Overcome

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You may feel oppressed at least occasionally. Even in a well-oiled democratic system, the citizens can feel oppressed by various policies of the State. As poet Louis Macneice said in his poem, Prayer before Birth, the world can convert us into “lethal automatons,” make us “a cog in a machine,” or blow us “like thistledown hither and thither.”

The State and its various machineries may decide what food you can or cannot eat, what kind of dress you should wear, how much money you can save, and so on. The State can make you feel powerless. There are even States which encourage one section of the citizens to eliminate another section. Both the eliminator and the victim are powerless. You want to overcome the lies  that create powerlessness.

There is only one way of overcoming that kind of powerlessness: living in your personal truth.

The State compels us to live within a lie, as political thinker Vaclav Havel said. You don’t have to accept the lies foisted on you by the State. You may have to accept those lies in order to be a law-abiding citizen. You have no choice in that matter. You have no choice but pay the umpteen taxes, for instance. You have no choice if your State decides to ban a certain food in the country. There are thousands of people in many nation-states who are forced to wear a particular kind of dress much as their hearts rebel against it.

The State cannot exercise any power over your soul, however. Your spirit. Your conscience. Call it what you like. The powerlessness of those in power begins there: in your soul.

Power has its rituals like making and enacting laws or foisting certain lies and illusions on the citizens using protean propaganda or terror agencies that look like political or religious organisations. But power cannot kill that part of our being which relentlessly yearns for freedom, truth and dignity. As long as we keep that spirit alive, we can overcome oppressive powers.

We can begin by expressing our feelings and ideas in social media or other places like political meetings. We can express solidarity with those whom our conscience commands us to support. We can reject certain rituals of the State and break certain rules of the game. We may have to pay certain prices for our actions. But redeeming our soul from oppressive powers is worth the prices. We cannot live in a lie for too long without losing our dignity.

Every time we choose to accept the State-created lies, our spirit shrinks and the nation becomes more of a quagmire. When more and more people begin to assert their right to live in truth, the power of governments and other oppressive systems begins to erode and the nation becomes richer. A great nation is made up of people who overcome the lies of political systems.

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