Actual Freedom – Mailing List ‘A’ Correspondence

RESPONDENT: The list has too much activity and I do not wish to bring such disorder to my mailbox. I noticed a post here recently that suggested the list be used to post topics and people could interact directly. This would reduce the traffic for whom ever that may be relevant. I am presently keen to explore the topic of ethnic orientation and violence but would correspond on other aspects of life as well.

RICHARD: ‘Ethnic orientation and violence’ ... the two would seem to go hand-in-hand, would you not say? And has it not got a lot to do with beliefs and the action of believing itself? And does it not all believing stem from separation? I see, first of all, that there is a separation of male and female from each other by gender identification as ‘man’ and ‘woman’ – two distinct social identities – leading to a localised discontent and resentment, causing the battle between the sexes.

Then there is the separation of oneself – by being a ‘me’, a psychological identity – from one’s body and therefore from the world about, leading to a generalised discontent and resentment, causing wars between tribal groups. To end the separation is to end the violence. To end the separation, can one not whittle away at all the social mores and psittacisms: all the beliefs, ideas, values, theories, truths, customs, traditions, ideals, superstitions ... and all the other schemes and dreams? One can surely become aware of all the socialisation, of all the conditioning, of all the programming, of all the methods and techniques that were used to produce what one finds oneself to be ... a wayward ego and soul careering around in confusion and illusion. I see that a ‘mature adult’ is actually a lost, lonely, frightened and cunning ‘entity’ inside the body.

However, it is never too late to start in on uncovering and discovering what one actually is under all the beliefs ... do you not think so?

Do not beliefs come in from another person, or persons, starting from day one as a new-born baby? Mother and Father – or a substitute parent – require the child to conform to the already existing world of fact and fiction. Through actions and words, carrots and sticks, the child is taught to believe until it is sufficiently indoctrinated, having made these beliefs their own ‘truths’. The child can not compare these beliefs with anything outside of their environment, because they do not know there is an outside ... so they have no reason not to swallow the entire package, this whole reality.

This process is called socialisation and results in forming the social identity; a process which may take, perhaps, up to twelve years to complete. All this while the child has learned, by trial and error, reward and punishment, precept and example – with endless repetition – how to feel afraid, secure, loved, disliked, greedy, proud, lonely, etcetera ... no matter what culture one is born into. Humankind is now sufficiently programmed into believing that this what human beings are is ‘human nature and it cannot be changed ... we are all stuck with it’. Such is the extent of believing. What one can do, however, is ask oneself whether one wants to continue to live an illusory life? Following blindly in the footsteps of ancestors is to perpetuate fiction over fact, as being the only way to live.

One has taken on their beliefs and made them one’s own ... their beliefs are who one is. One’s image of oneself is a totally borrowed picture ... which one believes to be one’s very identity. It is what one thinks – and feels – one is as ‘me’. Does one wish to continue to defend an illusion? Family ties, tribal customs and national mores all contribute in the making of one’s identity. Religious beliefs, ideological creeds and cultural values all go to cement the psychological make-up of one’s very real self. One’s identity is what one has adopted as being ‘me’. How much longer does one wish to go on defending ‘someone’ that is not me? How much longer does one want to go on living in pathos as a group member ... which is what a social entity is.

If one thinks – and feels – that this identity is me as I actually am, then ‘I’ must belong to a group. Out of loneliness ‘I’ must have a sense of belonging. This culturally created psychological entity that ‘I’ identify as is always lonely for it is an alien, a fictional creation of the group, who can not exist outside of the group mentality. But what about me as-I-am? Stripped of the identity, I can be never lonely, for I am complete, sufficient unto myself. Loneliness is as fictional as the identity that has been created as ‘me’ by all those other lonely entities which were here before one arrived as a baby. One has made it one’s own and called it ‘me’.

Whereas, by being me, me as I actually am, I can never be a belief.

RICHARD: Ethnic orientation and violence’ ... the two would seem to go hand-in-hand, would you not say?

RESPONDENT Are you suggesting that ethnic orientation would not exist without identification and any form of identification, not seeing what you are actually, free from identification, is violence?

RICHARD: Yes, this is my experience. I was born in Australia, of a British-born father and a first-generation Australian mother from an English background. Thus I was raised to believe that I was, literally, an Australian-born citizen ... but with British blood! (Blood is blood ... is this not all ridiculous!). However, as an infant, a child, a youth and then a man, I was unable to discriminate fact from fiction. I had no terms of reference that I could use as a standard to judge by as every single human being on this planet was not simply a flesh and blood body ... but an ‘ethnic’ human being. Thus, as I wrote in my previous post, I bought the whole package. Hook, line and sinker.

As I slowly started to unravel the mess that humankind was in by unravelling it in me, I discovered a second layer under ‘my’ ethnicity ... ‘I’ was a ‘man’, and not simply a flesh and blood body.

Under that lay a further layer. It took me years and years of exploration and discovery to find out that ‘I’ was a ‘me’ – a ‘being’ – and not simply a flesh and blood body.

There, and only there, was the root cause of violence. By identifying as a ‘me’, a psychological entity was able to ‘possess’ this body. It is not unlike those Christians who are said to be possessed by an evil entity and require exorcism. Only this ‘possession’ was called being normal. Therefore, (if I may be a touch melodramatic) every human being is thus possessed by an ‘alien entity’; for me ... a ‘walk-in’ was in control of this body!

RESPONDENT If there were no need to identify, ethnic orientation would merely fall away?

RICHARD: Yes. There is no such ‘thing’ as an ‘Australian’, an ‘American’, a ‘German’, a ‘Japanese’ and so on. All the wars; all the blood-shed; all the appalling misery is because of the absurdity of identification. But not just ethnic orientation, as I have already said above.

RESPONDENT The world has tremendous subtle violence going on then doesn’t it? (I hope I do not sound too naive).

RICHARD: No, you are most definitely not ‘too naive’. It is the cultured sophisticates that cause – and have caused – such untold damage on this fair earth. Naiveté is a beneficence ... it is what I got in touch with to enable me to steer my way through the maze of conditioning ... a conditioning that stretches back into antiquity. Naiveté is the closest thing one has got to an actual innocence ... one can rely much more upon it to see one’s way clearly than one can rely upon the most profound thought or the most sublime feeling. No matter how lofty the thought or deep the feeling, unless one is nearly innocent, one will never succeed.

As I said, naiveté is the closest thing we have to innocence. The fabled ‘innocence’ of children is just that: a fable. A child’s so-called ‘innocence’ turns out to be no more than a trusting gullibility, a preparedness to believe out of ignorance. Children are not innocent (literal definition: ‘free from sin’). Infants and children are not as happy and harmless and benevolent and carefree as is so often made out to be the case ... and have never been so. They have malice and sorrow firmly embedded in them, for one is born with instinctual fear and aggression. Just watch a one month old baby bellowing its distress at being alone; just watch a one year old pinching its sibling in spite for taking its toy; just watch a two year old stamping its foot in a temper tantrum; just watch a three year old child fighting with its peers for supremacy.

One must ask: where in all this is the fabulous ‘innocence’ ... an innocence which must have peace and harmony and tranquillity in it for there to be peace-on-earth? The imposition of social mores – moral virtues, ethical values, honourable principles, decent scruples and the like – are essential to curb the instinct-born spiteful anger and vicious hatred that are part and parcel of the essential traits of being a sentient being. A ‘Golden Past’ has never existed at any period, or at any stage, of development. To achieve a truly golden age, something entirely new must come into existence. All peoples must cease ‘being’. To change ‘Human Nature’, (which everyone says cannot be changed) one must give-up, voluntarily, one’s cherished identity ... the self one was born with.

It is an amazing adventure we are all on.