When Up is Down
Are we confused to the detriment of our health?
It’s confusing, often, to understand how we have strayed so far from the Natural Law that governs all things, that many of us can point to Light and call it Dark or to Dark and call it Light.
It’s less confusing when we examine our history, along with human nature, and discover the lengthy psychological processes, cultural trends, and societal shifts that have occurred to usher us in to the state we find ourselves today: railing against that which is good for us, and cheering on that which is bad.
There are several examples of how this is happening in the Metaverse (who knows if it’s happening in the Real World outside of my family’s conscious community, but I imagine it is):
women criticizing against the recent update of AAP’s recommendations for breastfeeding from 1 year to 2 years
companies boasting their use of wind + solar power as they destroy rain forest to build wind and solar farms
disparaging milk and meat as the environmental enemy while we vote as consumers for the new lab-derived (untested for safety) foods
patients (and even herbalists, sigh) touting the dangers of herbs while promoting pharmaceuticals and medical procedures as “safe alternatives”
women disparaging other women as “crazy” for having their babies at home or unattended, as women have done for since the beginning of humankind, and which has been proven safer for mamas and babies
Dr. Zach Bush recently did an interview in which he summed up this plight so cohesively and coherently that I’m tempted to quit writing & podcasting once and for all, as nothing else need be said. The interview is worth listening to. If you need the cliff notes, essentially, he explained: we Humans have become so disconnected from Nature, that we are not Coherent energetic beings. This lack of Coherence makes us easily programmable. Our programmability is of benefit to those who seek to keep us disconnected from Nature. If we are to connect to Nature, not only are we Coherent in our energy, but we aren’t programmable - we follow Natural Law.
With Natural Law it is easy to differentiate that which is good for our sentient being (mind, physical body, heart, and spirit) from that which is not.
For example, it shouldn’t need to be explained that breastfeeding babies until they are two is better for their biological health. To argue against this cannot be supported with scientific evidence and elucidates a profound amnesia to our evolutionary biology.
But I’m not sure anyone is even arguing against the health benefits. I think mostly women are incensed because this recommendation feels so far out of reach in a society that is grotesquely unfriendly to postpartum mothers and which hardly provides resources for mothers to undertake breastfeeding at all.
But does the needling of our Maternal Guilt by an ineffective third party upset us so that we must seek to invalidate their statement of Biological Truth?
Is the house of cards we’ve built our sense of Self on really so fragile that this recommendation feels like an existential threat? I’d say so. And there it is: the confirmation we’ve strayed from Natural Law.
Natural Law doesn’t need your endorsement. It governs all things without your belief, approval, or consent.
This particular example also underscores the phenomenon of our pervasive need as humans (and, I’d say, particularly as women) for permission.
Because ultimately, no one is demanding that you breastfeed your baby for any amount of time - let alone two years. And in fact, there are plenty of online forums that will cheer you on for not feeling compelled to do so at all.
But we (as women, mothers, and Humans) desperately want to be told that what we are doing is Right, by someone we consider higher & mightier than Self. We don’t trust our own instincts or choices (generally speaking). Either we distinctly fear going “against the grain” or else we yearn for someone else to tell us we are “good.”
I was pondering this when yesterday, on Independence Day, the Daily Stoic released this email. It deserves spotlighting.
When Seneca was an advisor to Nero, he served alongside an aide named Epaphroditus, the owner of a slave named…Epictetus.
Yet between Seneca, who was the richest man in Rome, Epaphroditus, who was one of the most powerful men in Rome, and Epictetus, who as a slave had no power at allit would be the slave who was the most free.
How could that possibly be?
Seneca himself would say that to be free is to belong to yourself. It is to be in charge of your mind, your will, your self. It is to insulate yourself from pointless obligations, from other people’s expectations, from materialism and the slavery of cravings or aspirations.
“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power,” Seneca said.
Seneca would know, for he was acutely aware that he lacked such power. So did Epictetus. Not only as a slave, but also as a witness to Nero slowly buying and trapping Seneca in a gilded cage. In the end, Seneca couldn’t even quit his job without permission. It was the ultimate prison—one with no walls.
Seneca was not a singular figure in this regard. Epictetus saw countless other people who were unable to walk away from a job they hated because they were walled in by big houses and fancy titles. He saw people contorting themselves to get on Nero’s good side. He saw all the limitations and constraints that come with money and power. He saw how jobs that needed to be held for years in order to get ahead narrowed the choices of the ambitious who held them, like chains attached to their own yoke.
Epictetus was horrified by what he saw. “It is better to starve to death in a calm and confident state of mind,” he would say, “than to live anxiously amidst abundance.”
“Freedom is the prize we are working for,” Seneca wrote, “not being a slave to anything—not to compulsion, not to chance events.” Then he said, “show me a man who isn’t a slave.” To money. To work. To fear. To whatever everyone else is doing. To alcohol, to cigarettes, soda, material possessions, bad habits, followers on social media, anchors on cable news. Indeed, we have many masters.
Here on the 4th of July, the celebration of America’s Declaration of Independence, before you head off to BBQs full of hot dogs and beer, you should think about this stuff and ponder the questions that people have been wrestling with since the Ancients. Are you free? Do you belong to yourself? Are you in charge of yourself? Do you have yourself in your own power? Or are you held in captivity by someone or something else? By work? By money? By your mortgage? By your social media followers? By your anxieties and aspirations?
Sober up. You’re a slave! Epictetus would know. That’s why he reminds us: “No man is free who is not master of himself.”
If the recommendation of a governing organization so incenses us that we must expend our precious Life Force energy to condemn it, we are slaves.
If we must get approval from any other for how to raise our children, we are slaves.
And if we have so forgotten our Nature that we champion that which harms us (and the planet) while skeptically deriding basic facts of biology, the sacred truths persistent from a time when our ancestors and Earth’s beings lived in harmony (ie, Natural Law), then we are easily enslaved.
Now is the time to break chains.
