Needing Need
December 3, 2008 by Erin Reynolds · Leave a Comment
(Guest Contributor)
Part 2
| Part 1 |
“The mother who bends over a little casket to leave her triune gift of roses, tears, and kisses may yet perceive, in the light of a higher revelation, that though the rose-wreathed casket bears the ashes of her cherished hopes, it is also ministrant to a need she knows not of.” -C. E. Sargent
Once a lifetime we are granted everything we absolutely need. Before we are born we receive precisely enough oxygen, water, and nourishment to survive and to develop the organs that are absolutely essential for existence.
After that, we are immersed in an abundance that we rarely comprehend or appreciate.
Those who fall subject to hunger or exposure to the elements usually die not because of insufficient matter, but because of insufficient methods of distribution and production.
When capability is misdirected, it often leads to incapacity.
America has tried to find the answer to hunger, AIDS, and war itself through war. Yet after so much warfare we are not much closer to peace.
The world’s method of solving problems is to attempt to destroy the problem, but all the while feed the source. We may do the same in our own lives. We create drugs and programs and counselors to fix societal problems, before considering that modern society might be the problem.
The solution to overcrowded prisons and overweight citizens could lie closer to home than we now teach. What we serve for dinner tonight might conceivably impact both prisoners and weight-loss programs; having family mealtime could change not only what but also where our children eat, now and in the future.
Gripped With Need In the Midst of Abundance
Although we have been born into significant abundance, many of us are not content with all that is readily available. One of humankind’s primary sources of malcontent is need. Frequently the reason many of us don’t respond to the needs of others is that we feel encompassed, debilitated, and humiliated by our own needs.
But need often grants more than it denies. This ravening wolf wards off more predators than we ever realize. This is hard to recognize at first, confirming that we don’t understand the true nature of need.
The average American doesn’t know what it means to be truly hungry, or scared or cold. We cannot easily relate to a prisoner of war that lived on starvation rations for decades, and worked outside in –60° weather without coat or shoes. We aren’t concerned about stretching a quarter cup of flour to last three meals.
Usually we find ourselves worrying about things such as our car’s faulty air conditioning, or stressing over the color of our teeth, hair and nails. Skin cancer in America is more likely to be caused by too many hours at the beach than from too many hours of working in a rice field. The increasing number of weight-loss programs alone ought to be a fairly accurate indicator of where one of our nation’s most consuming worries lies, not in sufficiency, but in overabundance.
With this superabundance to which most of us have become accustomed, how can our understanding of need be felt in any other context than what we have experienced first hand, in relation to what we want, not what we truly need?
Needs can be classified into a number of categories, but two types are easily recognizable. The first type of needs are those universal to all humans and are absolutely necessary for existence: food, water, or shelter. The second type includes needs that are relative to what we, specifically, possess and are not as closely related to our subsistence: a baker needs an oven, a sailor needs a ship.
But is there a need greater than any of these? Is there a higher need, which, if understood and fulfilled, could increase each person’s capacity and success, and put all other needs in perspective?
What Do We Really Need?
Perhaps if we had more time we could fit in everything we really needed to do, and thus avert disappointment. Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman emperor and philosopher, once counseled, “Do not act as if you were going to live 10,000 years.” He recognized that humans need increased capacity to utilize time, not more time.
This capacity can only be fostered by limiting, not increasing, that element of life. Ability must be tested if it is to be increased, just as muscles must be exercised if they are to be strengthened. To augment the element of time could indeed limit our capacity. Aurelius identified time as the universal ally.
None of us is cheated of one second of one day. One boy may live ten years, and his father one hundred. But each day of every life is filled with the same full measure of seconds, minutes and hours. Time was never the true excuse of failure, nor the real element of success.
What we need is not more time.
Perhaps more money would allow us to finally reach true happiness. This seems to have become the premise of much of today’s logic. If we usually find more exalted happiness than exalted looks among the wealthy, we might legitimately conclude that happiness and wealthiness are closely connected. But as it now stands, the meek are allotted to receive a greater inheritance than everyone else combined.
What we need is not more money.
So do we need more of anything?
The empty homes, and bursting hospitals, the refugee camps and unmarked mass graves issue a silent but resounding yes. We need more healing and helping. We need armies that protect more lives than they deny, treaties that allow more freedom than they revoke, and leaders that give more than they require.
Yet if we really need these things, are we condemned to die of want from such needs –- or is the surest provision for the solution’s endurance actually its temporary absence?
If Lincoln had libraries, would we have had Lincoln?
If Washington had peace, would we?
Was it the men, or the methods that made these leaders who they were? Maybe it was both. Lincoln needed books and learning. But more than needing books, he needed to need books. More significant than the hours of reading were the walks through the woods to get those books. More important than the knowledge he received was the price he paid to obtain that knowledge.
So it is with most of our greatest gifts; what we give will often reward us more and impact us more than what we receive. This is true of both good and ill.
The Reward of Paying the Price
Often we lay our excuses upon all that is absent in our lives. But as we achieve greatness we realize the significant thing we hold in common with others who have done the same is in having learned to appreciate, and even capitalize, on what we lacked.
Sometimes what we find in seeking to fulfill a need is not what we sought, but what we paid, and that payment becomes more meaningful and dear than it ever was before. Both need and fulfillment are elements of happiness. When our gaze rests finally upon the fulfillment, or at least the most outward manifestation of it, we have not understood real happiness.
Ask a group of mountain climbers where their view rests the longest once they have reached the summit of their climb. The exhilaration of the view does not usually lie in seeing a patch of ground under foot that could not be seen from the valley below. Rather it comes from seeing the valley below, but from an entirely new perspective.
It could be that what we need most is a change of view about what we already see. Our needs symbolize more than need; they represent a source. Each solution to a problem stands for something more than a solution; it implies a comprehensive whole.
The Test of Debt
Need and fulfillment are naturally united. But another aspect of existence, intertwined with each of these, is something we all know well enough by face and not enough at heart: debt.
Debt is one of our most potent tools and one of our greatest allies, if we use it wisely. Debt is an essential aspect of our development. What we go into debt for shows where our lives are really lived, on borrowed, or invested, time and means.
What this tool really proves is that there are few if any other choices before us; we can spend, or we can invest what was a gift in the first place. If much of what we possess is given from a Higher Power, then isn’t one of life’s great lessons about how well we deal with debt, and how well we respond to need?
And does that Power really care most about how much we have of anything? Isn’t it more concerned with how well we use what we already have?
Only those who invest what they are given, from time to talents, to money to means, ever approach fulfillment. Every other action, use and abuse, proves that such fulfillment is at worst illusory, and at best, borrowed. Only invested effort, or effort that seeks to magnify and improve, can yield happiness that is truly genuine.
This aspect of debt illustrates that often our greatest needs are internal, and will never be met by more money, more friends, more food or more recognition. In fact, these things may increase our indebtedness to ourselves and to the world. What empowers us is the ability, the gift, to augment what is already innate.
The key to a rest-filled sleep could depend more on what is in our heart, than what prescriptions we have in our bathroom cabinet. And while the latter might help us get through one more night, they are not what is helping us get through one more day. The really restful answer addresses both concerns.
The most obnoxious people we know could have more in common with us than our very best friends, in that both of us suffer from the same disease: discontentment. They, from discontentment with life; we, from discontentment with humankind.
The world’s prisoners of war are our neighbors, families, and friends who have lived through hell, but do not possess the language to ever tell about it. This restriction does not augment the torture, it is the only escape from it. Our deepest wounds are often couched in tears that are never shed, and in pain that is always subverted, not of necessity, but of our own choice.
Other people usually can’t comprehend our suffering. They often won’t understand our fears. And that’s all right because neither they nor we need to save ourselves. But we do need to be saved. We don’t need to magnify our battle scars; we need them erased.
Someone paid for what no one else ever could. Someone offers us the “Balm of Gilead” because no one else ever can, and no one else ever will. To be healed of pain, confusion and doubt we need only accept what we have already been given.
Our Greatest Needs
Our greatest need is acceptance, not receipt. We really need love, not license. We need to empathize with others, not detail our wounds. It could be that the only way to surmount the injustices of life is to refute their injustice, and embrace the only Judge whose judgment will finally matter.
We can encourage healing without inciting further injury. We can forgive without condoning what is wrong. Our needs can be changed and overcome; not, at least yet, by complete fulfillment, but certainly by more fulfilling needs.
Perhaps as we surmount the tendency to place responsibility for emptiness on our needs, we will find we are more full. A deeper need could demand and provide a deeper fulfillment. A deeper source could provide a higher triumph. A deeper debt could cultivate a stronger debtor, one capable of absolving more than his own debts, one dedicated to healing more than his own wounds. American need can lead to narrow-minded greed, or something much greater. The abundance we enjoy can hide our real needs, or illuminate them.
The time has come to consider what it is we truly need.
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This essay is Chapter 2 of Dinnertime Revolutions: Meeting the American Challenge by Erin Reynolds. Click here to purchase the book.
Erin Reynolds is a graduate of George Wythe University with a Bachelor’s degree in Statesmanship and a Master’s Degree in Education. She has taught in a number of venues, including spearheading a group to Uganda. She resides in Cedar City, Utah.
Dinnertime Revolutions
December 2, 2008 by Erin Reynolds · Leave a Comment
(Guest Contributor)
Part 1
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” -George Eliot
What is the power of one boy walking alone? The impact of one man going home early? The portent of one woman on her knees?
The essence of the world, and in fact this world’s summation, can be found at the scene of a family gathered around a table, leading the world’s great revolutions.
One father can stop an army. One mother can make the difference between a World War and a Continental Conference.
The next American Revolution has begun. It has commenced within the quiet precincts of our nation’s homes. The collective cry for help is being sounded by a world in chaos; the pledge to assist is being offered one person at a time.
American freedom has provided a sounding board for the great ideas of the twenty-first century. American freedom has allowed its citizens the opportunity to decide what those major ideas will do. American freedom, begun long before 1776, can no longer be just another subject we study in school, or a pledge at a ball game, or a prayer in church.
American freedom is clearly an obligation — a resounding cry that must be answered, because very soon roll will be called, and solutions will be required. The discrepancies of justice refuse to be silent; the arbiters of justice will be called to take account.
But who knows about his or her obligation to the world? Each person born in America today faces challenges as great as did Gandhi, Churchill, or Lincoln. And while we may not be required to suppress cultural rebellions, conquer international dictators, or defend human dignity, our challenges match and sometimes exceed those of past generations.
The Challenge
Our challenge today is to defend the destiny of the world; it is to promote liberty in our legislatures and at our dinner tables, at home and abroad. Americans are at an influential fulcrum point. The future of freedom hinges on decision we are making unawares. We must therefore become aware of all we have to offer, and all that is at stake, or we cannot summon the courage to reckon with our fears and thereby deny our enemies their only real weapon.
Today we are obligated to defend freedom when it may seem in our best interest to do otherwise. In sharing liberty we may risk opposing political and economic agendas designed to promote what some have termed “American freedom” and “American prosperity.”
But this revolution will teach us that no biased, selfish agenda can ever be called American. As part of the revolution we could be invited to sacrifice personal prosperity and peace on behalf of those who have who have not experienced either. We will choose by how we vote, whom we follow, and how we live, whether or not our children’s children will think of freedom as a legacy, or a memory.
The line connecting our children to freedom, and ourselves to the defense of that gift, has never been clearer, or harder to realize. More could not be at stake.
For at least five decades freedom has allowed peace and prosperity. It has not been requisite that the patriotic citizen sacrifice his business for his country, or his home for the world. But revolutions breed strange benefits. We may be surprised at what is asked of us, and even more, at what results.
The sacrifices demanded by this revolution will bring benefits of courage and virtue. They will inculcate greater prosperity and peace. Yet, as in any war, much hinges on the knowledge of the nature and aims of the enemy. Ignorance of this revolution may lead to loss of more than our own happiness. If we are not careful, we could indeed find ourselves fighting on the wrong side.
To find ourselves fighting for our own enemies seems almost impossible, but it is easily accomplished when the impact of ignorance is forgotten. We often do not realize that the bridge linking us to true fulfillment is not the next bridge, nor the last bridge, but the one we’re burning right now.
It can be hard to see that the reason our children are sent to battle is not because we cannot find the answer to war, but because we will not give the price of peace. Indeed, many of us do not know exactly what that price is.
What is this revolution, and what does it mean?
Who are its advocates? Against what is it revolting? This revolution is not really industrial, economic, or political –- though it impacts each of these. It is a departure from current trends, a return to past principles, and a leap forward in terms of what will be demanded, what will be given, and what will result. This revolution will show us that the years ahead offer more enjoyment, more fulfillment, and more happiness than we have ever known. As with the first great American Revolution, more than anything this revolution is concerned about what will be.
While this revolution is purely American in region, in thought, and principle, its founders come from nations worldwide. Its advocates are found on all sides of the political spectrum, and some of its greatest heroes are those whose eyes never viewed the land of the free and the home of the brave. But their hearts still thrilled at the thought of liberty, and their voices still defend what is right — Joan, Solon, Wellington and a host of others.
True liberty was their hope and their ideal, a vision that gave life meaning, and death purpose. For it they surrendered family, friends and fortune, but all this with the understanding that their sacrifices, alone, would never be enough. They looked forward with the knowledge that somehow, someway, somewhere freedom could ignite not just one individual, but an entire nation, and thereby liberate not one class, or one country, but actually revolutionize a world.
This was the liberty they sought; this is the obligation we have inherited.
The leaders of this revolution are the men and women, the mothers and fathers, the grandsons and granddaughters who care about not only the next twenty years of peace, but also about the next two hundred. They are leaders of movements past and present that look to us to defend the fact that freedom is not an American enigma, but a condition of progression.
Finally, what is this revolt against? It is a revolution against bondage, against mediocrity, particularly mediocrity of the most important things. The most dangerous battles are the ones where the “least” is at stake; in such scenarios those who fight are prepared for, and question, nothing. Whatever they lose, then, is more than they were prepared to surrender, and less than they could have given.
Such seemingly insignificant battles define the most significant ones. This revolution may seem insignificant. It may appear that not much is at stake. But to choose mediocrity now could make our lives as well as our nation meaningless. Our personal choices are no longer personal, and in fact touch the very center of civil service.
Family: The Heart of the Revolution
Our business strategies may not be as important as our marital success. Our financial legacy may hold less meaning than a family tradition. The degrees and accolades, the promotions and profits, often detract from the real purpose at hand. The world measures success by the only method it knows: public opinion. But by its very nature, such opinion can grant only public happiness.
Slow down and consider this for a minute — public happiness. We tell ourselves how happy we all are, and it must be true. Right? Everyone says so. But the only happiness you can take home with you is private. As we turn to sources closer to home to find inner happiness and peace, we will be fighting more than our own battles.
Our dinnertimes hold greater meaning than we may think.
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This essay is Chapter 1 of Dinnertime Revolutions: Meeting the American Challenge by Erin Reynolds. Click here to purchase the book.
Erin Reynolds is a graduate of George Wythe University with a Bachelor’s degree in Statesmanship and a Master’s Degree in Education. She has taught in a number of venues, including spearheading a group to Uganda. She resides in Cedar City, Utah.
Why You Should Vote For A Third Party Candidate This Election
November 3, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 7 Comments
The Cause of Liberty does not endorse specific candidates and/or political parties; we seek truth from all and do our best to help community members make educated decisions. This post is not meant to endorse parties or candidates; rather, it is meant as a long-term strategy for freedom.
Having said this, the case for a third-party vote in this election is a simple three-part formula: 1) we live in a virtual democracy, 2) more discontentment exists now than ever before, and 3) Ron Paul’s campaign, as perhaps the most viable anti-status quo movement in America’s post-Revolutionary War history, was a tangible demonstration of both discontentment and the rising numbers and influence of independent thinkers.
1. Virtual Democracy
Although our governmental forms are technically set up as a constitutional republic, elected representatives act as if America is a democracy. They don’t make decisions based upon what they think is right; they make decisions based upon what they think the People want, based on polling data. We’re a de jure republic, but a de facto democracy.
This means that whoever gets elected will listen to the People.
2. Rising Discontentment
More and more people realize that two-party monopolization can be limiting and destructive. All evidence suggests that we’re on the verge of a depression. Bankruptcies and layoffs are reaching record highs.
More and more people want real change. They want more than discussions about what Federal Reserve-determined interest rates should be; they want discussions about whether or not the Fed should even exist. They want to discuss the legitimacy of the war in Iraq, not how many troops should be there. They want discussions based upon principles, not simply issues. They want fundamental, rather than surface-level, incremental change.
We haven’t seen this much discontentment since the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The result of that discontentment was FDR and the New Deal; we now have the opportunity to harness current discontentment and turn America in the opposite direction.
The way to harness the opportunity is to vote for a third party — not because a third party candidate will win this election, but because whoever does get elected will be more likely to cater to the independent freedom thinkers because of our solidified vote in favor of fundamental change.
Since we live in a virtual democracy, a massive third-party voting block sends a message to our next President that he will not ignore.
3. Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty
Ron Paul broke records this election and provided solid evidence of people fed up with status quo thinking and policies. His book The Revolution: A Manifesto has stayed on bestseller lists for months. He didn’t get the party nomination, but he did send a message: the people are ready for real change.
The relevance of Ron Paul to this discussion is to provide further evidence for those who argue that a third-party vote just hands the election to “the other guy.” As the thinking goes, Ross Perot gave the election to Bill Clinton, etc. I myself have made this argument in the past.
But this election is different, simply because independent, third-party thinking is much more prevalent and much more viable than it ever has been. Also, the people are beginning to see that there’s not much difference between the two main parties anyway. Are we really better off because we’ve had George W. Bush, rather than Al Gore or John Kerry for the past eight years? I’m inclined to think that either of them would have eroded our freedoms less than President Bush.
Conclusion
We can and we must send a message to Washington this election. A third party candidate isn’t going to win the election, but a record-breaking third-party vote will make the elected President pay attention and cater to us. Status quo thinking and policies are going to be the death of us. We need fundamental change, which is something that neither the Democratic or Republican party candidates are capable of offering.
For those who claim that you’re throwing your vote away by voting third party, my challenge is to question how voting for either Obama or McCain is not throwing your vote away. Vote for status quo and you’re going to get status quo, which in our current circumstances is tantamount to a wasted vote, and the further decline of freedom and of America.
Vote third party and your candidate will not get elected, but the next president will be that much more likely to pay attention to the independent freedom movement. It’s the strategic approach in a virtual democracy controlled by two main parties — without much tangible difference between them. Remember that we’re not fighting a battle; we’re fighting a war. A third party vote will lose the battle (as will a vote for the status quo candidates, for that matter), but it places us in a better position to win the long-term war.
We’ve never had as much momentum — as a result of discontentment — than we have now. Let’s harness that discontentment by sending a message to Washington that status quo thinking is no longer acceptable.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Bucking the System: My Choice For President
October 25, 2008 by Ryan Heneise · 4 Comments
Guest Contributor
(Note: The Cause of Liberty does not endorse particular political candidates or parties. We do, however, support independent, insightful thinking that leads to greater freedom, which we feel this article represents. Enjoy!)
I love change. I love hope. And I love choices. But something about the way our electoral process works really rubs me the wrong way.
Sure, it’s great that we get to vote for our President. But someone out there –- someone with power –- has picked my two choices for me, and for the past year has been hammering it into my head that if I don’t choose one of these two prescribed choices, then I’m throwing my vote away.
You know what I realized? Aside from minor policy differences, like what percentage of a tax cut the middle class will get, and whether we should invade this country or that country, there really is very little difference between the two mainstream candidates. Both Senators Obama and McCain voted in support of FISA, the Patriot Act, and the Bailout Bill, three of the most odious and nefarious acts of legislation that have done incredible damage to the American way.
Neither of these two candidates provide any real solutions, and when put to the test, we see that in the end, a vote for McCain is the same as a vote for Obama; and neither will bring about any real change or mitigate or destroy the corruption that now gnaws away at the character of our government, nor will they stop the cancerous expansion of government powers that make our current government look and act more and more like the government of King George, from whom we won our Independence.
So if there is no real difference between the two, and I’m only voting for one or the other because I want to be on the winning side, or because I want to vote for one so the other won’t win, then I am truly wasting my vote.
What’s a patriot to do?
Well, did you know that there are actually six noteworthy candidates (plus a few others) for president this election? “But,” you say, “none of these candidates can win. Why bother voting at all?” You’re right, we might as well just give up. No sense in playing if we can’t be on the winning team, right?
Look, the whole country is saying that. Everybody is just rolling over and letting the political establishment have its way with them. If we all just comply then we’re going to get exactly what people with power want to give us. That’s what the American Revolution was about folks!
In a way, the American Revolution continues to this day. The fight against tyranny and oppression will go on as long as there are good and evil (and I don’t mean the “axis of evil” – I mean real evil, and people who would use power to harm other people). As long as we’re here on this earth we each have a responsibility to fight to maintain our freedom and our individual rights and to preserve and protect our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The Constitution (read it, it’s good) limits the government’s power, and it grants the government power only by the consent of the governed. Our responsibility as citizens is to give that consent, to withhold our consent to tyranny, and to keep the government accountable by electing officials that respect the people and their position as representatives of the people.
One of the most obvious ways that we fulfill this responsibility is by choosing our executive, our President. If we believe in the Constitution, then we ought to elect a president who shares our reverence of liberty, freedom, and the Constitution, and who has demonstrated an understanding of these tenets, and who will do the most to uphold these precious things.
That is why I have decided to support Chuck Baldwin for President of the United States.
Baldwin does not have as much political experience as Obama or McCain, but in this case I think that might be a good thing. He certainly is not part of the political establishment. Based on his writings, his history, and his character recommendations, I believe that Chuck Baldwin is the candidate best suited to execute the office of President of the United States.
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Ryan Heneise grew up as a missionary kid in Haiti. He’s lived in West Virginia, Florida, Chile, and California, and now resides with his wife and two young children in Texas. A programmer/entrepreneur by trade and non- profit aficionado by heritage, Ryan’s latest venture is Donor Tools, a donor management product for non-profits.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Changing the World…
October 17, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 6 Comments
…One comic at a time.
Look on the bright side of our economic crash, at least now we can see where we are! What do you see? Maybe it takes a crash to get a better view of the world around us. Now lets climb down and start heading in the right direction.
Attacks always come from where you least expect it. Being big and tough to the rest of the world doesn’t mean we can’t destroy ourselves from the inside.
The reality is that as a nation we are in dire need of change, real change. We are on the fast track to a dangerous and unstable times. If you don’t like the reality of our situation you can always choose not to accept it.
Or, you can help begin a revolution against apathy and ignorance. Don’t be selective about the reality you accept. Accept reality for what it is and allow your action to change it.
Need I say more?
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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