Bonding vs. Bondage: Free Will, Love, Fear, Control

What bonds us more pleasantly, free will, or brutal dominating force?

This story is not about the kinky sexual thing, it’s about real-life bonding based on free will vs. bondage, slavery, mining people’s energy based on force.

The premise

Every creature on this planet needs and seeks relationships of some sort. We, people, live through our relationships. As kids, we learn about the world from our grown-up and from our friends. And even as adults, we form opinions largely based on our social circles, we get our needs met through relationships with others, etc. All in all, we experience life in our bodies (go away, stupid virtual reality!) and through our relationships with various entities, both in the visible world and in the invisible world.

For now, let us focus on our relationships with other human beings.

Bonding vs. bondage

Relationships—of the good kind, that is—are based on live and natural energy: attraction, adoration, respect, joy of intermingling with another person, excitement, resonance of the soul, good will, patience, benevolence, the desire to be good to another person out of love, etc. All those things are intrinsically creative, intrinsically of spirit (i.e. the invisible world). They are the breath of the spirit onto the things we see.

And of course, because they are live and subjective, they  are also “unpredictable” in the mechanical sense. Maintaining them requires maturity of the soul, a degree of trust, and a lot of patience and even-headedness because inevitably, in any kind of close relationship, individual or communal, there are occasional differences in opinion, occasional annoyances, occasional misunderstandings, etc. But as long as every participant has an invisible foundation of love and a genuine dedication to doing what’s right, the magic happens, and it works.  Which is to say, in order to maintain relationships that are based on quintessential love, one has to “work.” It’s an investment of energy of love, and the return is also love.

Well, that doesn’t appeal to everyone. If one is impatient, broken, or maybe blatantly missing a couple of screws and carries an icicle in place of the heart, the lack of mechanical guarantees in free-will-based relationships is a source of annoyance and pain. No bueno. Not acceptable. Best avoided. And so, instead of investing time in earning good energy from others, one seeks to yank energy out of others at any cost (to them). One seeks relationships based not on bonding but on bondage (slavery, ownership of others through violence or tricks).

That gives the people with not-so-good intentions a sense of power. It gives them a sense of power foe a limited time though—it’s a very hungry ghost, and it needs to be fed often, otherwise it has no problem eating the psychopath it temporarily serves. And so, the person who chose domination as his mode of obtaining energy from others keeps chasing his high. He seeks to enslave more living beings and “mine” them for energy, in order to feed the hungry ghost and keep feeling high.

By the way, power is a neutral high but the power of love is pure and healing (and also infinite) while the power of stomping on others is an anxious, self-poisoning power.

Focusing on the things you can change and the love on the inside

My philosophy is that I don’t spend too much time thinking about what’s in the heads of people who have temporarily chosen to walk on the dark side. It is not good energy to do that.

They chose to have that experience, it is their choice, they have an existential role to play. Their existential role, I believe,  is to remind the people to connect to their souls tighter—and find ways to resist the darkness that are based on the live energy of love (not fear).

I personally believe that our job is to connect to our souls tighter and do what’s in our powers to be protected from different harms. That is all. Scope of the project matters. The existential big picture is bigger than us. It is good to ponder it but the technical side of it is handled in the invisible world, and the judgement belongs with the Creator under any sensible theology.  My job, as one person here on Earth, is situational awareness, protection of my turf (that I almost misspelled as “tuft”), and doing it from love.

My prayer for the people with not-so-good intentions is their highest good, which is always love, the way the Creator knows love, the infinite love.  If a person decides to stop walking on the dark side, they would be compelled to fix what they broke, and that, existentially and practically, is a very happy thing for all. Healing is better than punishment in my book. And while they are choosing destruction, I let the Creator handle them because I am not any sort of smart, I am just one human being on Earth trying to do my best. And it’s a start.

On the Nature of Good and Evil and Historical Psyops

Why People Act Cruel

All this is the topic of today Philosophy Club call for paid subscribers (Friday March 22, 2pm EST). The link to the call is behind the paywall, after the video that is a little cheesy but soooo sweet. And dammit, I can’t enable comments for everyone in any posts with a paywall (ideas welcome) As usual, if you want to participate and can’t afford a paid subscription or if you have supported me in the past, please send me a note to be comped, etc. Looking forward to seeing you there!