Free from Bureaucracy

Freedom – no-one can rule
another

To be free is one of the most complex ideas ever.

We are never truly free. There is always an attachment or something
that we will need from another.

At a basic level, humans need to interact with other humans. It is
like a bank account. You need attention and when you do not get it – you
need more when you do get it. When we do not interact with others, we
become less human. Some people never give and never get into the
relationship game. When we do start interacting with people, a complex
set of interactions unfolds to shape our relationships.

Man has it pre-wired to seek to gain advantage over others. We have
to feel that we are superior in some way or form. This superiority plays
out in the way we present ourselves to society. We insist that something
in our make-up needs to be different from others. It is a primal
instinct that originates from mating. Research is showing that one of
the differentiating factors of human selection is that people choose
people that have a perceived uniqueness about them. In this way – we
tend to create new variations in the system and keep the gene pool
diverse. Advantage in this sense also could mean to highlight a
disadvantage. By allowing yourself to be pitied or presenting defects –
often it means that you are indirectly in control of a situation. By
always being sick, one sibling gets more attention than their healthy
counterpart does. The sickness becomes what defines the sibling.

The very act of seeking advantage is what drives power.

Power manifests when we embed a human need into a position and we
occupy this position with a person. We give away some of our
self-determination in favour of someone that would be good at serving
that specific function in society and we trust and otherwise support
this person to fulfil that function. At a basic level – we trust each
other to cook, to clean and to take care of daily situations. These
functions are fulfilled and it allows the total achievement or energy of
the system to increase.

In a more complex scenario we trust groups of people to take on
complex challenges by having given our power to do so to them. I am not
in a position to provide my own water, land and roads – as the task I
have effectively delegated to people that will make a living out of
fulfilling those functions. In exchange I will fulfil other functions
that society expects of me, with the hope that this exchange will
generally be fair and that I can partake in society at large and society
at large will reciprocate by striving to make the world a better place
for all.

Enter advantage again.

Two people are working on a task generally have two motivations. One
sees it as a task in itself and the other sees it as a means to an end.
Both do the work, but the expectation of the first is that the task is
complete and this can now lead to the next task while the expectation of
the second is that the task is complete and now they never have to do
that type of work ever again. The first is a good worker and the second
is labelled as ambitious. The second person has a conversation with the
first person and convinces them that it is better that they continue
doing the task that was described and that they both did the first time.
He tells the first guy that he will do important things for both of them
and starts organising tasks, getting new tasks and thinking up ideas for
tasks. When the worker sees that the ideas guy is working less
physically than him, he starts complaining and the idea guys either
convinces the worker that they must keep on working or if this fails
dominates them in ways that keeps them working.

This domination is important because it entrenches the advantage of
the ideas person and keeps them from doing the hard labour. The
advantage is important because it procures a better girl.

So how do the ideas people dominate? They think and ideas turn into
rules. If the person does not want to work as hard, they must fill in a
form. If the worker fills in the form, it still cannot happen because
there is now a regulation. The regulation states that the form was not
filled in correctly. When the worker fills in the form correctly and
follows the regulation, then the regulations change or there is a fee
involved that requires them to do more work. If all of this is too much,
then the ideas people offer some entertainment. The entertainment is
expensive – so the worker has to work harder. When entertainment is too
much work, the ideas people put it in the news, newspapers and a million
other ways in which they make the workers work more and the ideas people
work less.

When the worker dies – another worker replaces them. When the ideas
person dies, the regulations and the rule books are passed on to the
next ideas person that must drive the bureaucracy. When the new worker
asks why things are the same, they are told that it has always been like
that but there is a form that they can fill in, and the cycle starts
again.

Now we all sit back at this point and say, but some people need to
work and some people need to come up with ideas. This is the natural
order of things. In writing this article – many people highlighted that
this is exactly how things should be.

They also thought they were ideas people, but after some careful
consideration realised that they are just workers being manipulated into
thinking that they are on the other side – a rather fiendish trick of
the ideas people.

So, what does this have to do with freedom? Realising that we are
being oppressed allows us to become conscious of the possibility that we
have options. For instance, it allows us to become the ideas people, and
oppress others more effectively – or alternatively to come up with a new
way of doing things that does not require one party to gain an advantage
over another (which is a very ideas person answer). It also allows us to
be workers and be happy about it, knowing that we will be oppressed, but
accepting that it is our lot. We will take the form, fill it in, do it
bloody well and also make sure that we are in the front of the queue
when we submit it. We know the regulation will mess us up – but we will
do it anyway because it is the way that things work.

In the modern society we have another option, which is technology. We
can now either remove the oppressor by getting a meaningless agent to do
the job, or put it into a system, which allows the ideas person – to not
even have to come up with a new idea to keep the bureaucracy going. We
have used systems neatly to replicate our normal inefficiencies in
society.

The level to which regulations and frameworks have come to rule our
lives are beyond frightening. Every area, discipline and science has
become complex miasmas of layer upon layer of terminology, regulations
and basic exploitation of individuals. We pay billions in taxes to come
up with new ways in which the systems in society will disappoint us
daily. All of this so that the few, can benefit from the many. This is
not a bad thing always – as we few want to benefit from not having to do
everything ourselves. This is need. Need is an important factor of what
drive society. Sometimes the system of need fails and we create jobs and
functions that society at some level can do without. The system is
designed to perpetuate itself and incremental evolution keeps on making
the system work the same as before.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the sheer number of security
guards that sit in front of doors and have books filled in with
visitors’ details. They have no real function other than to record that
some other person was there. This can be done with technology. The
challenge is that you will eliminate millions of jobs across the world
in a blink of an eye. Another example is photocopying. Going paperless
has only produced more paper. It really is sad.

Bureaucracy saps the joy out of living – but without it,
unfortunately so many people will not have jobs.

So if we look at it there are many things that capture us and that
keeps us from being free. It seems that we get stuck a lot and that this
enslaves us. There is more potential in us than we can handle. Life
repeats itself over and over in more elaborate patterns of sameness.

To be free then it seems that we have to be clear that we have some
things to do.

1. Keep moving forward

To be free we have to move on the next thing. The previous thing will
get us stuck. It does not mean that we have to hop around from job to
job or from situation to situation but we have to keep moving forward in
our emotional, spiritual, physical and mental worlds.

2. Face your demons and discover your angels

Inside each of us, there are fears and hopes. We have to run towards
these and unshackle ourselves from that which inhibits us from achieving
our true potential. Our fears and hopes are the same thing – just
unfulfilled potential that needs to be unleashed and that unstucks us
from our current entrapments.

3. Find your creator

Something in you wants to get out. It may be your music, your
writing, your photography, your gardening. In you, there exists a
creator that wants to make things and express their thoughts and
feelings. To create is to be free. If you find them – you can unleash
them.

4. Excellence beats the systems

Bureaucracy is the administrative anti-thesis to freedom. But to be
free you need to realise that there is a bureaucrat in all of us and
that this bureaucrat needs to work with other bureaucrats to bring
administrative freedom. People talking and walking your piece of paper
through the process can beat any bureaucracy. Do not shy away from it –
be better at it than others and the whole system improves. Smile while
you are doing it – and try to make others smile. We are all in this
together.

5. Listen to yourself – and be yourself

Inside of you, there is a genius. Listen this this genius. Inside of
you there is also a self critic and a dark side. Do not shy away from
this. You need to understand both what is good inside of you and what is
not. When you can reconcile these ideas and bring both to the table you
can move forward much faster. We are all constrained and held captive in
some way by our past and what we think is our own inadequacies. These
need to get engaged in and release the past. The key is not to walk away
from it – but towards it once again. Deal with your pain, your fear,
your hang-ups and your inadequacies. You are more than you think you
are…

6. Let the weight go.

Think of a time when you were carefree and had no worries in the
world. Compare that with where you are now and what is different. Let
the feelings that you have that makes you feel heavy about what has
changed go – acknowledge them as feelings that you have – and also that
there is no value in having them. If a feeling bothers you – ask
yourself what you are getting from having the feeling and if it would be
better to do something about it. To be free is to be light enough so
that any new weight can be let go of easily.

7. Take a male and a female perspective

In a situation, ask yourself what you would have done if you were a
member of the opposite gender. This is useful to learn to be
compassionate if you are a woman and to be strong if you are a man. You
may think this is the wrong way round – but in reality we have defined
these things very wrong in the past and you need to see it from the
other side to understand it.

8. Connect unconnected things

Take five things are unconnected and or unrelated and link them. The
link may not be easy and may elude you for a while – but you will find
it eventually. You will find that there is always a link. There is
always a link and a path between everything and if you start looking for
these, you will soon find that they are connected in the most unexpected
ways.

Whenever you get stuck – get unstuck by asking when you can do to
overcome an obstacle. View it as a connection that you are looking for
between two points. Your curiosity to find a path will overcome your
desire to continue seeing something as an obstacle.

9. Decide if you are being repelled or attracted

When you realise that you are not free – you have to realise that
something is holding you. If you are being held – you are being pushed
or pulled, repelled or attracted. Something is standing in your way or
pushing you forward. The sky might be falling or the earth moving
upwards. Whatever the dimension – decide which it is. Are you repelled –
moving away from where you want to be, or are you going to where you do
not want to be. If you understand this – then change direction. If you
want to be rich (attracted), then become rich. If you want to stop being
poor (repelled), then stop being poor.

10. Shift dramatically and live incrementally

If you are clear you need to change direction – then do so quickly.
If you are happy – then live incrementally – getting better at things
every opportunity you have.

11. Be all that you can be.

At some point in life we realise that we are going to die one day and
all of a sudden, we start doing more, being more and taking more
responsibility. This is good. Some people decide that they need to leave
a legacy. Some people want to live forever and some cannot wait for the
next life to come fast enough. The real key to freedom is realising that
there is no tomorrow and you cannot be tied to the future. This does not
mean that you must now stop planning and getting things done. Indeed –
to be really free you need to mindful that everything that is important
needs to be done today, now and in this moment. However – to be truly
free it needs to be done.

12. Release your subjects

We all believe that we are the kings and queens of the universe and
that other people are our subjects. This is simply not true. A true
ruler lets their people live their lives and release them to do great
things. Have you released all your subjects – or do you expect others to
serve you. Maybe it is time to be a benevolent dictator and give them a
day off.

So to get to the end.

Basically – we are really bad as people at being free and we will
never really be free. We will always depend on others and attempt to
gain advantage over others. To become free-er than we were previously,
it is sometimes important to realise that we have to let some of the
constraints and limitations go.

It is not all that bad to have to depend on others. As long as you
are happy that you are making a contribution and that you are being all
that you can be – there is little that can stand in the way of you
living a happy and fulfilled life full of gratitude and wonderful
living.

It may not always be easy – but then it must at least be fun to try
and find an answer.