Eman­ci­pate your­selves from men­tal slav­ery; None but our­selves can free our minds. — Bob Mar­ley, Redemp­tion Song

When I gaze across “the big pond” in my imag­i­na­tion, I see a vast land full of promise and poten­tial. A few hun­dred years ago it was pop­u­lated with a coura­geous, adven­tur­ous, free-spirited peo­ple, who have now become fairly depen­dent and com­pla­cent. In a sense, many of them have vol­un­tar­ily accepted servitude.

This seems a bit harsh but think of those pio­neers who seized the oppor­tu­nity to travel across the coun­try by wagon, car­ry­ing only the essen­tials, not really know­ing what they would face, and mak­ing do and using their hands, their minds, and what­ever was around them to build new lives full of free­dom and happiness.

Now look at the state of affairs, with so much poverty, suf­fer­ing, peo­ple chained to jobs they don’t like by credit card and mort­gage debts, mean­while watch­ing what lit­tle they do have worth less and less each day.

They may claim to be free but they are in servi­tude to a job that gives them money so they can buy goods and ser­vices made and pro­vided by oth­ers, that sup­ply their basic needs — food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, health care, water, power [elec­tric­ity, fuel, etc.], and then pay taxes to those who pro­vide the rest — ser­vices and infra­struc­ture, mil­i­tary, etc.

They’ve been led to believe that they NEED credit to sur­vive, then been made slaves to the credit com­pa­nies. Col­lege grad­u­ates are flooded with credit offers; doc­tors leave med­ical school with $500,000 debt or more.

So…it’s far more than know­ing the boat is going to sink and decid­ing to aban­don ship. It’s under­stand­ing that, by decid­ing to walk away from servi­tude, you can bring the best of what we have cre­ated as a soci­ety with you, and walk towards the Amer­i­can Dream, not away from it. Towards life, lib­erty and (the pur­suit of) happiness.

What really makes us happy? It’s all those things that Robert F. Kennedy pointed out were not a part of the GNP, all those things that make life worth liv­ing: “the health of our chil­dren, the qual­ity of their edu­ca­tion or the joy of their play… the beauty of our poetry…the strength of our mar­riages, the intel­li­gence of our pub­lic debate or the integrity of our pub­lic officials…our wit…our courage…our wisdom…our learning…our compassion…our devo­tion to our country.”

There is also what will be gained by being pre­pared for what­ever may hap­pen — per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion, car­ing about and for oth­ers, a sense of pur­pose, a thor­ough enjoy­ment of life, the sense of being in con­trol of our lives and capa­ble of car­ing for our fam­i­lies’ needs, and much more…

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