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Some people are more emotionally equipped to handle freedom than others are. People emotionally equipped to handle freedom don't have a compulsion to lie, they don't get off on physically or verbally abusing people, they don't abuse people 's trust either. They don't intimidate, humiliate or belittle other people to force them to be silent. They don't act like greedy pigs at other's expense.
They police themselves from within. They have self control and confidence that comes with self awareness.
Some people don't desire to dominate relationships they are involved in. Some people are not afraid of losing, being wrong, looking 'weak' or having their own integrity doubted by others. Their personalities and personal flaws are less defended because the person accepts them and is aware of their own limits.
They are well aware of their own autonomy and power to choose right and wrong. They are self aware, self responsible, compassionate and secure. Some people know how to share what they have and are oriented towards cultivating right relationships with others. They know how to be assertive without being aggressive. Some people have enough self control to handle freedom of speech and free association.
Other people can't cope with freedom, and beg by their actions and abusive speech to be limited in their freedoms. They readily use the noble idea of freedom as a rallying cry for the right to abuse, use or mutilate others. They use freedom of speech as a cry for their own alleged right to verbally abuse others. They use freedom of association as a cry for the rights to use others to look "powerful" and con them with religion, scams or false hopes.
People with conduct disorders want the freedom to be intimidating, pushy, deceptive and cruel, and disrupt others' freedoms and relationships. They need to dominate and control social situations. These people can't handle freedom well. They are emotionally and socially screwed up.
They want to be free to abuse and manipulate other people around themselves and reduce other people's freedoms in the name of the bullies' sought-after authoritarian "freedom."
Tyrants, abusers, and bullies have problems with their own conduct in relationships of any kind. They are freedom killing, disruptive authoritarians, aggressive greedy and deceptive.
A person who is behaving like a totalitarian, a bully, a dominator, a user or abuser is INCOMPATIBLE with a society that values freedom and democracy.
Yet taking an absolutist stance on 'freedom' ... preserves the bully's "rights" to abuse, as well as our own rights to relate to whom we wish to, and to speak our minds.
It was said by the anthropologist who studied a very aggressive and abusive patriarchal tribe, the Yanomano, that in order for one segment of the population to dominate and know power over the "lessers," the other segment or "lessers" must be indoctrinated in cowardice.
It has always been this struggle in society ... what do we do with the bullies, exploiters and liars? Do we give them, rights and let them abuse our freedom ... so they can lie disrupt, foment hatred and abuse people? Or do we limit their damage? Restrict their freedoms?
In a small, close knit tribe where "leaders" have less power over the members and are held accountable by the force of close proximity to the populace, it might be possible to recognize problem people just by watching their habits. Then a population can purge its sociopaths and bullies by exile or by restriction, and maintain sociological health (that is, if bullies are not dominating the tribal government).
But in America, in this civilization gone insane, you can't just limit a bullies freedom without limiting your own freedoms. We are caught in a double bind here. And can we get ourselves out of it — and still be free? If so, HOW?
How can a distant uninvolved entity like the government recognize a conduct-disordered bully from someone who is just colorful and outspoken? The government we allow is currently run by authoritarians, bullies liars and abusers. The people in the government have various conduct disorders; that is why we expect them to lie, expect them to exploit us and expect them to abuse our freedoms. This is why we do not trust the government to do much in the interests of maintaining civil freedoms from bullies. Better use those absolutist principles to restrict power-made authoritarians who are equipped with homeland security, FBI and CIA, and huge nuclear arsenals built with our tax money to restrict our freedoms and the freedoms of other nations.
You can risk your own comfy position and turn on the bullies around you with teeth and expose them, call them on their lies publicly, and denounce their sick disordered social control tactics, their greed and destroy their stranglehold over others. So that they know they are no lord or master over others ... It would be a constant fight to get conduct-disordered people to restrict themselves from within. But this is one way out of this "double bind" about freedom.
The other way out is slowly strangling and silencing your own humanity within, by betraying yourself from within. For America's top 1%, the most wealthy to be in the powerful position they are in today, the other 99% of the population of America has to have learned the lessons of cowardice.
A lot of sad, alienated, tired, insecure, overworked, guilty, confused, emotionally unstable, intellectually lazy, and fearful people who are emotionally unequipped for confronting an asshole boss, or an asshole kid, or an asshole spouse have given up freedoms. Especially if they are dependant upon the bully for a paycheck, a relationship, or if they are afraid of confrontation or deep down believe they can't change the situation.
When 1 in 4 Americans have some form of mental illness, it's a warning that our way of relating to each other socially is becoming very sick. I think it's a call from within to stand up and confront the bullies around us, the bullies we let be in power, the bullies who are making us all sick. I am referring to the corporate polluters, liars, con men, the advertisers, politicians, lobbyists, spin doctors, media whores, and all the other public abusers of trust, as well as the domestic bullies like spouse beaters, con men, the TV, school bullies, religious bullies, work bullies, parent bullies and social bullies.
A person's conscience (if they have one) can torment them emotionally from within, until they make things right with themselves. If you ignore your own conscience's convictions of your wrong actions and words long enough, you can condition yourself to become numbed to it. The cost of ignoring your own conscience is to become neurotic, dishonest, addicted, impulsive, passive aggressive, manipulating, secretive and insecure.
A conduct-disordered person has a conscience disorder as well. Authoritarians can't self-police their own actions in society. They see no wrong in harming or using others or destroying the Earth for profit. Other people have to step up to control them and contain them or they will not stop.
If you let bullies dictate how you live, if you let bullies lie and steal unchallenged, then you are setting yourself up for a big explosion someday — or for a freefall to the bottom. Or you just might lose your conscience, either momentarily or forever, when you choose to betray yourself in a fit of rage, frustration or despair. When you are down or shattered to bits inside, a bully does not care about your pain at all. He sees you as an all day sucker to exploit, or as a weak, pathetic loser. He thinks this way because he has no empathy for you.
Authoritarians, bullies, liars, users, abusers, con men, and control freaks are incompatible with notions of freedom and democracy in any civil society.
Yet there is another half of this sick equation: the enabling, passive cowardice of a population who accepts being exploited, who are willing to throw away their consciences mental health and civil society for a pittance and cling to absolutist principles because they don't want to risk doing anything others might disapprove of. They don't want to risk more corrupting influences, to remove to corruption that is already there. This sad dynamic in people makes "the natural domination of sociopaths" in society possible.
Get honest and right with yourselves, people. Freedom for the World begins within YOU.
Fuck what others might think of you and those absolutist principals, and do what is right. Authoritarians, con men and bullies are by their nature incompatible with freedom and democracy in a civil society. Get off yer butt and confront those who would warp and destroy freedom in the name of freedom. . fearlessly. To not listen to your own conscience and to choose to not have self control, to avoid confrontation of a bully at all costs is what it takes to truly lose your freedom.
Underground Panther in the Sky
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