“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Rudyard Kipling
Read the next two lines carefully, they belong together:
Politicians desire to lead the blind, deaf, and dumb so they instituted public schools to disable children.
If you attended an elite private prep school you understand. If you attended a public school you are incensed — just as you were taught. If you are just curious, you can own yourself.
Regardless, right now there are many that believe they own you. Your employer, your union, your magazines and newsletters, the websites and acquaintances you follow, and of course your governments and their bureaucrats. If you proceed naming them with an “I’m proud to be” or a “I belong to” than you believe it too. Those whose patterns of thought always support one world view, and reject or ridicule other’s ideas; have probably already left this page.
Example: “History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.” Voltaire
You might add: “and a tool selectively used by others to shape my world view.”
Asking, “How do I own myself?” is but a query. Deciding, “I will own myself,” is a resolution. As soon as you decide to be autonomous — Voltaire would have said, “you are autonomous.” If you’ve decided to be free, what then is a next small step? Read books and news from other nations, political parties, and societies. You will see that history is malleable, that no constrained world view can encompass the truth in it.
Owning yourself requires freeing your mind.
All of that is but a first small step. The good news; your mind walks like a centipede. You may never finish freeing your mind, but you don’t have to before you take other steps. The other steps will support the momentum gained by your having started a first step.
A second step is freeing your body from the limitations that your prior owners are using to limit your actions. This step is not mentally arduous, like your body it is physical. You physically apply for a passport, you plan and take trips to other nations. You open bank accounts and develop other financial relationships offshore. You may acquire other personas, residencies, citizenships, passports. The centipede keeps moving, many sequential steps flowing naturally. Each step reinforces other steps taken or soon to be made.
If you want to own yourself, rather than be a programed service automation, start walking.
Or accept slavery.
Bill Freeman