Western culture is commonly known throughout the world as the freedom hemisphere. Recent history shows this title well deserved. Because of our vast individual and collective freedoms we enjoy an above global average lifestyle, right? We are consumers of means. We are seekers of luxury. If we need or want a newer better wireless phone, we are afforded several methods of obtaining it. If we need or want a newer better automobile, we are given a plethora of methods to get it. If we need or want a newer better home, or improved home, we are again afforded the means. If we need or want a newer better partner/spouse, or the BEST, voilá, this too can be ultimately satisfied a number of ways. Western society gladly embraces and perpetuates the motto “Where there is a will, there is a way.” In Western culture, there is nothing we cannot do or get, right?
Before you answer that question, pause a moment. What are the consequences and rewards of material or sensory buffets? More to the point, are their consequences or rewards to a “love” buffet? Match.com, eHarmony.com, and all the other love-buffet providers certainly say, your wish is our command. Many would claim that choices are good — it is the responsibility of the chooser to decide what is best. Still others would claim that the chooser is not always responsible and doesn’t always know what is best. Hence, there must be limits. Who is correct?
If you haven’t noticed, in the journey for love and The One, your world IS a buffet. And here’s another kicker: the buffet is never closed, never with just one choice, and never ever the same tomorrow, next month, or next year. I find something very peculiar with this gorilla sitting in the room. In every aspect of our Western society we strive for, we fight for and defend our right to freedom, even die for it to have our buffets! We embody the success of a free market buffet society! Yet, strangely we do not allow it within the institution of marriage. How very odd. How very… unfree.
Furthermore, I believe there is not just a huge gorilla in the room. There is a partly covered mirror in the room. How did it get covered? Why is it covered? More importantly WHO covered it and why? Perhaps as importantly, are you willing to uncover that mirror and gaze into it during the best of times and worst of times? Most choose not only to keep the mirror ‘covered’, but to also pretend the gorilla isn’t there in this particular room of love.
Would you like for me to decipher the symbolism? I am more than happy to, but first I want you to think about these points.
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Even though the Renaissance brought us out of the Dark Ages, we still implicitly or explicitly cling to barbaric myths about human nature that presently stifle the real human spirit.
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Our free market mentality, for good or for worse, that we have so achieved and bought with blood and life over the centuries, is still not truly free at all.
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Is a society or person that limits love in all of its forms, really a free society or fully free person?
Look at the picture to the right. What does it show you? It reveals plenty without any words at all. The obvious observation is dishonor, but what else does the picture tell? Who do you think invited the buffet in and who do you think allowed it? Or did the buffet line just happen? Who is in the room of love with their mirror covered?
Over the next several months I would like to explore all these questions as well as examine the gripping myths that Western society holds on to in light of a growing divorce rate, a growing obesity rate, a growing goods and material consumption (buffets) rate, and more critically their sources.
As any rehab center and staff will tell you, it is not the chemicals that are the insurmountable problems or source; certainly not at the start. And for the record, and always, it is NEVER the Devil — never has a mythological external figure ever been given so much power as it was during the post-325 CE Dark Ages. No, the responsibility falls squarely on each person’s self-controlled or sacrificed other-controlled will and spirit. It is a question of whether your internal spirit is yours, or whether external experiences, myths, or people guide your will and desires. One is easier, but confining on ambition and self-empowerment. The other is harder, but rewards abundantly if honorably managed. Or maybe you disagree or are not sure. If so, let me know. Bon appetit!
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