I had a short dialogue with a friend last night. It didn't start this way but did end like it.
We were talking about why it is that nearly everyone is obedient to authority, in spite of that being harmful on the whole. I write about it here in 'obedience and how people submit their freedom'. So it's silly to complain about one's master if one has already willingly contracted socially to obey.
This left us in a bit of a dilemma, because once this observation is accepted as true, where should an authentic dialogue go next - did we have the courage to dig deeper and find the 'remains of the dead'?
And also, the piece above is discussing it all in the context of social organisation only, rather than in a whole of world context - in that all states and governments use obedience structures deliberately, knowing full well their consequences, for short term gain to hold onto power, knowing eventually they will lose it, exactly because they used obedience structures in the first place. This is the pathology of modern day social organisation structured around earth bound hierarchies.
What we discovered as we got this far is that there is a propensity for some to obey a master figure of some kind. And for others to resist that master. And that both of us had chosen from a very young age to resist.
We fell on the possibility it was because we did not have a strong bond with our father. This disconnection with our father led us to challenge everything and anything within our society which had not yet been well answered, and especially the biggest social problems which had never even been questioned at all. Our father already has answers and punishments and we had resisted him.
What made us like this. Was it that we were disconnected from our father. Why could we never remember when we had started acting like it? We must have known, even subconsciously, the decision to disconnect would be a life long limitation for us within the social hierarchy in which we all must exist.
That is, by choosing this untrodden pathway, we already knew we would never be accepted by our peers for a 'high seat' on the earth even if we wanted one. Perhaps it was also because we knew intuitively that those who did chose to obey would *only* be seated on high for that reason.
We decided to be brave for a change. Our dialogue went where all dialogues, if authentic, must end up. Which is very close to home - we were talking about how neither of us had had a close bonding with our fathers. So maybe had never allowed an authority figure to set the rules and punishments for disobedience.
Inevitably this meant asking about the pandemics of single parent families and 50% divorce rates. The children bear the biggest burden. But is it possible this burden could be turned into a flame? Could a child wilfully choose to disobey, yet act obediently like a clown, having realised the social consequences, because that choice was seen as the better alternative. In a world where most people are oblivious that their obedience is root cause of all the world's great social problems.
Our discussion ended for now because we did not know how to proceed yet. And in just a few moments of dialogue had taken on a rather giant recognition of 150 years of accumulated blindness.
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
We left it asking the next obvious question: is there a difference between our father on earth and our father in heaven? I think we realised quickly by intuition, of course there is! His will does not seem to be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
We have left that dialogue for another day, when the holy spirit is once again passing by.