Birthright

There is in each man, woman, and child a sleeping force.  Every fairytale, myth, and legend has spoken of it; even today, we see it plastered upon cellulose and screen with the subtle turns of seemingly mundane fictions or the extravagant adventures of impossible heroes.   Science and modernity have done their best to condition this out of the human soul, but there it lays still--nagging, itching, calling us to something more. 

    

We drone away at our jobs, our families, our past times always hoping that each moment will bring us a sense of fullness, a meaning, something greater than the simple physicality of existence.  And each of us, whether we are aware of it or not, captures it in moments not looked for.  A child's beaming grin brings us back to the bounty of love, a job well done deepens our gratitude for the act of living, laughter shared among friends builds the fires of fellowship that warm us against the night.  Even amongst the depressed, the anti-social, and the insane these moments occur, albeit often unacknowledged and unvalued--for we all would have killed ourselves long ago if it were otherwise.  Yet those feelings, sensations, and perceptions never sate us; they are only the bare surface of a reality that lay right next to us, calling us to arms.  We all know it, wrestle with it, and slowly go mad because of it.  We have unimaginable potential that we terrified to access, so we continue trying to settle for the commonplace, and thus we sit: unfulfilled.  

    

Mankind has struggled with the search for fulfillment for as long as it has lived, but it has not struggled in vain.  The answers to our general dilemma have been recorded in story after story: in the stories of the gods, amongst the journeys of heroes, in all the tales of old.  Men and women, child and elder, were beset with the very same conditions we find ourselves in today:  they were conscious beings in a physical realm; they suffered at the hands of nature, misfortune, and other individuals; and they knew they would die and the world would continue.  Faced with such difficulties, they looked for meaning and fulfillment to make sense of their lives.   Looking back, we often degrade the imagery and content of such stories as the wild manifestations of the imaginations of people unschooled in reason and science; nothing could be more wrong.  Our ancestors, in their lack of scientific sophistication and ideologies, used whatever imagery was most appropriate to capture the experience or conception.  Of the millions of forms they could have conceived of, of the countless variations of story they could have told, the images, symbols, and tales are generally the same regardless of the specific culture.   The powers that lay with humanities reach are better represented by dragons, superhuman heroes, and mysterious gods.

It would be easy here to drift into sentimentalism about the wisdom of things ancient and the profanity of all things new, but that would be a mistake.  So powerful and accurate were the ways of our elder ways that we still use them today.  Despite the abundance of clinical psychological terms like neurosis, self-realization, or peak modal experience, most of us still make sense of our world and our lives through story.  Indeed, the scientists and scribes have shamed all of us from actually following the paths that story gives us; they tell us we are "being foolish", "engaging in fantasy", or even "delusional".    And yet, despite all that,  Friday night will find most of us engaging in a good story rather than analyzing ourselves on a couch.  In the cinema, at  the theatre, on the television, or even on our computers: we watch story to find meanings, gain fulfillment, and seek guidance.

    

So then, why are we not out seeking to slay dragons, recover secret treasures, or save the world like those in stories old and new?  We have been conditioned by the vary same men and women who have been there throughout time: those with control.  In every era they have empowered some group or other to subjugate the greater whole through idealism.   At times it has been religious leaders, at others brute mercenaries, and now it is in the hand of science and humanism that our birthright is suppressed.  They have convinced us that we are all just small, flawed creatures; little more than masses of squirting chemicals and complex tissues.  We walk through our lives seeking only to "get by" and be happy.  Everywhere we are urged to "fit in" or worse still "grow up".   So twisted has our thinking become that many of us mock the vary ways of thinking we secretly wish to engage in.  

     

Science, like religion or nationalism, has its uses and is in many ways a wonderful thing, and it is not to blame for our circumstances.   But it must be dethroned from its position in our psyches.  Science is a practice, not an ideology; and further, if scientific investigation of history has shown us anything, it has shown us how often science is incomplete.   Time and again, science has implied to humanity it has arrived at a complete truth, only to retract that statement later for some new complete truth it has discovered.  Again, science and humanism are wonderful things, but they are by no means completely accurate when it comes to the potentials of the individual, or even the nature of reality.   

    

Any person can easily confirm these truths about the inaccuracies of the present dominant mode of thinking through a simple examination of their own experience.   Yet we often do not.  So ingrained have these ways of thinking become that we are uncomfortable with moving beyond them.  We seek to rationalize are fantasies, to rein in our desires, to temper our dreams--all in the name of being realistic.   And that is just the way those in control want it.

    

But here is the thing: we are in control.  Those of us at the top are just as much responsible as those at the bottom.  All of us, each and everyone, has sold away our own birthright for the imagined safety we will gain.   Of course, those in a position of influence, bear a certain heavier responsibility for this than those without, but it is only because they have a greater ability to change it, not because they are actively repressing it more than those without influence.   And here it comes again, who among us has no influence?  We all do, somewhere, with someone.  We are our own slavers.   Rather than accepting this, rather than charging out to realize "impossible" dreams, we sit and tell ourselves that we "can't do it", we tell others to "be practical", we cede all our power to people we imagine our in control and say to ourselves, "aww shucks, theres just nothing I can do".

    

My fellows, friends, brothers and sisters: awaken your sleeping dragons, be impractical, and rule your own worlds.