Addressed To:
Parents, Liberty-Leaders, Church Congregations, Religious Leaders,
and America-First Political Leaders.
Many of you are gravely concerned, as I’m concerned, that liberty is on the chopping block, that it may be lost to us forever, and more tragically, lost to our children. If there were ever a moment that called for bold personal action, it is this moment.
Like you, I’ve given this problem lots of thought; we need to talk about it. But, before discussing any strategy that might help us restore and preserve liberty, there are questions we must explore. These questions can be traced back to our nation’s founding…and much earlier.
Are you with me? If so, let’s begin with an allegory:
To a herd of feedlot cattle, liberty has no meaning. In the small print, as part of the deal, feedlot creatures are given food, safety, and companionship; they don’t recognize they’re being deprived of anything essential, nor do they know what their smooth-talking and generous masters have planned for them. Since the mentally neutered cow has forgotten the meaning of its cow-ness, and since the cow’s basic needs are covered, the cow unwittingly forgoes all the ancillary experiences it otherwise would have enjoyed free in the landscape, thus the cow is no longer a cow and instead is just a fleshy bag of money handed over to its owner’s bank account, a fine leather satchel, if you will.
Therefore…
We can’t intelligently speak of liberty and its meaning until we have some working definition of the meaning of human life. What use is liberty to a human who lacks both substance and meaning? What use is liberty to a human who lives as the cow in a feedlot thus has no connection or responsibility to upholding human-meaning? History is littered with people, civilizations, nations, etc. who by being duped into losing the human plot have allowed their hubris to walk them over the precipice. (Be it the hubris of the elites or of the mob). Prior to their losing the plot, the people collaboratively shared the burden of protecting what needed to be protected. But, over time, like a game of Jenga, they exchanged the essential blocks of reality for hope in a fantasy, a fantasy that reaches toward the sky, then crumbles. With each shift away from the essential, these gullible people thought they could get away with sacrificing their fundamental humanness for something “better.” Sound familiar? Our liberties are only as sustainable as our humanness is carried into the future with a story. (I’ll explain)
Q: What is the meaning of being human?
We are human, we operate via something called meaning, and meaning is conveyed through story. So, to craft culturally useful stories (meaningful stories), we must first ask ourselves what the meaning of human life is? If you assume that the answer is subjective, then I will disagree, just as I will disagree that the purpose of a human lung, liver, or gall bladder is subjective.
Imagine yourself as a mouse. You might not need to know the meaning of being a mouse, but you will certainly live-out its meaning. If mice tried to live as the lion, the mouse would be crushed by reality very quickly. The mouse is part of Earth’s story, just as we humans are part of Earth’s story. Earth’s story was here before us and will be here after we’re gone. The human story does not supersede Earth’s story. (We lose what’s most essential and most beautiful about the human experience the moment we are fooled into believing our story can outshine Earth’s story.)
We are discussing liberty, everything that leads to it, and everything it is useful for. I bring this line of thinking to you because I believe you are the people who hold the key to liberty. The solution is in your hands, because you are the people anchored in communities held together by a very important story.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” –– John Adams
We humans have the capacity for this amazing thing called language. Through language, we experience life through a lens of a story, and that story is constructed with concepts, ideas, and mental forms. If humans were not designed to live in groups, there would neither be language nor story. Humans are story creatures who use a shared language to create a shared story that holds a small group of people together, together to perform acts of survival. Where there is a suitable story to hold people together (emotionally and physically together), that group’s DNA will propel forward––– like a well-built raft that carries DNA down the river of time.
What do I mean when I say that humans are “story creatures”? Ex: After you finish a day of hard work, you want to take a break from your own story. Most of us spend time watching/reading other people’s stories, even fictional stories. When we sleep, we dream as a character in a story. And as we live each day in a story, we continue pushing through each moment, choosing the options that reflect whichever story we believe ourselves a character. We are guided through each choice by whichever principles we knowingly or unknowingly operate from.
No matter how absurd or wildly inaccurate our perception of reality, if we had no story from which to operate or no way by which to feel connected to a destiny with a meaningful outcome, then we’d have no reason to do more than scratch the immediate existential itch of basic hunger. If we possessed no story, we would never sacrifice today’s pleasure for tomorrow well-being, thus there would be no meaning attributed to our personal identity. When our usefulness towards the people we care about is reflected back at us through their gratitude and respect, our resulting feelings are synthesized into a personal identity of dignity and honor. The emotions we feel for our people are what drive us towards preserving our identity. For those with no concern for the people with whom they survive, everything that is friendship, romance, family, personal value, and story, all dies. With the death of the story, there is no reason to bury the dead, no eulogy, no heroes, no recoded history, and no art. All this to say that human meaning is one in the same with dignified identity, but only when our identity is tied to caring for our people. Caring for our people inspires the necessary personal sacrifices that hold a people together. A lineage cannot survive unless its people sacrifice today for tomorrow.
If there were no such thing as human meaning, there could be no such thing as a story. Stories contain the glue that links each moment to the next. Stories shine a light on a singular heart-felt purpose that emanates through every action, through to the story’s end. In such a story, the human meaning that ties one moment to the next reflects the underlying motivation, the “WHY.” When we navigate our lives fueled by a WHY, we are willing to apply whichever “how” that we must.
“He who has a why to live for, can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
What use or meaning could liberty possibly have for people who are without an identity, without a WHY, without a story, and without a destiny? Even if given perfect instructions on HOW to live, but never given the initiation that fills the heart with the most basic of a passionate “WHY,” for such people there will be no possibility of ever making investments in the tenets of liberty! Again, cattle in a feedlot do not long for, do not understand, and can no longer protect their cow-ness. The cow’s liberty is lost, leaving a void to be filled with a confused and irksome feeling. They’ll say, “something feels wrong, but I just don’t know what,” then they’ll go on chewing their cud.
If humans didn’t experience time or discomfort, there would be no such thing as human meaning. Personal meaning emerges the moment we’ve decided there are discomforts we’re willing to endure, if by enduring them, it serves the future of someone we love. A meaningful human life is one where we willingly and protectively carry something we deem good to its rightful destination. To be human means to fulfill a story and destiny that is bigger than oneself, which means delivering something beautiful to someone beautiful––– someone other than ourselves.
To live a human life, is to protect the group with whom one lives, thus is to endure discomfort on behalf of that group’s future well-being. If this is what the group needs in order to survive and thrive, then each human in that group must be given a WHY that can bear almost any HOW. And what else but a comprehensive story will convey the all-inspiring WHY? This heartfelt WHY is the basis of universal human meaning. Through a story, the listener identifies with the characters when the character’s WHY is relatable and universal. Once the listener is seduced into caring for the story’s character, he becomes invested in the character’s journey and destiny! The listener and the character become one.
In our own minds, we live in a story. The measure of our life’s meaning takes shape within that story when our hearts have been filled with loving concern for the characters of that story. Human meaning blossoms after the initiation. Initiation begins when through the story, we have fallen in love––––in love with the landscape that feeds us, in love with the people whom we share that landscape with, and in love with the Creator–––or whatever/whomever we wish to thanks for the fact that we exist whatsoever (that we are given this opportunity to both experience this feast on Earth and to be part of Earth’s story.) When this falling in love becomes the heartfelt WHY that fuels all life’s required acts, then one ‘s heart shifts from self-concern (living to fill oneself with immediate pleasure-seeking) to living in a way that pays back a debt of gratitude, a debt paid for all the beautiful delights received. (Paid at the feet of the named and nameless, of the visible and invisible, of the knowable and unknowable, all who have made this experience of living possible). A person’s character is a measure of how much they feel they owe. A person with no character lives by what they feel they’re owed. The proper cultural initiation helps reveal how Earth (and one’s people) conspires to deliver the gifts of nourishment, love, and meaning to the initiate. The initiate’s heart becomes activated once he realizes what’s been received, thus he quickly realizes what he owes in return. Being filled with love makes us feel that we owe something for the beauty we’ve received.
The word, meaning boils down to this: meaning is attributed to the sacrifices we willingly make to carry the beautiful and the good to its rightful distant destination. We, the love-filled initiates, deliver what is beautiful, just as those who came before us carried and delivered this beauty to us. We deliver this gift, wrapped in both our DNA and our community’s shared narrative. For a human lineage to live on into the future, each member must feel themselves supremely responsible for carrying something meaningful. What could be more meaningful than carrying the story that made us: fall in love with the landscape, fall in love with the tribe, and fall in love with life-itself? If we fail to carry this bundle of beauty, and if we fail to deliver this supreme meaning to our future generations, then what use is liberty? And if there is no use for liberty, then what use is there for living whatsoever? What meaning can meaning-itself have if we fail to carry meaning’s beauty to its rightful destination? There is no story if the story is without a burden worth risking one’s life and name to carry.
For human life to continue in any meaningful way, there must be a life-affirming WHY that fuels all method of HOW. Without the WHY, people live in a meaningless and dystopian Brave New World. Though they may inherit technology, centralized banking, and central authorities, the people of the future will be deprived of meaning, deprived of beauty, deprived of all life-affirming goodness, and deprived of the worthy story. Though they may look like humans, they will live as drug-addicted slaves who act like cattle in a feed lot. Are we not already there?
If we are unwilling to carry the worthy story, hence unable to transfer its beauty to our future DNA, then likely, it’s because we have already lost our connection. We’ve lost the connection with our people; we’ve lost our love of the landscape, and likely we’re lacking the story that reveals the beauty and goodness of life’s meaning. If this is so, then likely are living only to pass the time, living a life-sentence in a prison.
A story worth living for, is a story that sets our protagonist (you and I) to carry beauty and all its goodness into the future. Can anyone here think of a story that holds a group of people together, a story whereby its message is passed down from generation to generation, where the people who carry that story deem the story more important than themselves? I can. It’s you.
If that sacred story inspires its human-transporters to treat their small group of people in good faith, then that group will likely live into the future having preserved everything that makes life worth living, everything that preserves love, friendship, teamwork, collaboration, love of nature, and honor.
We are not designed to live alone or to survive alone. Yes, cattle in a feed lot can be isolated and survive on the behalf of their owners, but real human beings are not designed for that kind of mindless alienation, and it’s the real humans who will carry the story down the river of time for future generations.
At the heart of the story, carried down the river of time, is a nugget of pure truth that makes us fall in love with the tribe, landscape, and Creator. At the nucleus of this story is the reveal of EVERYTHING! I’m going to call that nugget a bundle. The bundle is a symbolic collection of elements that together opens our eyes to the layers of perception that show us all the actions and interactions that hold Earth’s story together…the story that we ourselves are part of, the story that we can’t escape no matter how much we try. This bundle does not only reveal our humanness, but the bundle is our humanness itself. If we carry that bundle of humanness, but that bundle somehow lacked the substance needed to reveal its wisdom to future generations, then neither the bundle nor our humanness would have any recognition. Being human is worthwhile only if we’re in possession of our humanness. And with it, we feel it our duty to carry and deliver it to the future. This is a birthright, just as mother’s milk is a birthright, just as being part of a tribe is a birthright.
For each of us who lives in a story, our life’s journey tasks us with carrying it, then delivering it along with our DNA to the next port. We hand over our story giftwrapped in a small symbolic bundle. In that bundle is our humanness. It’s revealed to each who lives in the group, the group who willingly sacrifices to carry and protect the bundle. Our humanness exists not by the fact that a human body is born, or that a human mind grows into an able body, but that our humanness emerges through the story that reveals the WHY we should bother celebrating this existence whatsoever.
The oldest question that those in possession of their humanness know how to answer: What’s the greatest gift to be given a child? If this answer is not at our fingertips, then what can possibly become of us, of liberty, of life-itself? Liberty is worthless if life-itself is given no value.
Liberty gives us the opportunity to live by the story, and that story contains the group’s method of carrying and delivering the story to YOU! Liberty is the thing that allows us to deliver our humanness to the next generation. If we’ve been deprived of our job as transporters of humanness, then liberty seems useless; it will be taken for granted and lost.
If we are to Save America, then we need to get the story straight, because that story is what reveals our precious humanness–––it reveals the bundle of life’s beauty. The ceremony is what makes the child fall in love with life-itself, thus activates the child’s desire to nourish and protect everything that holds his people together. Most importantly, by the quality of the story’s ability to do as mentioned, the initiate will want to carry this story forward into a future worth giving his heirs.
If a builder has forgotten the most essential rules or elements of building, then his latest structures will certainly collapse. When humans forget what is most essentially human, then these human lineages are certain for a devastating fall. If a person never falls in love with the essential structures of Earth, of tribe, and of the individual self, then that person will certainly fail to uphold the essential. No matter how well we intellectually understand the essential, unless its message has made its way into our hearts, thus has inspired us to devote ourselves to upholding these structures, then the structures of civilization will fall. Awe, love, gratitude, and respect are the glue that holds it all together. Unless the bundle can reveal that which activates the heart, and unless the heart acclimates itself to the tasks required to hold the fabric of reality together, then most certainly, those human lineages will die.
If you stand for liberty; if you wish to rescue liberty as to usher it back into American life, and if you wish to proudly hand it off to your children and your children’s children, then please join me in the ceremonial acts that reveal the bundle of wisdom that helps our people fall in love with Creator, Creation, Tribe, and all the acts of participation that hold the fabric of reality together. Please join me to learn how to tell the story that contains our humanness. Our humanness is the shiny human jewel handed from elder to youth; it evokes all the love worth living and dying for.
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