Any animal needs to hold, in its consciousness, pretty much all the knowledge needed to live on the planet. Well, maybe a male cat doesn’t know much about breeding kittens and the female cat might not be an expert on how to pee around the boundaries of a territory, but other than that, every animal needs all knowledge, it seems.
Not so with humans. I regard this as our most special, and important, asset.I play the guitar and sing and I don’t know shit about even basic stuff such as how to grow food. If someone didn’t build me a house I’d be long since dead. One individual builds bridges, another heals wounds, someone else cleans floors, and my cousin knows everything about the second world war. Yet we can all survive.
How is this possible? Because we have the ability to cooperate, to pool our knowledge into a common consciousness, share it, so each individual will be fine even though he wouldn’t even survive on his own. We can even access that which others have learnt.
This is a remarkable feature. It deepens our collective knowledge and power enormously since it frees up so much consciousness energy for everyone to go deep into anything they choose to. We couldn’t have if we all needed to know everything.
Cooperation is the human basic survival technique, as opposed to competition, something we are taught is our natural state of being. Even competition in the market is actually a form of cooperation: different companies are cooperating at developing very similar products, they are bouncing improvements back and forth when they engage in what we superficially call ”competition”. It’s more realistic to call it cooperation, really.
What has this got to do with freedom then? Well, the point is the multitude of ideas, perspectives, thoughts, arguments, experiences etc that makes us so strong as a species. Diversity is strength, in fact.
So when authority all around the world now are saying that certain opinions are dangerous and must be stopped, they have chosen the most dangerous path. They are suppressing the very core of our strength.
The idea of ”concensus” as a good thing is lunacy. ”Concensus” actually means ”no more development”. Even the most stupid and uninformed opinion serves the purpose of forcing a sharpening of the arguments for that which is correct.
No opinions are ever dangerous. Actions can be, but not thoughts. Because that’s what opinions are – thoughts.
Even more ludicrous is the idea that ”the science is settled”. Well if it is then it stopped being science. Science never stops asking questions. Any real scientist must always be ready to abandon everything he thought he knew if evidence should appear that things are otherwise. Obviously.
The sentence ”The science is settled” equals the concept of dogma. Dogma means a set of conclusions or teachings that are never to be questioned, cannot be discussed, and thus cannot develop. That’s the very opposite of science, in fact.
We see this line of thinking coming into full bloom all over the world right now. It’s been in the brewing for some time and now it’s implemented as policy, Governments are creating new departments to fight certain ideas and try to influence what ideas are out there to even consider.
Madness.Debate is nowhere to be heard and considered dangerous.
Lunacy.
Debate makes us strong, not weak. Debate makes us wise. It sharpens us. Discussion is vital. It forces us to continually develop rather than getting stuck.Yes it might feel a bit unpleasant at times, disagreement feels worse than agreement. But it’s not dangerous and we really need to start practicing again.
Maybe there are good reasons for the lack of debate though. He who has no arguments and no proof will loose a debate and everyone who listens will learn accordingly.So he who wants to supress debate most likely knows he wouldn’t win it. He who is confident he can argue his case will invite debate. Obviously.
These tendencies leads to the next dangerous human mind set: separation. People will identify with one opinion or the other, most often in the most black and white terms, and then start to harbour bad feelings towards those who think differently.
We see this most destructive mind set really gaining power right now. Families split, parents split from their offspring, old friendships fall apart, siblings can’t talk to each other any more.
This is not our natural state of mind. It is induced into us. The method is FEAR.Fear makes us really stupid. Which raises the question: Why are elected officials, all our institutíons and all our media all over the world geared towards inducing fear? All the time, 24/7, from all angles, at all cost?
It is vital that we ask these questions now. They work for us, don’t they? We pay theirwages, don’t we? We tell our representatives what to do, not the other way around, right? We need to grow up now, get a grip, be responsible for ourselves, our knowledge and our opinions and stop repeating what we are told without questioning. To do this we must leave the state of fear. To do that we must grow up spritually, become aware of our inner state and take responsibility for it.
We must cease to believe that someone else will protect us and keep us safe and solve our problems.
I believe we are ready.
I come from the perspective of cultural expression, another uniquely human feature.Cultural expression is a fast lane to this inner landscape, it enables connection with our core, our feelings, our hearts, with shared spiritual emotional experience. Fear is actually superficial and cultural expression proves that, time and time again: The right song at the right moment will sweep away any bad feelings and reconnect us with our core, our hearts.
For some reason cultural expression has been forbidden all over the world since all this started. No concerts, no theatre, no musicals. Sweden is world famous for its no lockdown policy but there have been one exception: Culture. Shops and restaurants have been open but it’s been illegal for me to stand in a corner and sing. Really.
Freedom is not something anyone can grant you. It’s a birthright. Our natural state. Freedom is not given to us by some elected person or ”expert”, it’s already ours and cannot be taken away.
It is my belief that cultural expression has the power to wake humans from this fear-induced sleep. This flashmob is an attempt to release that power. Most of the people involved (except the musicians) have never performed, danced or sung in front of an audience before. They came up with the idea and we did it together. It was a lot of work. That is a very good example of human creative collective capacity and I am very proud to be their friend when I watch them perform in the streets of Malmö. It is also a testament to the power of cooperation. It has been a lot of fun.
It’s time we grow up. It’s time we open our hearts. It’s time we become our own masters.
We are free. We stand strong.
And we will never back down.
/Christoffer Lundquist, Sweden, 7th of dec 2021