The Power of No
I wrote my last post, titled Divided Consciousness, about the ability to discern and judge based upon a mental division. At our mental core is an ever present question of yes or no repeated countless times each day. At an emotional, heart level hopefully we live in a state of yes to our surroundings and our world with our no being reserved for drama, trauma and disturbances. Even as infants we learned the ability to concentrate our no into powerful emotional outbursts in hopes of a restoration of yes.
Today, we will explore the power of no deeper than the mind or the heart. These two centers allow us an ability to control the power of no to a greater or lesser degree based upon age, maturity and experience. But the power of no in the body, as best represented as our immune system, has an agenda beyond our ability to control.
The will to live expressed by the trillions of cells in our body wields a power of no we have all been subjected to by high fever, vomiting, coughing, sneezing and muscular weakness. All for “our own good”. Being sick is being at war against an intruder using the power of no. And as much as we hate the feeling of being sick, it is a high state of life force being wielded by an intelligence and a love of being alive and a rejection of death.
Every organization of humans, from the single human to the family of humans to the tribe of humans to an entire country of humans has its own mental, emotional and physical body even if nascent and not well formed. The best way to evaluate the development of any single human or group of humans is by checking their ability to wield the power of no, especially when their existence is threatened.
With all this as backdrop, putting on our doctor of civilization white coat, what is the condition of Western Civilization? Where and how well are we wielding the power of no? Economically? We are in the state when all democracies commit suicide. When a majority of the people discover they can vote themselves more fiat money today and the only loser is the future life of that organization the power of no has yet to reach the body but will soon. Socially? When the power of no becomes divide and conquer through internal division we are again dealing with first a mental and then an emotional power of no. These are attempts to resolve divisions more superficially before the entire organization goes into a civil war.
Western Civilization is on the verge of a bodily use of the power of no to heal itself. The age of liberal ideals, social welfare, open borders, deficit spending, wars of external proselytizing is over. The age of internal conflict and renewal is upon us. Sometimes called a fourth turning, every eighty years or so, the founding principals of a large organization suffers crisis and death or rebirth.
What determines whether life or death is the result of the power of no? Does the group of humans have an internal organizing principal allowing for a win-win empowerment at its core? At some level of the power of no and its over compression comes a reversal. When the external conditions of division pushes our backs to the wall we discover other humans who have been pushed into the same dead end. If this group says no to death then the reverse of saying yes to life cooperatively emerges with equal and opposite power.
The power of no is ultimately in service to the power of yes to life. From a soap bubble to a planet the equalization of the forces of compression and expansion creates a circular citadel, the ubiquitous shape of all things created from space. The citadel of the single cell, the single human, or of Western Civilization is occasionally forced to find the zero point between the power of yes and the power of no. When one power has been dominate too long, it calls out its opposite for a healing.
So here we are today. The sooner we embrace the power of no and find our citadel at the balance point between yes and no the sooner the disease upon Western Civilization will pass.