What happened to our autonomy? We used to be able to roam the world freely without a care in the world, going from place to place without having to surrender to searches and have passports. This world has become a security state with cameras and guards everywhere. We’re always being watched by someone or something. We have no real freedom anymore. We can’t even express certain opinions freely without being subject to the penalties of law. We are told there is only one way to live and that it’s the way every other human lives and if we go against it, we are worthless. We are deviant. We are bad. It’s total bunk because good and bad are subjective by their very foundation. Humans made up good and bad. But there’s a big grey area and it is so unnecessary because there is no such thing.
We cannot do as we please because the way we’ve structured our society, it would lead to chaos. But 10,000 years ago, we could do as we pleased, without need for law and order. Agriculture concentrated populations to the point where there had to be central authority or it would all fall apart. We began making the Earth our bitch instead of living on it and off of it. Since then, our population has grown exponentially to more than 100 times what it was 10,000 years ago. Since we’ve decided to create food for ourselves instead of just living off the land that’s there and thereby controlling population, we have manufactured more and more food, which has in turn led to more and more people. Even as we increase food to feed our growing population, we in turn create more people. Feeding the starving people in Africa only feeds their population growth. It’s sad, but true. And as we grow our populations, the security tightens around us because it takes more authority to control 6 billion than it does 3 or 4 billion people. And people are still having children!
The whole reason we need laws and control structures in the first place is the tribes (or countries) got too big because of agriculture. If we would have stayed living in balance, taking only what we need and leaving the rest, as pre-historic people did, then we would still be living in a lush, green paradise as we remember reading about in the Bible. Cain murdering Abel was the representation of the Takers, or civilized people murdering and exterminating the Leavers, or nature-based peoples. The Takers and Leavers both have a myth or story they tell themselves. The Takers believe the world was created solely for man and his selfish wants and needs. He believes he is the crown of creation and everything on this planet is here to serve him. The Leavers, on the other hand, believe that they are stewards of the Earth, making it bountiful and diverse. Keeping it the way it is or better in terms of diversity.
Why diversity? Diversity is resilient. If something drastic happens and there are only 15 species on the planet, it is less likely that all of them or any of them will survive. Let’s say the temperature of the Earth was lowered by 20 degrees. If there are millions or billions of different species on the Earth, the probablility that some of them would survive is very, very high. But if there are 15 or even just hundreds of species, it will severely cripple the world if something as drastic as a global cooling happened. This is the main point in why diversity trumps all. Us, as humans, have been making the world less and less diverse for thousands of years. We keep only what we can use, as if all the other life were meaningless. And it may kill us in the long run. Check that, it will kill us because the more we unify the Earth to suit only our needs and the needs of the food we eat, the less resilient the world will become. Remember the blight in Ireland over the potatoes. It wasn’t because the blight destroyed every species of potato. It was because they were only growing 2 or 3 types of potatoes, instead of the thousands there are in existence. If they were growing thousands of types of potatoes, then I’m sure that not all of them would be victim to the blight. This is what agriculture does to the world.
We’ve taken autonomy away from many animals, such as on farms, in plantations, and at zoos. We break the animals’ spirits and force them to comply with our selfish wants and needs. Instead of allowing them to be autonomous, we see them as serving us, because after all we are what the world and this universe was created for. The laws of nature and the universe do not apply to us. We are “above” all those other creatures, so we can create our own laws. But we are also captive in civilization because we were never taught any other way to live. So we accept the world as it is, instead of moving to change it back to the way it once was, perfect and diverse, with total democracy among all animals and living things. It’s so easy to take the path of least resistance when everyone else is doing the same.
We lived for 3 million years in balance and after 10,000 years in agricultural societies, we’ve destroyed most of the world. That is less than 0.4% of our existence as Homo sapiens. Sure, the real destruction on a massive scale has only really begun in the last century, but it’s like the first flying machines that would go off a cliff and it would be in the air for awhile, but slowly sinking because the people who built them did not understand the laws of aerodynamics. They would look down and see the wonders below them, but at the same time see the ground coming fast at them at 32 feet per second per second, an accelerating pace. It would take until just before the crash that the person flying the aircraft would realize he’d made a big mistake and when he did, it would be too late. That’s where our civilization is now. Unsustainable, yes. Heading towards a crash, yes. In the middle of a crash, possibly. But people are still going through the motions because they don’t know any other way to live. All the forests and jungles they used to call home are being cut down in the name of progress. It’s because people are so attached to the story of the Takers that becoming a Leaver is almost out of the question, at least until the Earth heals from what we’ve done to it.
We are controlled, so we seek to control other living beings, other people, physical space, etc. In this environment in which we live, our response is normal because we can’t argue with the rest of the world, can we? We think, “People need to be controlled at all costs because if they’re not, the world would be a terrible place.” But doesn’t our pre-history show the exact opposite? Sure, there would be a time of chaos if we switched today to a Leaver mindset, but after the initial backlash, the world would become a paradise again. We would have much smaller numbers and never let it get out of control again. That is, of course, with the right mindset. We would have to all know both the Leaver and Taker stories and all opt to live the way of the Leaver because it is the only sustainable way. Otherwise, we might as well go extinct because it’s going to happen eventually anyway living by the Taker’s rules and stories. Let’s get our autonomy back, people! Absolute freedom! It is the natural way.
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