Nelson Mandela showed us how it was done. How to cooperate for the greater good, without sacrificing respect and dignity and freedom for all. It’s important that we all remember, that as great as he was, as great as Martin Luther King was, as great as Gandhi was, none of them did it alone. Humankind, really all of creation, is weighted to cooperate for the greater good with respect and dignity. Fear drives us to limiting freedom, whereas generosity of spirit, and faith in the greater good moves us towards embracing freedom and the creative chaos that often accompanies it!
It took the courageous people, who believe in justice for all, all over the world, to demand that Nelson Mandela be freed from prison. Without the global village recognizing and rejecting injustice, Nelson Mandela’s beautiful soul would never have been expressed in a way that showed us all how it is done. It’s important that we remember that we need to take a stand for what is right in this world, to stand up for those that are mistreated, wrongly judged, especially those who are speaking truth to power. It may cost you personally, but it is the right thing to do for the greater good.
Tyranny can exist wherever fearful people objectify one another, effectively stripping the other of their humanity. Once objectified, the need for respect and dignity go out the window. There is no need for cooperation, only subjugation. That never lasts for long though. People of quiet dignity and self-respect cannot be subjugated, and their humanity shines through for all to see. I encourage you all to find that within yourself. It is where the deepest roots of health reside.
I am reading a wonderful book by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was published in 1861 and is titled Currents and Crosscurrents in Medical Science. Now, Oliver and I don’t see eye to eye on everything. Indeed, in this volume he has one essay entitled “Homeopathy, and It’s Kindred Delusions”. However, he is a thinking man, who does not blindly follow trends or support a status quo. He’s the guy who said, to paraphrase “if we threw all the medications in the sea, it would be great for humans, but bad for the fishes.” He also said (again paraphrasing) that” if all of the medications on earth magically disappeared all thinking people would return to what we know are the true determinates of health: good diet and lifestyle.”
He also wrote something about freedom, particularly freedom of speech in medicine, and the unique intent (at that time) of the founders of the US government in regards to governance. I want to share it with you, in honor of Nelson Mandela:
“But mainly we owe the large license of speech we enjoy to those influences and privileges common to us all as self-governing Americans. This Republic is the chosen home of minorities, of the less power in the presence of the greater. It is a common error to speak of our distinction as consisting in the rule of the majority. Majorities, the greater material powers, have always ruled before. The history of most countries has been that of majorities,-mounted majorities, clad in iron, armed with death, treading down the tenfold more numerous minorities…With us the majority is only the flower of the passing noon, and the minority is the bud which may open in the next morning’s sun. We must be tolerant, for the thought that stammers on the single tongue to-day may organize itself in the growing consciousness of the time, and come back to us like the multitudinous waves of the ocean in the morrow.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes