Society and Individual Choice
Society and Individual Choice
What makes a society? A society is not a society because people live together with rules, laws and morality - that is what makes a group. A society is a society because it leaves room for every individual to evolve. It leaves room for individuals to go from point A, which is their birth, to point B, which is their death. From the observations we have of the world, it is important to notice that there are two kinds of attitudes that affect every individual's life. In other words, there are two kinds of societies. These two kinds of societies determine the goals the individual sets for himself. There are only two options: the material point of view and the non-material point of view. The material attitude involves not trusting anything you don't see... which means, if I turn my back to you, by principle, you don't exist. That looks kind of absurd, because I have the memory of you. The non-material attitude sees existence as a whole and has the honesty to admit that there is more in this world than what the eye can see, more than what the ear can hear, more than what the nose can smell, and more than what the individual can perceive.
These two approaches come with huge consequences for the individual. They end up determining how the individual is born, how they live, what are the choices they make, and what is important to them.
There are perpetual questions that every individual asks himself: why are we here? What are we doing? What is going to become of us? Is death the end of existence? If not, then what will happen? We have these questions that are in our subconscious. We are always trying to assess them. Depending on the societies we live in, the questions that the individual asks himself may be suppressed, or the individual simply will be too distracted to even bring these questions to his own awareness.
What is a materialistic society? It is a society that tells your that there is nothing beyond death. Which means: live for today and enjoy the moment, have fun, and don't worry about what will become of you after your death. Some people find reasons for this to make sense. We can convince ourselves of the importance of the "now" and the lack of importance of the future.
The material world has no room for the idea that a God exists. Despite all what is being preached and said, there is absolutely no room for Gods. In a material world, there is no God and there is no Divine world. This is why everything is aimed at how much we can enjoy now and today. In the material world, the attention is directed toward pleasure, sensations for the senses and not thinking of tomorrow. By principle, in a material world, only laws function. Morality has no place in the material world.
Why should I be good if there is nothing to fear after I die? A logical question. Why should I be good - why should I follow seventy-seven commandments if nothing happens to me when I break them? In a material world, there Is no room for morality or values, because every thing is about how much fun one can have, or how much one can enjoy today.
Of course, inside the non-material society, the rules that apply in the material world have no place. The problem is that the individual needs to make it clear for himself what his choice is, what he wants, and which kind of world he wants to see. If you decide that you are interested in spiritual growth, then you want to grow, evolve, and advance; if you are aware of your spirit or what you call your soul, of the process of transcendence, of reincarnation, of the fact that that your ancestors are still there, and you are aware of the fact that the body, in the spiritual domain, is what we call the corruptible part of the being, then you must choose to live with an attitude of non-materialism.
You will see a dilemma. When an individual is born in a society that has intentionally chosen a materialistic view where there is no room for anything other than corruption (the pleasures of the flesh, the senses, the enjoyment of today, the enjoyment of now. sacrificing the future for today), the individual has a problem.
That problem is made more complicated by the fact that the society we live in is the one that educates us and determines our values. This means while the soul is crying for preservation of the self and for transcendence, the body has been corrupted, and it puts us in a dualistic situation. There are some things you just don't do when you want to preserve your soul. Ironically, in the materialistic society, these things are simply what is supposed to be done, It's a dilemma. It's stupid enough to think you can fool someone else. How stupid is it when you think you can fool yourself!? You think on one hand you want to preserve your soul, to transcend, to continue, to be... but on the other hand, you are ready to do things that will jeopardize just that. Who are you fooling?
The interesting question is: what is your choice? What do you choose? Do you choose to live a life that takes into consideration the fact that your life on Earth now is not all there is, that there is life after you die?
The way you go in this life is just like going to look for a job. You carry your resume with you. There is no dignity in making your success depend on the failure of another person. Whatever you do goes as a part of your own history. When you hurt someone, you are giving them an excuse - they will spend their life making you the cause of their troubles. You give them something they won't let go of, because it goes into their favor - it makes you suddenly the cause of everything that went wrong in their life. There is no dignity in that.
From the day you know of the seventy-seven commandments, you no longer have an excuse for being bad or for doing the wrong thing. If you think you can fool yourself, your ancestors or the Gods you are trying to get close to, think again! You cannot fool Gods. If you can fool a God, that makes you a God, not Him. This is the dilemma you are facing. The problem is, just like how the fish swims in the sea, how big is the sea? It's huge. How big is the fish? Very small. But it swims through the sea. That is how a spiritual person is supposed to go through life - swim through the life of corruption, but stay firm in yourself. Swim through the life of the evil that surrounds the world, and make sure to keep corruption away from you. That is the only thing that will come to clearly express the choice you have made. You can't say at one moment that you are thinking of how your soul will be, how you can transcend, reincarnate, and allow your ancestors to reincarnate, and then at another moment do the exact opposite of that, forgetting that you are the same person who at one moment was giving another speech. It simply doesn't work. This is the problem the society has set for you.
What are you going to do? You need to go back and think about the choices you are making. What do you want? What do you want?
If you do not follow the seventy-seven commandments, you might as well buy a gun and stand on the street corner and rob people, because it will be the same thing. If you think that is repulsive because you think of yourself as higher than that, then the seventy-seven commandments are there. You can't have it both ways.
There are two worlds; the one that only believes what the eyes see and the hands touch and nothing else, and the one that believes that even when one turns his back to the world, the world still exists behind him. This affects the way one makes decisions. Gods are there for those who understand that the universe is a whole. Gods are there only for those who recognize the fact that there is more than what they can understand, and for those that want to go from point A to point B. There is nothing to gain in the pursuit of the pleasures of the flesh. There is nothing to gain from the pursuit of materials and the material word. The day you die, you will leave the material you accumulate for the others to fight over. What was your life worth? What will be your life after that?
All depends on one's choices. What do you want? If you don't care about tomorrow and just want fun now, then you have no place in the non-material or spiritual world, as that is not our goal. Your behavior reflects your choice. If you don't care about your soul, then you don't care about the commandments. If you have decided that there is more to the world than pleasure and fun, then you understand that the seventy-seven commandments are very, very important. They come to guide your stops. You understand that you don't have an excuse.
How do you want your life to be? It's almost like someone deciding to get drunk today vs. somebody deciding they want to be sober. If you want to be sober, you don't wake up in the morning and open a can of beer. lf you keep drinking all day and end up drunk, you can't ask how it happened! This is how practical the commandments are. That's how they affect the kind of future you have - that's how direct it is. lf you don't want to end up drunk in the afternoon, then start by staying sober in the morning. You will see that you will not get drunk. If you get up and tell people you want to be sober this afternoon and start drinking in the morning, don't ask how you ended up drunk! That's how practical the commandments are. That's how directly they affect which way your life will go.
When it is cold, we wear clothes. When it is hot, we take them off. What you know should determine how you behave. That should be very clear and understood. Keep it in mind and think about your choice. Which kind of future do you want for yourself? According to that choice, your behavior should reflect what you've chosen. A soldier has chosen to die, so it's normal for him to kill. Those who don't mind ending up in prison don't mind breaking the law. If someone has chosen to preserve the spirit, to survive and eternalize themselves, that should affect how they behave: what they say, what they listen to, what they don't listen to, what they do, what they don't do, what they like, what they don't like... all this is determined by which kind of future they have ahead of them.