Champions of The Status Quo
"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
— Mark Twain
The longer you live, the more you realize: the frequently deceitful people who "lead" us, as well as the "experts" and "authorities," do not solve our problems for us. Instead, they are often invested in them. They gain more money, power, and control over our lives, as problems grow. And, so, they do not really work to solve them. After all, they wouldn't want to put themselves out of a job. When was the last time you heard a preacher say, "You are spiritually well, now. There is no need to come back here any more. Good bye and God bless"? How about a psychiatrist, or a politician? There are always more verses to memorize, more laws to write and enforce, more neuroses to explore — they grow by leaps and bounds, yearly. But, do our problems go away?
The status quo carries all the inertia and ignorance of the past with it. It hides an unseen force which tries to inhibit or oppose what is progressive, right, true, or good. Recall the saying: Argue for your limitations, and they become yours. Proponents of the status quo, and the powers-that-be, seem to argue most forcefully for everyone else's limitations. What they fear most is people getting free from dependence upon them and their institutions. Included in this category are the church, religious authorities, and all institutions that want to ensure that you cannot "hear" the truth within you, but are instead forced to rely upon their misguided programming, dogma, and tradition. Institutions are threatened by someone who can hear the truth for his/her own self, and use attack and denial to defend their untenable positions. This is how the dominant forces in this world, which are wrong-spirited, maintain their grip, maximize suffering, and perpetuate the status quo.
Consider this example. There is an electronic device known as a cochlear implant which when surgically implanted in the ear can allow a totally deaf child to hear (and speak) like a hearing person. It requires training and adjustment, but the device does work. You might imagine that deaf people would applaud such a breakthrough, but the reverse is true. The deaf "authorities" condemned this as an intrusion into (or threat to) so-called "deaf culture." They take great pride in deafness, and say that they are not missing anything in not being able to hear. Being in total denial ("not wanting to hear"), they argue that they are not handicapped or hearing-impaired but rather "sight-enhanced." The fact is, like any culture, this one is built around a power structure, a tradition, and a status quo that tries to keep its iron grip. It is the most powerful leaders of the deaf culture, who head deaf associations, who publish deaf newsletters, and who head and teach at deaf educational institutions, who resisted this change most strongly. After all, where would they be — what would be their importance — if the status quo changed, and people were freed from what limits them? These authorities actually wanted to have the government (whom they were strongly lobbying) ban cochlear implants, and they wanted hearing parents declared unfit to decide to help their deaf child to hear. read more ...
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