I wish to tell everyone that there is hope. That the future can be brightened. It could take years, or it can take decades to actually brighten it - depending on us, those alive today.
I often refer to a part of my life that was a reality: I was born in a communist country. BORN INTO IT. No choice was given, no options were presented. More so, no history was allowed to be told except in the privacy of our homes - IF our elders chose to still speak of history. In schools, and on the streets, history was only about the greatness of the Party as it built the nation under the one supreme leader. The “golden age” it was called, many decades ago..
I was born with a law asking people to have children in order to build the nation. I was a product of an ideology. Born into the Golden Age of my country.
The system was already there, built, enforced, omnipresent. My MIND began forming inside that political system and inside the communist regime. If we could go back in time, before my birth, there were 1-2 generations that made it possible for that communist reality to exist. I was born into a system that others have built, and others have allowed it to be built. This is important. An authoritarian regime doesn't happen in a vacuum. It is not an accidental hiccup in human evolution. Instead, it is a planned, ferociously executed strategy to assert full control of a society. And, along with millions others, I was born into one.
I had no say.
I hold no grudges either, but I figured out early on that I had to put up a fight or I would be assimilated into an implacable machine.
Later, as life went on, I started to employ critical thinking to the best of my abilities. However, the system itself had one design power: it was meant to mold me into a permanently obedient subject. Day in and day out, in school, on the streets, in stores, in the media, and often in the homes of my friends and even mine, we were to remain docile, quiet, and loyal.
It obviously failed, but others were not so fortunate. Our nation lost many dreamers and many thinkers in the process of indoctrination and often re-education.
Their names forgotten. Rendered irrelevant.
Lost.
Their only sin? Being born into submission.
The sacrifice to be true to yourself is sometimes too great to make, but the cost of submission is always being passed forward.
The balance comes due for those generations yet to come.
Have you ever watched a caged animal as it paces back and forth, at nauseam for you both, until exhaustion?
Freedom does not die easily – not even for those born in captivity – except in one, specific and devastating circumstance:
The longer an authoritarian system is allowed to spread and enforce its power, the more a society forgets its historic roots. Over time, a society in submission finds the “cage” acceptable and justifiable.
After all, not all caged animals will pace ad nauseam in their cage. Only those with true inner power will. Those driven by an unbreakable instinct.
Freedom does not die easily. The dream lives on, almost in dormancy, until it can find a pulse again.
Unless we choose to hide from our roots until we forget.
An authoritarian regime is nothing but a choice transferred forward, through time, through lives. Their lives, not ours. The lives after ours.
The very existence of an authoritarian system requires our participation. Ironically, the more passive our participation is, the more actively the system is enforced. Year after year, then decade after decade, generation after generation.
There is hope, but freedom is not served on a silver platter. If we want our children to experience a brighter future, the way to achieve it is not through mutual funds and real estate deals.
Those lead to comfort, not freedom. A lion in a zoo is well fed, but its cubs will be born in captivity - just like me and millions of others like me…and maybe like you as well.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
(Buckminster Fuller)
Keep hope alive. Give dreams a voice. 195 voices in fact. Build a village:
https://www.project-forward.org/
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