There are times when I am watching a movie, maybe about the 1980 Olympic hockey team, and I get caught up in the cheering and crying and am so happy that the US team had such a great story to tell. But, that’s a movie. And I think out here in the real world the continuing loud and often blind patriotism can be obnoxious and overbearing. Now, I’m the first to say that people have the right to be as obnoxious as they want in their flag-waving and anthem-singing. However, I do believe that it is not in the country’s best interest.Our “Patriotic Nationalism” often keeps us from seeing who and what we really are. When someone says another country does something better, our knee-jerk response is, “then move there.” This does not apply to discussions of the fundamental basis of our country, the Constitution. In my opinion that is about the only thing that is sacrosanct and not up for change. Discussing yes, changing no. Unfortunately, that is something that too many people are pointing to as ‘out of date’ and in need of modifying, when the real issue is that we have gotten away from it already, and that has caused us many problems. Instead of getting back in line with supreme law of the land, we have loud groups demanding more change and comparing us to other countries, but they miss all the added stuff. All that added stuff is that we are not those other countries.
Rather than adopting fundamental changes that make us like other countries who have achieved a level of success that we haven’t (however inside the confines of their individual culture, which is different from ours), we need to look to see where we can take more freedom and lighten up our self-imposed restrictions. It is in our freedom that we will achieve our personal greatness.
So, we don’t need to rewrite our Constitution. What we do need is to be open to changes in education, agriculture, welfare: changes that place freedom and therefore responsibility back into the hands of the individual people. The basis of our country’s laws are good. It is the added millions that seem to be weighing us down. A few laws are good. More is not necessarily better.
Any civilization that prides itself on the characteristics that this country has for centuries, will feel the weight of rules and legislation designed to align us. Make us more similar. Muddy our waters.
Leaving aside the sociopaths in prison and those who should be, we are equal in value. However we are not the same. I think that somehow equal has gotten confused with same. We are not the same. No two of us are the same, let alone all of us. We don’t look the same, except perhaps identical twins, and we don’t think the same. This is something to be cherished. This is what the country was based on. This is one of our greatest attributes. We cannot (and should not try to) legislate ourselves into sameness.
We have to have and be able to make choices in order to evolve. The less ability we have to challenge ourselves and our surroundings, which includes rules and authority, the more we hinder our personal evolution and therefore that of our country and our species. This incessant need to keep us all safe through more legislation is killing us. It is destroying our individuality and our creativity and uniqueness. We need to have insecurity in our lives to learn to cope and to test ourselves. In order for the species and the country to be stronger and safer long-term, we must accept being weaker and unsafe.
We see more and more of our fellow citizens pulled into this spiral of decay, while reaching for safety and sameness for everyone. We must all have the exact same opportunities. We must all make a good wage. We must all have a job, and the job we want. We must all have the same education. We must all speak in such a way that everyone feels uplifted and no one is ever offended. We must all wear clothing that covers our bodies so that no one should ever see skin that they do not wish to. We must all have the same vaccinations and we must all eat the same foods and those foods must be approved. We must all be the same.
There is no breathing room. We should not be aspiring to be alike. We should not be aspiring to be like other countries, any more than wanting all our schools to be the same with the same standards and same testing. We lose our creativity and innovation the more alike we become. We lose ourselves.
We need to fight our knee-jerk reactions of “Then go live there” and say, “Ok… why is that?” and with the freedom and individuality that we have, we can explore potential answers.
The more laws we pass, and the more our individual freedoms are legislated, the more we all become the same.. and therefore cannot evolve. Laws and regulations and legislation are the antithesis of self-actualization.