Our worst enemy

Human beings have been fighting ever since we first started out on this planet. We always had an enemy to fear and we had to find ways to overcome it. When we started out as individual cavemen, our enemies were made up of large predators, the harsh conditions of nature and of course other human beings. Hunting and gathering were difficult to achieve alone as they were time consuming and there were other significant threats to us.  We evolved from being the lone hunter to tribes because we found out that it could be much easier if we worked together hunting and gathering and we were much safer from our aforementioned common enemies. Tasks and duties were shared in a tribe but as individuals we had to relinquish part of our freedom and power to the head of the tribe. From then on we had to follow and obey rules and regulations set out by the chief of the tribe in return for food and security.

It then evolved to bigger tribes or clans, where there were more people who could contribute to food and security. However with more people rules and regulations were more difficult to reinforce. Laws were formed and to ensure that members of the clan did not break them, people were assigned to uphold the law and strict punishment was the result of breaking the law. With more people there were more problems and thus more laws. With more laws every individual had to be more aware of the laws and surrender more of their freedoms to the leaders of the clan in return for the security and privileges of the clan. Clan privileges in terms of food have evolved from hunting and gathering to agriculture. More food was available and with the condition that we obeyed the Law, we were entitled to the benefits of the clan. The clan was united because it provided safety and security from common enemies like other clans and predators.  Due the larger size of the clan in terms of numbers, the clan leader had more power and authority over the individuals as compared to the Tribe Chief as he himself had to surrender part of his power to the leader of the Clan.   

Clans then started conquering other clans forming empires and kingdoms. Kings, Emperors, Caesars, Sultans and Khans all emerged with the mandate from the heavens to rule over the peasants. They had a divine right to rule over the peasants and were more or less considered Gods themselves. Nothing they do can be questioned by the peasants at this point because all the powers and freedoms had been given away to the divine 'Rulers of the Empire'. There were "Just" and "Unjust" rulers of these empires and kingdoms, most of them had to be ruthless to impose their authority and will among the people. From then on human beings were living in fear of the rulers themselves. Rulers of these kingdoms more often had to go to wars with other Kingdoms to defend or conquer territories, thus giving the people of the kingdom a common enemy to fear and focus on. Apart from the wars, technology and agriculture developed vastly within the kingdoms and this helped to provide a more comfortable standard of living for the peasants but most of the wealth was channelled to the rulers of the kingdoms for them to have majestic palaces and to live a life of gods.

At that point in time, any peasant who dared question the rulers let alone oppose them were brutally punished or even killed. Our biggest enemy was not the wild animal in the forest or the jungle anymore, it was the rulers themselves hording all the wealth and resources for themselves. The glutton of the rulers left the peasants in poverty. This led to mass revolts like the French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution and the American Revolution against the imperialist rulers. The peasants had enough of the glutton of the royalties and the imbalance and extensive wealth gap between the rich and the poor drove the poverty stricken poor into desperation and the overthrowing of the imperialist rulers ensued.  

From the analysis of how we have behaved ever since we started to form into groups of tribes to the stage where we reached "civilisation", there has been a trend where we have increasingly given more and more of our freedom and power away for a life which we thought would be better for us. Unfortunately  we have reached a stage where too much of our individual freedoms and powers were given away to a group of people who have no second thoughts of abusing them because they can very well get away with it without any consequences whatsoever.

The question we should ask ourselves is how and why did we reach a stage where we gave up almost all of our individual freedom and power to the rulers? What caused us to do act in this manner? If we look back to where we started off as tribes, we were afraid of wild animals and the harshness of nature and we also enjoyed task sharing where we had less to do but more food.  Our fear and greed had caused us act in this manner but during those days we probably did not have much of a choice as the conditions of nature and the wilderness were really harsh and the only way to survive was to live in tribes. This however had more benefits rather than cost when we gave away parts of our freedom and power.

When we formed clans, we became bigger in terms of numbers and we had to surrender more freedom of power to the Clan leaders for them to be able to manage more people. This time our enemies evolved to predominantly other clans and still the wilderness and harsh conditions of nature. From there on taboos and myths formed to keep us in line in what the clan leaders wanted or did not want us to do. Once again our fear and greed were manipulated to keep us in line of what they wanted us to do and accomplish for their own benefit and the benefit of the clan as a whole. At this stage it was the beginning of the manipulation of our fear and greed by the leaders but the benefits of doing this was far greater than the cost as we continue to develop our technologies and agricultural methods and life as a whole was getting better for the people in general.

The age of the kingdoms was where we reached a stage where we surrendered most our power and freedom away, where the kings, royalties and nobles more than often abused their power and manipulated our greed and particularly our fear for them to stay in control.  The kings and royalties knew very well how to keep all of us in line, either with the carrot or the stick. Those who listened and were "loyal" to the royalties were promoted to aristocrats and all other types of hierarchy to watch over and keep an eye over the masses making sure they were in line.  Those who did not obey were punished or killed. More often these rulers got carried away with their powers by constantly abusing them. The benefits of surrendering our freedoms and powers here however did not exceed the cost. It was costing and hurting the majority of the peasants more than it was benefiting them making it difficult to live. Through their tactic of manipulating our greed and fear they had managed to obtain all of the people's wealth and power.  It was at this stage where the massive imbalance of wealth and power forced the peasants to rise up against and overthrow the rulers and the corrupt system through a revolution.

Today we live in system where there is a representative government elected by the people (aka Republic System) who are supposed to act and make decisions in the best interests of the people.  However, instead of them acting on our interests, we see the same of what had happened in the past. A group filthy rich people(aka Oligarchs) who owns almost all the world corporations and international banks and command tremendous influence over the representative government to the point where the representative government no longer represent the interest of the people but more so the interest of the corporations and bankers instead. Let's just call these oligarchs the "Elites" who are our current day rulers. Again, we see history repeating itself where the Governments use the carrot and stick approach to manipulate us into behaving in a certain manner for their own benefit. They create fear and manipulate our greed for us to jump over hoops and stand on our hind legs clapping. We always had an enemy to fear so that they can get us to react in ways beneficial to the Elites themselves. Ever since the end of the Second World War we had enemies. They told us to be afraid of the Soviets, the North Koreans, the Vietnamese, the Chinese, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein just to name a few.

With the degradation of the Soviet Union for over twenty years now, the Elites had to create another enemy for us to fear and this time this enemy is invisible and unknown. The 911 event created a monster that we could not see or did not know about. At first it was Osama Bin Laden, and then it was Saddam Hussein. This in turn could make anybody a suspected terrorist. Therefore we fear everyone and anyone who could be a potential terrorist. Anyone who speaks out and questions the system or any event itself is crucified and labelled a terrorist sympathiser. It is just history repeating itself again as in the days of the kingdoms where people were punished for questioning the rulers. Till today and even after Osama Bin Laden had been killed, we still have to fear for our lives for terroristic events that statistically kill less people than bee stings in a year.

Our fears have led us to a point where the rulers can either radiate us every time we go on board an aeroplane or molest us. Our fears have made huge profits for the military industrial complex and the oil conglomerates. Our fears have made us lose our freedoms and powers and instead we get abused by the police who treat every person as a potential terrorist. Our fears have caused a million civilian lives in Afghanistan and another million in Iraq. Our fears have caused us to be constantly under surveillance and have no right to our own privacy. Our fears have led us to the collapse of our own society and to others when the government used our tax money to buy bombs instead of using it to provide free education or healthcare for the people. Our fears have created a polarised world full of hate and suspicion where it is unsafe.  Our fears have allowed the bankers and Wall Street to not collapse when they should have. Our fears have diverted our tax monies to the bankers and Wall Street who make record profits every year even after the financial collapse of 2008. Our fears are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Our fears are destroying the middle class and creating a system of just two classes, the master and the slave. Our fears have created hell on earth in the Middle East. Our fears have made us prisoners of our own world where we should be free. Our fears are destroying us human beings and every fabric of our society and our planet.

We have to learn to not give in to fear but instead to learn to start loving which is the direct emotional opposite of fear. Learn how to love yourself first and foremost. The media is filled with self hating propaganda, stop listening to it. The planet is full of fear and we all have the power and ability to change it. It has reached a point where the wealth gap between the rich and the poor is so huge now that we need to ask ourselves a simple question. Do we deserve this or do we deserve better? We have reached a point like we have reached in the past where the rulers abused their power and left the people in poverty to work like slaves but this time the bankers and the global corporations who are our current rulers are actually the ones calling the shots.  What do we as humanity do from here?  This system we are living in now is obviously not working and highly destructive to not only us humans but to the entire planet.  Is it not time now for a change for the better? Is it not time now for us to change how we are full of fear and hatred but instead start to spread the love and peace again? Are you living your life in fear or in joy? Is it not time we evolve to a better system now where the internet and social networks are able to replace the government who abuses their power quite frequently? How do you want to really live your life, free or trapped in debt forever? Remember, we are all in this together as humanity and we have a greater responsibility to future generations on how our reality will turn out.

The time now is ripe and we are at the fork roads where we either have to choose to start taking action if we want to see positive changes for ourselves, our future generations and our planet or choose to continue living in a world full of fear and hate. The power is in our hands not the rulers and it's up for us to decide what we want of this world. Every single one of us out there have the power to make the change we want and we first have to realise this and not to fall into the fear mongering of the rulers anymore.

Brian Liew