Example of a Roman military punishment, soldiers being sold into slavery and servitude. Military History. Army. Contributors: William Hogarth. Work ID: fgcccz48.
The powers want to believe that we’re happier as a people if we’re assigned roles to fulfill, the people they don’t like being assigned to disappear. Women understand this mandate with pain, because through history we’ve frequently been assigned restrictive roles. Men have, too, but they didn’t feel as free to examine what that meant to them. Culture selects different groups to suffer by race, religion, gender, ethnicity or even intelligence. Life hasn’t always been regulated in the same way. There were times when women filled powerful positions and were lauded for what they could accomplish—times when slaves revolted and died in the quest for equality. But insecurity winds like boa constrictors around the mind, squeezing independence into tiny corners. Identity is a test–the final exam of Earth School (the place where humans learn to be.)
Identity is frequently dependent on the group, the tribe, the society—in truth, being used by the greedy to manipulate the masses. Thus, good people murder one another for causes they don’t fully understand—because the causes are masked and the glory of conquest amplified. Good people commit heinous acts such as terrorizing children or destroying families, thinking they’re improving the human race in the place of a Creator instead of usurping choices that aren’t theirs. People have been burned alive, shot into mass graves, divided into servitude, and gassed to ease the sorting. But the sorting belongs mainly to only a few insecure minds that yearn to feel mighty. We accept that we are superior, inferior, or totally insignificant because others tell us so. What gives the others the right to assign? Opportunity… plus the power to enforce policies that are insane by loving standards.
Power is an aphrodisiac, a toxin that blurs the logical mind and confuses the material with the unseen. People define power with wealth, assuming wealth separates the superior from the common. Women fell into the trap because they were designed to cooperate and fated to carry the unborn and bodies men find seductive. They represented easy prey. Female intelligence was often hidden like a dirty secret as was male intelligence that strayed from what was mandated and traditional. One woman I know well has never born children but she has birthed original thought, innovation, and compassion in bright persons around the globe. She isn’t rare but stories of similar accomplishments by “inferior” persons aren’t generally lauded. Proof of goodness is defaced, as though destroying it will elevate lesser beings.
The world is leaning ever too slowly toward emotional/intellectual improvement and must at times undergo a painful purge to enable routes of change. The nature of the purge may be ugly enough to be named evil, but that doesn’t mean the outcome has to be dark. The results of the horrific world wars was that people began truly questioning the use of war and the fact that most wars were expressions of male needs to exercise control. Over time people forgot their lesson. Greed and domination are pointless goals in a world that cares for all its inhabitants. This time, we wonder if the earth will survive, still able to sustain those who wish to find their higher selves. We wonder if goodness will survive. It will. Kindness has always been a rare and beautiful treasure we delight in discovering. When we finally elevate it above ego, we will have the raw materials of a wiser existence.
