Legitimate Authority
Within the human organism, there is a place and purpose designed and built to interface with the outer world and coordinate our activities. Our mind. There is also within the human organization something we call our conscience which carries an imbedded wisdom of right and wrong and feelings about our actions. Our heart center has abilities beyond simply pumping blood.
We have externalized our collective mind and heart into the state and the church while the trillions of individual cells are simply focused upon their 200+ unique missions to accomplish for our whole being. Rarely do these trillions of cells coordinate except in obedient response to ideas coming from the mind and feelings coming from the heart.
The one place of legitimate authority for the cells of the body to operate in opposition to ideas and feelings is when the ideas of the mind and the feelings of the heart are obviously threatening our life. This legitimate authority can be expressed tactically as a vomit, a cough, or a sneeze and strategically as a withdrawal of consciousness from the mind during sleep and an exhaustion of feelings by “crying our eyes out”.
Humans take for granted these safeguards built into the functioning of our organization. Well fed and well hydrated cells just do not organize into full scale rebellion except the natural cycle of sleep and awake. The body’s authority to act is legitimate based upon the most basic set of laws we know as instinct. And just like the mind has the analog of the state and the heart has its collective outer representation as church, the body must also have its group advocate.
There is a legitimate authority and an advocate for the cells of the body we loosely call by the name of life and its immune system. But this body organization and advocate for trillions of cells has no analog for a civilization. We invoke “the people” as in “we the people”. The idea of “we” as a force is left un named, un explored and un led. It arises spontaneously. Democracy and citizen government are spontaneous ideas yet to be fully implemented.
The Mapuche people of the Patagonia region of South America were the last indigenous people to be conquered. They were so decentralized, self sufficient and wild that it took well into the 20th century before they had any government oversight…even from themselves. A chief was only elected as the greatest warrior to lead them into battle once the people felt they must act to repel some invader. Once the battle was over and the victory won, the chief lost his title and went back to being just another cell in the tribe.
The Mapuche people were trained from birth to be fearless. The parents of a baby would dip their children into the icy rivers to strengthen their chi. Where we westerners were encouraged by church and state to leave any violence to God and the organs of the state, these tribes allowed for no outer authority. They were completely wild because, unlike westerners where our adrenal response to threats became inaction and fear, these people acted and went berserk.
The instinct of a sneeze or a vomit was not modulated by fear of punishment or consequence. They acted by their internal legitimate authority to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, just like the other tribes, the mental and emotional organizing power of church and state with their schools and organized violence backed by guns were too much even for the Mapuche. Slowly the legitimate authority divested from the people to the government and the Catholic church.
But we humans have left something very powerful and necessary behind in letting our physical and emotional bodies be domesticated by fear. The idea of facing life without a government filter or facing God without an intermediary generates fear within most people. We have lost our wildness and with it our ability to tap into unbridled violence in defense of life. We, at most, complain and maybe vote one of two flavors of control.
The Chinese have a rich history of the people going berserk against a central government even up to modern times. The French went berserk too. The chopping off of heads in a rousing spectacle is the extreme tip of reaction to mental and emotional repression. The vomit reaction of the body is unnecessary if the mind and the heart do not make stupid food choices. I will say that the people have a legitimate authority to respond to the threat of their life. And I advocate the balanced, the routine and non-violent approach in response to systemic illegitimate authority.
How do we reprogram our commitment to fear and recover “we the people” authority? To be continued…