunning instincts would be behaving so strangely. You would be amazed to see such powerful, energetic animals milling without purpose, afraid to act in their own manner.

When you see people today, you can wonder the same thing. Here is an animal with such capacity for genius, and beauty, and purpose. Yet by and large, such gifts go unused.

Today, people have lost sight of their abilities to shape the future. They have grown accustomed to accepting things the way they are, without any sense that things can change in a positive fashion.

I write this in a world where exploding gas prices, growing shortages in food, and rising casualties from natural disasters threaten to make conditions on this planet increasingly difficult and harsh. It is so easy to look at all these things taking place in the world today — economic turmoil, political apathy, militarism, growing social unrest, climate change and resource depletion — and conclude that nothing can be done.

But this is an answer born of laziness. It is an answer that ignores the fact that the lion can roar if it wants to. We forget that this direction can be changed, if people want it to be change.

Humanity has never before faced the convergence of so many problems at one time. It is not enough that nations still go to war with each other for resources, still threaten each other with nuclear weapons — they do so at a time when ice caps are melting, when there are 6 billion plus people on the planet, when people are starting to riot over food in many places and when oil resources will only be more expensive from now on.

The old ways of thinking — acting like sheep — will not provide any solutions to these crises. Human thinking must advance and evolve to a higher place, a place that allows for more meaningful and lasting solutions to the problems of the present. The lion will have to roar like a lion if it wants to solve the problems it has caused by acting like a sheep.

It is possible to imagine a world with more joy, more happiness, more freedom. It would look very different than our world today. It would be a world where people were taught from birth their true natures, and the power they have to control and shape their futures. The lion would know that it is a lion; and a pride of lions, acting in their true natures, would be unstoppable against any problem, any enemy.

In order for the lion to recognize its true nature, there is one thing it must do. It must confront its fear. It is a scary thing to think that we have more power over our lives than we think. It is scary because we are unaccustomed to thinking ourselves as powerful. The lion who has never roared will be scared to try it out. Yet this is what must be done.

The root cause of all the problems today in this world derive from fear.

If fear can be tackled, then the world will be OK. People will be OK.

And the best place to tackle fear is in your own life. Look at your fears, confront them, lay them to rest. Stop baaing like a sheep and start roaring like a lion.

That will make all the difference.

The toughest task in this world is to confront something that we are afraid of doing.

This seems like an obvious proposition; but if it were obvious, then people would be more willing to face their fears.

I firmly believe that our purpose on this Earth — the reason we as humans exist at all — is to evolve. Not biologically evolve (although that may be happening), but to spiritually evolve. Everyday, our task on this planet is nothing more than to break down the barriers of our own minds and to trek onward into the ever expanding terrain of freedom.

The barriers that stand in our way are the barriers we have constructed ourselves. They are the barriers of fear. These barriers represent the lessons we must learn if we are to move forward in our lives, to find greater happiness and joy.

They are individual barriers. A man who is afraid of his parents will have to learn how to handle them if he is to find greater happiness in life. Or a woman may be scared to confront a past instance of abuse.  One could give a million examples of a fear.  Everyone has something, or somethings, they are afraid to confront, that they would wish would go away. The individual examples don’t matter; rather, it is the fact that such fears exist at all which act as the challenge to individual growth.

Tackling such fears takes courage. Courage does not mean aggression, or militarism. Courage is simply a sense of confidence, born of self-love, that such fears can be tackled. One must carry with him or her the intention to tackle the fear; and, grounded in such intention, one can then confront the fear once and for all and move on with things.
Once the light of courage is cast into the shadows, the fear is minimized, and then goes away forever. The fear goes away because the fear never really existed at all. It was all in your head.

It is the job of leaders to display this courage. This is why we have leaders at all. A leader without courage is a leader in name only. No doubt, the disease of fear can spread rapidly, but courage, too, is an emotion that can be shared with others. And a leader who is filled with courage can be the shining star of his or her people.

If we expect to have any fighting chance in dealing with climate change and oil depletion, then we will have to rethink our conception of energy.

To be plain, the energy free ride we’ve received from fossil fuels — cheap, abundant, and easy to refine — is over.

Every week, oil prices hit new records. Last week, they were at $112 a barrel.

Last year, oil prices were $75 a barrel.

In 2003 — just five years ago, and before the war in Iraq — the price of a barrel of oil was under $25 a barrel.

Oil is the blood of civilization. It powers everything. It is used in every manufacturing process and is the key component of plastic, which is ubiquitous in our society. It is used to make fertilizer and power tractors — the basic elements of modern food production.

Without oil, our lives change dramatically, and not for the better. All the modern conveniences we take for granted are a result of cheap energy, of cheap oil.

Because oil is so important, it is no surprise that the control of oil has led to war. This is what led the British to seek control of the Middle East and install puppet kings in the 1920s, and what led the United States to continue this legacy after World War II. It’s why the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1953, and why the United States gave weapons to Iraq in 1980 against a nationalist Iranian regime. It’s why the United States went to war with Iraq in 1990 and rescue Kuwait — to preserve the balance of power in the Middle East and preserve its access to cheap oil.

It’s why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003: to control the oil of the Middle East.

Today, people are beginning to suffer from the effects of high oil prices. They are the poor, the marginalized, the invisible — the people who cannot afford to pay the high premiums for gas in cities without functional public transportation (e.g., cities in states west of the Mississippi), who have to choose between food and energy (and God forbid that there is a health need, because health care is largely unavailable as well), whose faces are not the faces that you see on the six-o-clock news because they are neither light-skinned nor rich (so there must be no newsworthy stories about them); today, at this very moment, it is these millions who act as unchosen vanguards of a future without cheap energy.

And their experiences appear to indicate that life without cheap energy will be very difficult indeed.

There is so much hope placed on technology — fuel cells will save us, or solar power, or wind power, or geothermic, etc. The list is endless, the snake oil salesman undusting their tried-and-true techniques to get a little private funding (or even government funding) on the hope that the energy free ride can continue.

In the meantime, there continues to be little concern over the effects of oil: that the use of cheap oil is melting the polar ice caps and leading to a world of potentially dramatic changes in terms of environment.

Oil has allowed humanity to live a way of life that is just not sustainable. This is especially true for Americans. Americans are five percent of the world population, but produce 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, consume 25% of the world’s resources, and generate roughtly 30% of the world’s waste. If everyone in the world lived like Americans, we would need the resources of four Earths. That isn’t possible. We only have one Earth.

Yet countries like India and China see the American way of life and they are motivated to obtain it as well. For centuries, so many countries have been mired in poverty and oppression. They see the good life of America — a society powered by cheap energy, and all the benefits of that — and they want that way of life as well.

As the prime users and beneficiaries of cheap oil, Americans will have to take the lead in coming to terms with its overuse. They will have to take responsibility for an unsustainable way of life, and start to develop a new way of living — one that is more sustainable and healthier. Americans will have to give up some of the comforts and benefits of cheap energy. That is a difficult thing to accept, but if there is any chance of dealing with the effects of climate change and expensive energy in the future, then it will have to be done.

We are not talking about buying Priuses and putting the thermostat lower. Our habits, assumptions, and behaviors are intimately tied to our thinking about energy: that it is cheap, plentiful, and harmless to the environment. None of these things are true anymore. Energy is no longer cheap; it is no longer plentiful (at least with regard to fossil fuels); and it is now generally accepted science that the use of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide, which is contributing to climate change.

We need a totally new way of thinking that is based on that reality. Then we will be able to successfully deal with the problems that arise from the consumption of cheap energy.

Think about how difficult that is. I write these words on a computer made from plastic (and thus made from oil), powered by energy coming from an outlet in my wall that comes from electricity (produced either by natural resources such as coal or even nuclear power). If I am hungry, I will go and eat food that was grown with fossil-fuel based fertilizers and gas-powered tractors, and delivered by a gas-powered truck to a grocery store, where I went and drove my gas-powered car. Every moment of my current existence and all of my basic needs are based on the availability of cheap energy. This will all change in the near future.

Instead of waiting for the effects of this to ripple through society — and those effects will be harsh — people need to start affirmatively changing their lives. The best way to do this is to live a life where less energy is consumed. Live in smaller communities, walk more, use less energy; the suburban sprawl that we have generated in the past 50 years must come to an end. People will have to start living together again as they once did before the advent of the suburb.

This may mean a return to urban areas, but new (and better) models of social living can be created as well. Suburbs can be transformed to incorporate elements of food production — yes, growing food in the suburbs — so that food is local and doesn’t have to be transported hundreds of miles by truck to get where it needs to go. In fact, all sorts of manufacturing and light industry can be recreated within the suburb so that all basic needs are met within a small radius. There is simply no need for our goods and services to be manufactured in China and then shipped (by a gas-powered ship) to the United States. This may benefit the industrialist who saves on cheap labor, but it is destructive to the common good and to the environment as well. American industry will have to be reborn and retrofitted for sustainability and incorporation into the community.

But the most important change takes place in the mind. We have to learn to recognize the waste of everyday life and seek to change it. When you walk into a drug store, and find yourself surrounded by aisles and aisles of plastic goods, consider the energy use (and the oil use especially) in manufacturing all those plastic goods and shipping them to that store. Consider how many of those items will be wasted. That way of life is just totally unworkable in a world without cheap oil. It is nice to go into a upscale grocery store and see so many different items from around the world — but that way of life is just not workable without cheap oil. We’ll probably all have to eat locally grown food in the near future if we expect to meet our food demands.

We’ll have to rediscover the fact that global problems — no matter their size and scope — can be best met by local solutions. Let the people, at the local level, come up with the solutions on their own and they will learn to take care of themselves. This is the essence of American-style democracy, and in reality, that way of life is the key in confronting the challenges of the 21st century.

Everything I’ve described here will become obvious in the coming months, if it is not obvious already. Oil will climb higher, more people will suffer, the economy will falter as it starts to stall on the decline of cheap energy — cheap oil is its blood. At some point, the news of melting of polar ice will become difficult to avoid and shut out. This is all inevitable.

What is not inevitable is the reaction to these events. They may seem catastrophic, but these problems can be managed. But that will require effort, and a change of thinking about the world we all live in. It will require a recognition of reality. Sometimes, reality is the most difficult thing in the world to accept.

The American people and their leaders continue to avoid confrontation with a harsh but necessary truth.

Since World War II, Americans have assumed that their country has been the most powerful country on Earth. America’s economic strength, military might, and nuclear capability have presented an illusion of unparalleled supremacy.

Americans believe, even today, that no one can beat America.

Yet this truth is being challenged by the reality of failure — the failure of Iraq. Despite amassing a force of 330,000 troops — 150,000 soldiers and another 180,000 mercenaries — America is being beaten by a rag-tag group of rebels who have nothing but guns, road-side explosives, and the support of the people.

This is all they need.

Sun-Tzu, writing 2,400 years ago in his treatise The Art of War, noted: “When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength . . . There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”

He concluded, “In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.”

Five years after invading Iraq, America does little but engage in a lengthy campaign. It lays siege to the country, but cannot produce victory.

America’s military strategy has failed. America has lost Iraq.

America lost Iraq because its leaders did not plan ahead. America’s leaders assumed victory, because they assumed America’s military might.

Assumptions do not win a war.

Still, the people and their leaders hope for eventual victory. They cannot admit that the war is over — that America has lost. This is why the Democratic party — despite its majority in Congress — has no intention of cutting off funds for the war. They do not want to be the ones responsible for America’s perceived “failure” to win.

But there is nothing left to win in Iraq. Iraq is lost.

So instead, the war rages on. And because America’s leaders realize they will be utterly despised if they act as the messengers of this truth, they keep it hidden. They insist the war can be won.  But they do not define victory. They do not plan a strategy for winning. They hope their words alone can secure what they want. Indeed, instead of thinking about how to end the Iraq War, they plan on expanding it. America’s allies, including the British, fear that America plans to attack Iran. A former weapons-inspector for Iraq, who insisted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, sees an 80% chance of war with Iran.

This is what happens when people insist on believing a lie. When you believe a lie, you stop living in reality. You make choices in life based on that lie. Those choices result in poor outcomes, even disasters.

It is a lie that America can win in Iraq. Believe it if you want. See where that belief will take you. It will take you to more death, and suffering, and war with Iran.

America cannot win in Iraq, just like it could not win in Viet Nam. It is time to move on. If people could see this, they would be on the phone the next day with their representatives in Congress, asking why the country fights for a lie and throws money and life at madness. Their reason would insist on this, because the truth will have set them free.

But the people cannot admit this. So America complains — 81% of America thinks that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track” in their country — but they do nothing. They do nothing because they want to continue to believe a lie. The lie tells them America can win. That everything will be all right. So there is no need for action.

It is time to accept the truth. Do your own research, certainly don’t take my word for it. But America cannot win in Iraq. America has already lost.

It is time to move on. The war is over, and America can do no better. It can only do worse.

Without vision, the people perish. — Proverbs 29:18

A person must have vision if he or she is to be happy. A vision guides action and provides meaning and purpose; it creates the future. When there is no vision, there is no purpose, and hence no happiness.

Nations, as well, have their own visions. A national vision is the story of the nation — its reason for existence. It, too, provides meaning and purpose for the nation.

When there is no vision, it is said that the people perish. This is because the people cease to see a reason why they should live together. They regard each other and the world with suspicion. Over time, society stops working; violence and banditry increase, and the rich take from the poor.

When there is vision, things are different. When there is vision, the people prosper because the people have their freedom. Countries that gain independence from oppressive governments — places like America, India, and South Africa — often have powerful visions of freedom. They will sometimes see that the boundaries of human dignity can be expanded, that freedom itself can reach ever higher in its never-ending upward movement.

Yet if never renewed, these visions fade away.

What is America’s vision today? It is a vision that looks nothing like the American vision of 1776.

Today, America’s vision is a vision of fear.

There are many fears today, some rational, others not so much. There is a fear of economic crash and depression, of homelessness and urban decline in the face of rising foreclosures. There is a fear of terrorism, a fear that America will fall if it pulls out of Iraq.

But deeper still are the fears that lie hidden in the hearts of the people. The people are afraid of each other. Blacks are afraid of whites, and whites are afraid of blacks; men are afraid of women, and women are afraid of men. The citizen fears the immigrant; the immigrant fears the citizen. The young fear the old; the old fear the young. Every person treats each other with suspicion.

And in all instances, everyone fears the sound of sirens and the announcement of authority — even as that same authority fears the rebellion of nonconformity, no matter how singular. The people are afraid of the government; and the government is afraid of the people. The government has grown powerful. It can spy on the people, it can throw them in jail and throw away the key. It can kill someone if it wants.

This vision of America is not a way of life. It is only a way of suffering.

A new vision is needed that is not based on fear. A new vision is needed that is based on courage — the courage of liberty. A new vision is needed that is a vision of happiness. A joyless freedom is no freedom at all.

What is freedom? Freedom begins in the mind. It is the battle within the self for individual liberation — the quest to expand the boundaries that we have set for ourselves, or that we have allowed others to set for us.

Freedom is the war for your soul, and your enemy is your own fear.

When people live in fear, they only make mistakes. All their actions are produced from that fear. Their fear sees things irrationally, in an incomplete state. So that fear also colors the result. People live in fear their whole lives, and they reap nothing but fear. They are slaves to it.

When people live in freedom, they live a life of joy because they are surrounded by possibility. The entire world is charged with potential. This is the power of the soul — the power to create, to explore this world and push the boundaries of consciousness. It is the power of infinity and the real power of the mind. Everything is possible with freedom.

America is afraid today. It is OK to admit this, there is no shame in it. But this is the truth. And in its fear, America commits many mistakes. It is afraid to stop a war or reign in its president. It is afraid to help out people who are going to lose their homes. It is afraid to admit that the environment is failing, that we will have to change the way we live if there will be enough food, water, and energy for everyone on the planet.

None of this can happen today because there is so much fear. So nothing is done.

What is needed today is a vision of courage, not of fear. A courage to look at problems as they exist and propose reasonable solutions in the interest of the common good. A courage to negotiate with adversaries, and not sideline them in the quest for supremacy. A courage to admit mistakes, take responsibility, and go on with life with love in one’s heart. A courage to accept the challenges of life and emerge a better person — in other words, a courage to lead a life of positive growth.

This courage will not come from America’s leaders. America’s leaders today are not good for America. They are cheaters and swindlers who lust only for power. They cannot be trusted. They will lead America only to ruin.

This courage will have to come from America itself — from every one of its citizens. The people themselves are being challenged to find the solutions despite their leaders. So it is also then a challenge to American democracy.

The American people must realize that the fate of their country is in their hands. The American people must come up with their own vision for America and implement it. And they will see that if they have love in their hearts and courage in their veins, each one of them will, independently, come up with the same vision for America: an America of peace, of liberty, of joy.

They will come up with the same vision because in confronting fear in their personal lives, Americans will confront fear in their political lives as well. Personal freedom leads to political freedom because the two are one and the same. A nation that lives in freedom, that is no longer afraid, will know dignity; and in knowing dignity, this nation will zealously guard against the intrusions of authority.  A nation with such people will not be afraid to protect what is rightfully theirs.

For the moment, let us ignore the vision of America as it exists — a vision of war, terrorism, and gangster capitalism — because this is an unhealthy vision. If you follow it, you do so at your peril. It will not lead to happiness, only suffering. So it should be ignored, at least for the moment.

Instead, we should focus on our own personal visions of courage. We must tackle fear in our own lives. We must cultivate freedom for ourselves. Then, just as day follows night, America will be free once more. America will be free because its people will be free. They will have freed themselves first; and then the government and the whole world will follow that example.

Without vision, the people perish. With vision, the people are free.

Today is the time to cultivate freedom. Today is the time to conquer fear. Today is the time to experience courage. Courage comes from love; thus, it is time for love to emerge in the hearts of every man, woman and child. Love for the self, for each other, for the community, for the nation, for the world.

This must be the vision.

Democracy is not a form of government. It is a way of life.

A democracy does not need a president or a parliament or ballot initiatives. It can certainly have those things, but those are not the defining aspects of a democracy.

Rather, what defines a democracy is the attitude, behavior, and values of the people who inhabit that democracy. In a democracy, people take care of themselves and of each other. In a democracy, there is no need for government.

Why does government exist at all? In the most benign sense, people institute governments because there are problems in society that they cannot take care of. Government — with its laws, police, judges, court systems, prisons, and taxes — comes about because people cannot settle disputes between themselves or do not have the means (or the will) to take care of themselves or each other. Government, at best, is a necessary evil that is instituted so as to help society better function.

The larger the size of the government, the more it must intervene in the lives of its citizens. It becomes a meddling parent that refuses to allow the child to leave the house and learn to take care of him- or herself.

In America today, we have forgotten this essential distinction between our society and our government. So we have allowed our social way of life — democracy — to wither in the face of growing government power, particularly at the federal level.

Today in America, people no longer remember the skills necessary to settle disputes without government intervention, which leads to the proliferation of laws, lawyers, courts, and jails. There are more people in jail than ever before: 1 in 99 Americans. America incarcerates more people than any other country in the planet, including China and Russia.

Today in America, the people ignore the fact that their government spends much more than it earns in taxes. The government has racked up over $9.4 trillion in debt in entitlement and defense spending while spending another $3 trillion to $5 trillion on its failed imperial experiment overseas. And precious liberties, even ones as basic as habeas corpus, have been restricted or abolished in the face of the phantom menace of terrorism.

And what is there to show for it? Are Americans happier than they were 10 years ago? Are they healthier? Do they have more free time? More money in their pocket? More freedom? The answer to all of these questions is certainly no.

Democracy is more than voting for the Democrats in November. Democracy requires a total change of thought, attitude, and behavior about one’s role in society. Democracy means taking responsibility as citizens in failing to control the government. Americans must admit they have made mistakes — they allowed a man to take the Presidency and destroy this country over the last 8 years. They don’t want to admit this; they’d much prefer to run out the clock and put in someone else. But this is not taking responsibility. This will not prevent America’s slide to oppression, but merely change its flavor.

Democracy begins in the minds of the people, and no where else. The people must, themselves, crave both the benefits as well as the responsibilities of freedom. They must tell their controlling parent that they can take care of themselves. They must look at their restricted liberties, their crowded prisons, their failing economy, and call it what it is: tyranny. And they must acknowledge that there is no knight in shining armor who will correct their mistakes for them. The people must do it themselves.

For many things in life, the journey is the same as the destination. If people want peace, they must live a peaceful life. If people want love, then they must learn to live a loving life. The same is true with democracy. If people want democracy, they must live a democratic life. They must adhere to the principles of democracy — freedom of thought and action, due process, equality, tolerance, responsibility — in their daily lives. They must start to take care of themselves as well as each other.

Then one day, the people will say to themselves, “I have my basic necessities, my freedom, and my happiness. I am secure. There is no threat to me. Why is it that I need this government again?” It will be on that day that democracy is reborn in America.

There are two ways in which it is possible to control human beings.

The first way is the most obvious way: brute force. If you hold a gun to someone’s head, or threaten and extort them, or otherwise put them in a state of duress, you can probably make them do what you want.

But this is a form of control that is messy. After all, it takes a great deal of energy to make someone do something against their will. It requires that someone else be the extorter, the slavemaster, or the executioner.

And the person who is controlled will typically put up resistance. They will probably come to hate and despise you, and plot ways to get back at you, or at least find a way to escape your control. Every slave revolt, every revolution, every prison escape can be traced to this instinct.

The other way is not as obvious, and requires some thought, but it is much more effective: manipulation. Humans are so smart and talented that they are able to package lies and make them look like truth. And if you do this, you can use lies and manipulation instead of force to make others do the things you want.

We are all liars. We tell ourselves lies everyday because we are oftentimes too comfortable, or too afraid, or too tired, or too ashamed to look at truth. We conjecture, or conclude, or assume, or presume — we analyze the world to fit our needs and arrive at the conclusions that we want.

It is liberating to admit this. I am a liar. I am lying right now, perhaps, but my intention is not to lie. I lie about why someone wants to talk to me, or why so-and-so sent me an email or acts a certain way. I want to think a certain thing, so I tell myself a lie and then I feel momentarily happy that I have an explanation.

Others lie to us also. 99% of the time we are surrounded with lies. The media lies, the government lies, your neighbor lies, your friends lie. Some of these are little while lies, some of them are dark and scary lies. Some of these lies are accidental or unintentional, while some of them are very much intentional. But they are all lies nonetheless.

We are so used to lies that when we are manipulated we no longer care. And so we have all reached a point where the people who seek to profit from manipulations and lies — the people who want control — have never had it easier to control so many people at any one time.

If they want a war, they lie and manipulate and manufacture an enemy, and the country goes to war. It is so easy. And when people start paying attention or ask too many questions, the people who want control will lie and manipulate and create a distraction so that people will stop asking questions.

The greatest invention in the history of control is television. Never before in human history have the people in power — the people with control, who want control — been able to so readily enter into the homes of millions of people and tell them exactly what is important. What you see on the news, what you watch for entertainment, what you listen to with every commercial is a message about what you should be doing with your life. “Buy this,” and “live your life this way” or “this is what’s important”. All these messages are encoded in every episode, news report, and television ad. And millions of people, every minute of every hour of every day watch and listen to these messages and unquestionably alter their lives to reflect the values, attitudes and behaviors they see on the TV.

The first people who used the media in this way were the Nazis. This is not a coincidence. They were masters of propaganda. They told people lies about the Russians and the Jews and a decade later the people were unquestionably killing on the Eastern Front and in Dachau, too tired by the lies to ask any questions, to mount a resistance. The media is powerful.

In a different era, people would talk to their neighbors, maintain familial relationships and keep a close watch over their government. Now, there’s something good on TV.

Of course, you cannot blame the technology. The TV needs someone to watch it. Reality is harsh; in societies without hope, without connection, with the calls of war heralded with every terror threat, it is not a surprise that so many people are unhappy, medicated, and otherwise in need of someone to tell them what to do.

Everywhere there is such a battle for control, a battle of lies. The boss doesn’t like you, so he gives you a bad review. Deserved? Who’s to say. It is a battle of control, so there will be lies on both sides. Your husband cheats on you. Deserved? Who’s to say. Again, like so many modern relationships, a battle of control, so there will be lies on both sides. He said, she said, I’m right, you’re wrong. They are all liars.

In the meantime, there is a real battle for control taking place amongst powerful countries that have discarded all pretense of lies. They are happy to use the other, messier form of control instead: force. In fact, they flaunt their force. Bombs, tanks, guns, missiles, nuclear warheads: every country in the world has parades where they display their weapons, their power, their ability to force other to do things — their ability to control. These weapons exist only for that purpose. A spear is used to kill. There are no shields in any modern arsenals, only spears. No one is interested in defense anymore.

Today, we are only at the beginning of a giant battle for control that will accelerate over the coming years. Power is fleeting; those who have it fear to lose it. So they will use more lies and force to keep their control, to keep their power. Those who want power will use more lies and force to acquire it. The lies will all get worse, the use of force more monumental. This is not a difficult thing to see, for those who are honest.

But there is the challenge. The hardest thing for people to do on this Earth is to stop the lies. This is difficult, because we are trained to lie and trained to accept that others will lie to us. No, this is wrong. There is truth in this world. It is what exists when you see something without telling yourself a story about it, when you can look at the world or a relationship or a circumstance and not let a thought enter your head describing it in some manner — because any thought will only be self-serving. You can see the unhealthy relationship, the beautiful sunset, the sick beggar, the lying friend, the giving child, all for what they are. You don’t judge, or categorize, you just see what exists.

Too often we let fear dictate our direction. And when we do that, we let ourselves be controlled by something else — be it the emotion, or someone else’s lie, or even the lies we tell ourselves so often. We let the lies lead us to more lies, to more falsehoods. This is why so many people are unhappy, because they live a life of lies, and lies produce suffering.

Freedom can only exist when there is truth, when a person can see things the way they are. They don’t judge, they just look. They don’t think about the thing they are observing, they just observe, and experience, and let themselves fade into the moment as if they were just as part of the canvas as what they are looking at. In such a moment there is only peace, only knowledge, only existence itself. The thoughts that clutter our heads are the chains we seek to escape from, that we drown in alcohol or Paxil or meaningless relationships.

We must learn to stop thinking so much. Then we will learn to separate the big lies from the small ones, the nasty ones from the not-so-nasty ones. Then we can take the next step and stop lying altogether.

We forget how much power is in our heads, how this universe has endowed humanity with the ability to think and direct our wills to live life. Truly we have the power of gods within us because we can shape our destinies and live a life of purpose and creativity. This is the Promethean fire that is bestowed only to humans. Yet we direct our thoughts to TV and pornography and violence and lies — so many lies. Then we wonder why we are so unhappy. This is like the man on a fast asking why he is hungry — in his hunger he has overlooked the obvious cause of his distress. So he forgets to eat.

Every prophet, every thinker, every person who has looked deep within and seen this fire and been awed by its significance knows that a world of beauty is possible, but it cannot happen unless people want it. It must happen one person at a time. The lies must end thought by thought until there is at least one person on this Earth who no longer lies and is no longer affected by lies, and who only sees truth. This person can no longer be controlled, but is above control. There is no power that can control this person.

Then a second person does the same, and a third, and a fourth and so on until an entire community lives in truth. This is the root of freedom for humanity. These people are neither controlled, nor do they seek control. And as a result, they have no need for the tools of control: force and lies. So they live in peace and they have their freedom.

Can this link be made any clearer? The link between control and force, and control and lies?

A Nobel Price-winning economist estimates that the American war effort in Iraq will cost the United States at least $3 trillion and as much as $5 trillion.

United States GDP (the sum total of economic activity) in 2007 was an estimated $13 trillion dollars. $3 trillion is about 23% of $13 trillion.

It helps to put this figure into perspective by contemplating what it would take to pay this figure. Suppose Americans wanted to totally pay for the war this year. Assuming the same level of GDP as 2007, one in five Americans would have to dedicate their entire productive capacities towards payment of the war. No purchases of goods, no payments towards any other debts; their entire paycheck would go into a fund to pay back creditors who have financed the war.

Such people would wake up and devote their entire working day towards someone else’s interests. This is nothing short of indentured servitude, or slavery.

If Americans wanted to pay this war over ten years, or fifty years, then the net impact would be much less (the same way a huge student loan is less burdensome over a thirty year period). And if sane government is ever restored, America will no doubt have to enter into some type of arrangement with its foreign financiers to pay off this absurd figure.

It is bewildering to think that in five years, America has spent $3 trillion on a war effort with nothing to show for it. It is impossible to imagine any politician announcing an initiative to spend $3 trillion on education, or health care, or national infrastructure without being mocked. And yet this sum has been spent, and continues to be spent, towards the occupation of a foreign country.

It used to be the case that if a government wanted to go to war, it had to tax the people. War, according to the Founder Thomas Paine, “is the art of conquering at home; the object of it is an increase of revenue; and as revenue cannot be increased without taxes, a pretense must be made for expenditure. In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.”

The Founder James Madison, who was also America’s fourth President, wrote, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

He cautioned, “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Today, with the invention of modern debt structures like the sub-prime mortgage and debt securitization, all sorts of things that used to require a cash payment can be paid for on credit. A mortgage, a car, even a foreign occupation — in principle, they can all be financed to hell and back. Politicians have turned into wizards and alchemists, capable of producing economic growth or a foreign war with the stroke of a pen. Something can be created from nothing. And because the people will not be taxed, at least directly, there will be less discontent with neverending warfare.

But as America is realizing with the crash of the housing market, the piper must be paid at some point. It turns out that in fact, something cannot be created from nothing. Prosperity must exist somewhere other than on paper, or it does not exist at all.

The fact that the American economy in the last few years was able to sustain a massive housing bubble while also expending trillions of dollars on a war effort says much about its resiliency. No other economy in the world could have done such a thing. There is so much power in American society, and yet it is directed towards nothing but waste. War, at heart, is a waste: a waste of natural resources, of production, of life. Over the last few years, so much money and energy has gone towards war.

And nothing will change so long as politicians — any politician, no matter how outwardly noble — have access to such power. Today, Americans accept the idea that their president, on a whim, can launch a foreign war that proceeds without end for years. How far they have strayed from their republican roots! The consequence of complacency but also affluence. For it was war that provided America with control over its land and over the oil that powers its way of life. And so long as Americans remain blind to the connection between their way of life and the blood that is necessary to fuel it, they will continue to elect leaders who see nothing wrong with the use of force in otherwise ordinary circumstances.

Change is coming. Americans must see the storm ahead and realize that choices must be made. They must take control over their destinies, or their destiny will be made for them, by people who claim allegiance to America’s finest values but who are nothing but parasites of power. As the economy crumbles, as rights are restricted, as politicians become corrupted by their grandeur, the illusions of the present will give way to the realities of the future. In this environment, confronting the grave dangers ahead with a brave courage, lies the only hope for a renewed America based on genuine democratic principles.