By Anna Von Reitz
It is apparent that the worst enemies that our efforts face come from within us, in the shape of the deep indoctrination we have all received from the schools, churches, corporate employers, military service, and other government interactions we have had.
This indoctrination is so pervasive, so insidious, and so generally accepted that most people have a hard time recognizing it when it rears its ugly head. So I am taking a little time today to outline and describe "the Enemy" of all free men and women.
What does the Corporate Mind-Set look like? How can we reliably recognize it --- and avoid it?
The Hallmark of the Corporate Mind-Set is competition.
The Corporate Mind-Set assumes that we are all in a competition, individually and as groups of people, too.
As such, we are forced into the position of thinking in terms of out-performing and/or undermining "the competition".
Anyone who doesn't think the way we do, is "the competition". Anyone who doesn't appear to belong to our "team" is "the competition". Anyone who opposes our actions, anyone who doesn't act as a "team player" is the competition.
In some cases, anyone who isn't the same color, or who doesn't share our religious beliefs, or who strongly opposes us on one particular issue becomes "the competition".
In extreme cases, it's just the suspicion that someone might not be on "our side" that is sufficient to brand them as "the competition".
Once this identification of "the competition" has been made, they have to be "beaten" and we have to "win" whatever the cost.
But the irony is, that this is a Mind Set in which everyone loses.
It's a False Option. There is no way to "win" the Us Versus Them Game. Just like you can never "win" a political election.
You get one CEO or another, but you are never the CEO of your own life, are you? So you don't win in either case, and neither does anyone else.
The war-like mentality of the Corporate Mind Set fractures natural communities into factions, so that we divide and conquer ourselves.
The members of rival factions then tear away at each other, gossiping about each other, blaming each other, slandering each other, and acting like nasty children, tattle-talking about each other, bragging up their own accomplishments, tooting their own horns, proudly asserting their superior moral rectitude, and presenting themselves (or their faction) as being on "the right side" of every issue.
They tattle-talk to whomever they assume to be in a superior office, which leads to the second Hallmark of the Corporate Mind-Set: belief in positional authority.
The governmental and other institutions we are familiar with have all functioned via positional authority.
Authority is neatly compartmentalized and distributed in a strict positional hierarchy, with an Executive Officer at the top of the pyramid, and increasingly less exalted officers arranged in ranks below the CEO, and all of them standing above the rank and file members of the public --- at least in their own minds.
This is the corporate model and it is what we associate with government, because the only government we have known in our lifetimes has been provided by foreign Municipal and British Crown corporations that are organized and function in this fashion.
So we have the spectacle of American Assembly members searching desperately for the CEO in charge, when there is no CEO.
Most of the time, these people mistake the Coordinator for the CEO, and the Coordinator is then faced with the temptation of "assuming" the vacant role of CEO and functioning as a CEO, so that everyone feels reassured and can hand over their own responsibility and authority to him or her --- or determinedly resisting the CEO role and making the members of the Assembly rise to the occasion.
Once the Corporate Mind Set takes hold, the participants in this foreign system think it is their "duty" to follow the direction of their CEO and protect the CEO figure --- so that they can continue to side-step their own obligation to self-govern.
After 160 years of being told what to do by our British Territorial Employees, many Americans don't know how to operate their own government or even think for themselves.
It's hard and it's uncomfortable to take responsibility for themselves and their own government.
At the bottom of it, they don't want to do the work and they don't want to be responsible for making the decisions.
They want someone else to tell them what to think, how to act, where to go and what to do and when. They are all too eager to cast the burdens of the CEO on someone else, and when there is, objectively, no CEO on offer, they push and struggle to find one or create one.
But our government is composed of equals, each bearing equal responsibility, having equal authority. So we don't have CEO's and ranks of bureaucrats and institutionalized Operations Manuals telling us what to do and how to do it.
Instead, we have to accept the challenge to know ourselves and to govern ourselves as individuals, as counties, as States, as a country.....
As Americans, we have to use our own faculties instead of relying on a CEO. We have to use our own ability to gather facts, our own discernment to sift and winnow those facts, our own ability to reason our way through things, our own sense of justice.
Then, we have to come together, as families, communities, counties, State governments, an entire country..... to promote what is best for everyone concerned. Laws that protect everyone. Services that benefit everyone.
It's a tall order.
Rules are so convenient and easy and reassuring in their own odd way.
No white shoes until Memorial Day. Don't walk on the grass. Don't talk to strangers. Always face East while saluting the flag. Do what your commanding officer tells you.
Rules give you the reasonable, but ultimately incorrect idea, that if you simply follow the rules and obey them, you will be rewarded in some way, or at least not blamed.
Having a hierarchy of power standing above you and all sorts of people in layers of bureaucracy, too, generating rules for you to follow, is part of what is so comforting and seductive about the Corporate Mind-Set.
As long as you are a good little dweeb and do what you are told, you are safe. Or are you?
You are certainly not free, but are you safe---- really?
No. You are still responsible for your actions, as certain Nazi soldiers and bureaucrats found out at Nuremberg. Just following orders and obeying rules set by someone else is no excuse.
It turns out that the Corporate Mind-Set leads us not only to war and divisiveness because as individuals and as groups, we must always be competing with each other and everyone else --- but the safety-through-obedience that we assume when we are ensnared in the Corporate Mind-Set is illusory, too.
The Corporate Mind-Set is an artificial construct in which we give away our power (along with, we hope, our responsibility) to someone else, and in the process, give away our rights as well.
Remember what you have been told: rights come with responsibilities firmly attached to them.
If you have and accept no responsibility, you also have no rights.
When we see Assemblies engaged in "he said - she said" battles, with groups of cronies knotted up in opposite corners of their self-created boxing ring, we know that Assembly has been infected with the Corporate Mind-Set.
We know that because in every case the members of the Assembly in question have allowed the "us versus them" mentality to creep in.
In every case, someone has knowingly or unknowingly occupied the CEO seat --- usually the Coordinator, but sometimes the Marshal at Arms or other official, and they are being protected by their adherents or attacked by those opposing their leadership.
In every case, they are missing the point that we are all leaders in the American Government. All.
These people who have carried the baggage of the Corporate Mind Set with them are unconsciously re-creating the same old monster that they wish to be free of, because they are falling back into the familiar Corporate Mindset like a computer operating on default settings.
There is a zombie-like aspect to this. They are doing this on automatic and don't know that they are doing anything wrong.
Somewhere in the back of their programming, they assume that they are right and doing things the way they are "supposed" to be done,
according to everything they've ever known.
And that is precisely the point --- we have never known the freedom and honesty and simplicity and harmony that is possible with our own American Government. That's what we need to learn.
We aren't here to recreate the Corporate Model or the Corporate Mind Set, either one.
Ours is a profoundly different way of organizing and accomplishing the tasks of government. Instead of the CEO telling us what we have to do and how to do it, we have Spokespeople expressing our collective will.
Instead of Departments and Agencies, we have Committees.
Instead of authority based on position in a hierarchy, we have functions --- work to do.
Instead of lying and scheming for corporate profit, our motive is to protect each other and our respective individual assets.
In our American Government, it's just me, you, and the chickens.
We are unified by our common goal which is nothing more or less than the Common Good, which we hope to achieve by the consistent application of Good Will and Common Sense.
The Corporate Government Model seeks to dictate and control and rule over everyone from cradle to grave. It seeks to farm us out like farm animals, using our assets for their benefit. It results in war profiteering and war-like competition, eternally dividing and conquering and crippling mankind. It operates on corporate profits and corporate cronyism and embraces special interest groups. Their private corporate elections are controlled by unelected political parties and determined by unelected Electors.
Our American Government promotes the freedom and well-being and actual security of every American. We don't interfere in your privacy, don't dictate your health decisions, and don't pretend to be your Nanny. We educate, we empower, we liberate. We are unified by Nature, by our common needs, and by our common concerns. We promote the Public Interest and the Public Good and the Public Law which means we provide services that everyone needs and everyone has access to, instead of pandering to lobbyists and special interests. Our Public Elections are simple affairs that are completely open to eligible candidates who are not selected by political parties and who are directly elected by the people they serve.
With these differences clearly in mind, check yourselves.
Have you fallen victim to your own indoctrination? Are you unconsciously falling back into the Corporate Mind Set? Are you creating the same-old-same-old Corporate Mess? Or boldly embracing the American Government you are heir to?
When you catch yourself falling back on your indoctrination -- correct it. If necessary, apologize and admit your mistake(s). And go forward with renewed determination to restore the American Government as it is meant to be.
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