WE SUFFER in many lands on earth from the actions of our own governments. Our troubles look worse in our eyes when we see how we supplied the means of our suffering by consenting to be ruled by these bad governments. As Thomas Paine wrote,

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence. The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, we would need no other lawgiver.”

Everyone heeding the universal still small voice of God within us would render all governments obsolete. Tyranny, therefore, would be pointless. Given our fears of anarchy, however, we create government by the same prudent reasoning that advises us, when faced by two evils, to choose the least evil.

One of Paine’s earliest tasks in Common Sense was explaining the nature of government. As a progressive libertarian, he believed that protecting us from force and fraud is the first purpose of government, but leaders must not use force or fraud to stay in power. Because we choose external government over internal self rule, we surrender part of our property and privacy, such as taxes and airport searches, so the state has the means to protect our possessions and our lives.

Paine said the best form of government is the one most likely to secure our freedom at the least expense.

To explain the origin of government, Paine offered a parable:

“Let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth…. They will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought.”

Human beings are social animals innately unfit for eternal solitude. Since thousands of urges excite each person, and since people cannot satisfy all desires by themselves, the colonists soon feel bound to seek help and relief from one another. Self sufficiency is valued, yet talents are most easily noticed through service to neighbors. Adversity forges common bonds as feelings of unity arise among the settlers.

Driven by social necessity, the emigrants form a loose community. Rights and duties are spread fairly among everyone as relative equals. Whatever culture may emerge in that remote place, the blessings from mutual integrity make the limits of law and government unnecessary. The people don’t need a government, for they practice self rule. Their utopian anarchy lasts only as long as they behave themselves.

* * *

Excerpted from GLOBAL SENSE: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (an update of Common Sense) by Judah Freed. (c) 2006 by Judah Freed.

MANY of us today think our leaders in the U.S. and in other lands have broken the social contract by waging corrupt wars, by revoking our civil liberties, by abetting environmental destruction in a heedless pursuit of profits. We contend that our governments are no longer morally legitimate. Yet we call for a peaceful regime change, for we know that the real revolution starts within ourselves.

Criticism of the government is not enough to cause social change. Without a realistic vision of a better world to inspire us with hope, we will not do the inner growth work that yields cultural shifts. This book is my contribution towards that empowering global vision. I advocate “mindful self rule” and “personal democracy.” What do I mean?

Mindful self rule is the fine art of making ethical or moral choices about how we want to live. For example, when I’ve chosen over the years to recover from addictions to tobacco and debting, that’s a form of mindful self rule. When I’ve chosen to sit beside a river to feel inner peace and commune with the God of my understanding, that’s a form of mindful self rule. When I’ve chosen in the privacy of my heart to honor my family, friends and neighbors as equal souls with free will, that’s definitely an act of mindful self rule. (NOTE: I have deliberately decided in this book not to hyphenate “self-rule” and related compound terms, so we’ll be more alert to the autonomy of the individual self.)

Personal democracy is the art of expressing mindful self rule in the world. If you seek a job in accord with your social or ecological values, that’s personal democracy. If you boycott products made with slave labor, that’s personal democracy. If you volunteer in a school or literacy center, that’s personal democracy. If you protest abuses of our human rights, that’s personal democracy. If you vote your conscience on election day, that’s definitely an act of personal democracy.

Inner self rule and outer personal democracy interact. In Taoism, the feminine yin energy stimulates masculine yang energy as yang stimulates yin, forming a dynamic loop. In the very same way, self rule stimulates personal democracy as personal democracy stimulates self rule.

What if our inner choices and outer actions are in conflict? Takeo Doi describes our struggles in The Anatomy of Self. Japanese culture, for example, marks a difference between outer face (omote) and inner truth (ura). Social standards and mores (tatemae) may disagree with our inner knowledge of what is natural and right (honne). Conflicts between the self and the society twist us into knots. A need to resolve the tension, I know from experience, makes us gullible to the appeals of shoguns, messiahs and other masters promising us the soft comfort of mindless obedience—the opposite of mindful self rule.

Practicing mindful self rule and personal democracy hinges upon understanding the nature and power of communication. We’ll see in Chapter 15 how we use communication to make sense of our lives and our world. We’ll learn how splitting our perceptions lets us filter out awareness of unpleasant truths about ourselves, such as how our self hate gets twisted into hatred toward others.

What matters here is knowing that we each form our personalities and societies through all the ways we interact daily. Changing how we communicate changes the world where we communicate. So, treating others with more love actually creates a more loving world.

On this planet where we each live and breathe and have our being, we each are a “co-creator.” What we do to others, we do to ourselves. We may admire the Golden Rule, but do we live accordingly?

Global interactivity means that each of us is globally powerful, perhaps infinitely powerful. Saying we are powerless is our excuse to avoid responsibility for using our global power wisely.

If love is the glue that holds life together, expanding our capacity for love expands global unity. Seeking inner peace helps create world peace. Liberating ourselves liberates the world. This is why Benjamin Franklin said, “Who is powerful? He that governs his passions.”

IN THIS opening chapter, I’ve laid a philosophical foundation for the update of Common Sense that follows. This was needed because schools rarely explain abstract ideals like “freedom” or “democracy.” We rarely hear that we can change the world by changing ourselves. So, what’s the plan from here?

In Part I, where Paine looked at the nature of civil government, we’ll apply his ideas to self rule and personal democracy.

In Part II, where Paine refuted monarchy and hereditary succession, we’ll challenge “male rule” and “authority addiction.”

In Part III, where Paine argued against serving a king, we’ll argue against enabling authority addiction in the world or in ourselves.

In Part IV, where Paine showed how to win national independence, we’ll see how to use our global interdependence to win world peace.

In other words, the first half of this book identifies our common problems, and the second half suggests practical solutions. If you stay with me on this journey, you will feel more empowered.

Our goal is self liberation. A free society follows.

* * *

Excerpted from GLOBAL SENSE: Awakening Your Personal Power for Democracy and World Peace (an update of Common Sense) by Judah Freed. (c) 2006 by Judah Freed.

COMMON SENSE by Thomas Paine shifted public opinion in favor of declaring independence from Britain, in favor of a revolution. George Washington said the essay erased his lingering doubts about leading the rebel army. Why was Common Sense so powerful?

Paine distilled into common language the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment thinkers in the 18th century. Their views flowed from the Age of Reason in the 17th century, which arose from the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, which sprang from the Renaissance in the 15th century, which revived Greek and Roman philosophy after a millennium of medieval darkness in Europe.

The invention of modern printing had upset the cultural applecart. Popular books on classical thought recalled Plato’s wholistic view of life and Aristotle’s deconstruction of reality into its tiniest classifiable parts. These books restored the use of reason based on the syllogism: If A = B, and if B = C, then A = C. Using logic, “freethinkers” and scientists like Benjamin Franklin applied René Descartes’ and Francis Bacon’s useful tool for critical thinking—The Scientific Method:

1. Create a working hypothesis or theory from all available facts.
2. Test the hypothesis fairly (tests must be repeatable by others).
3. Impartially and rigorously analyze the test findings.
4. Revise the hypothesis to fit the findings (return to Step 1).

Freethinkers read The Principia by Sir Isaac Newton, who saw an apple fall straight to earth (not on his head) and deduced gravitation. Newton supported Copernicus and Galileo, who said our planet goes around the sun. Man on earth was not the center of the universe, as the Church had taught. Reason was gaining power over religion just as the Magna Carta had given the law power over the king.

Such trends raised a vital question: Can we live without kings? Read the rest of this entry »

SOCIETY has long been ruled by a worldview that makes sense of life by assuming a king must govern us. Now we’re evolving a new view of life. Due to the emergence of “global thinking,” Paine’s 18th century vision of a free society makes sense in our 21st century.

To understand why Common Sense made sense at the dawn of the United States, and why it still applies to us today, put yourself in the place of those reading Thomas Paine’s essay in 1776.

The colonists’ rights as citizens under the English Constitution had been revoked by “mad” King George III, who probably suffered from variegate porphyria. Parliament only made matters worse with the Stamp Act, Tea Act, and other “intolerable acts.” As Thom Hartmann chronicled in Unequal Protection, Americans hurt by tyranny united behind the protest, “No taxation without representation.” The people wanted a fair say in making the laws governing their lives.

Massachusetts rebelled in early 1775, so English ships blockaded Boston Harbor. When British soldiers killed American colonists at nearby Lexington on April 19, this “massacre” confused and terrified Americans in all of the colonies. They likely felt much like modern Americans felt in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Read the rest of this entry »

THOMAS Paine opened Common Sense with words that still ring true today.

“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but [they] have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one.”

I wholly agree with Paine. By seeing the difference between society and government, we can discover our personal power to shape the future.

The history of society is the story of humanity learning to accept responsibility for liberty. If people governed their own lives sensibly, there would be no need for a high government to control our lowest impulses. If we all lived with compassionate regard for one another, if we loved and respected others as we want to be treated, we’d barely need any government at all. That’s not our current reality.

Our reality today is a world filled with hate, violence, exploitation, and suffering. Why? Society reflects the web of mass consciousness woven daily by what we think, say and do. Our daily actions impact ourselves, our families, workplaces, communities, nations, and planet. The harmful habits of our minds and hearts are reflected in society, and society reinforces those harmful habits in us. It’s a vicious circle. To break the cycle, we need to transform our consciousness. Happily, such a worldwide change in our thinking is happening now.

In an era of globalization, two specters haunt our world, the spirits of absolute tyranny and genuine democracy. We live in the spectrum between. On one side are corporations and religions ruling us through puppet governments that prey upon our addiction to authority. On the other side is a grassroots movement for peace and democracy through enlightened spiritual awareness of our global oneness. Which way goes society and government depends on which way goes each of us. Our daily choices decide the fate of life on earth.

Read the rest of this entry »

The discipline of desire is
the background of character.
– John Locke

FEAR, rage and grief consumed me when two hijacked airplanes slashed into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. Standing dumbstruck before my television screen at home in Denver, I watched the live news feed from New York at 9:03 AM as United Flight 175 banked gracefully into the south tower and burst into a ball of flame. When the twin towers collapsed that morning, the debris cascading down looked like two inverted mushroom clouds.

As the day wore on, TV news began to echo the drumbeat of war emanating from the White House. Because I’ve worked for years as a journalist reporting on media and politics, because I’ve studied and taught the tools of public relations and propaganda, I saw an ominous trend. With Americans feeling terrified, the president was pledging an “endless war on terrorism” while implying the air attack justified a crackdown on U.S. society—for our own safety, of course.

I picked up my phone and called my representatives in Congress. I left messages urging them not to sacrifice our civil liberties on the alter of homeland security. They did not call back.

In the weeks that followed, I began drafting an essay on the future of democracy in America and the world. I wrote that most of us are ripe for plucking by tyrants because we feel afraid and insecure. As I wrote, I confronted my own dark shame and pain, the hidden shadow of self doubt that for years has kept me small and weak.

In late September, I recalled using Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in 1997 as the framework for an essay at my new website on the need for democratic governance of the Internet. In a flash of insight, I saw that Paine’s classic work was a perfect vehicle for talking about how global thinking empowers us for freedom. Inspired by Paine as if he was leaning over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, I started writing the book, Global Sense, voicing my soul while praying to touch your heart.

Read the rest of this entry »