Togetherness

I am reading a book for school it is about creating healthy relationships within communities. Great book! Yesterday, we were in the chapter about "being one among many." Ronald W. Richardson, the author, bases the whole book on family systems theory and this chapter focuses on the two innate qualities that we possess as humans: the need for togetherness and the need for individuality. These two qualities must co-exist in our lives and how we regulate them will determine how healthy our relationships are.

So I came to a couple paragraphs that 100% describe where are nation is today! Here goes:

There would be no human community and no human life without the togetherness force...There can be a down side to the togetherness force in human community...Great anxiety will increase the pressure for togetherness. And at lower levels of emotional maturity, this pressure will be experienced as 'everyone must be the same' or fit in with some expectation for how everyone should be within particular roles; few or no exceptions are allowed.

In Germany in the 1930's, there was a very high level of anxiety. The primary source of this anxiety, but not the only one, related to the chaotic economic conditions. The Germans are an intelligent and well-educated people. But as their anxiety went up, they were increasingly attracted to the simplistic ideas of the Nazi party and Adolf Hilter, who offered, as the cause of Germany's problems, Jews, communists, homosexuals, and others whom he saw as social misfits who diluted the quality of what he called the 'pure Aryan race."

In the midst of so much anxiety, the majority of the people lost their ability to think clearly, put aside their deep spiritual beliefs and values, and participated in a social/political movement that helped them to feel better and more confident about themselves. They gave up many of their beliefs to go along with the "party line." Dictators thrive in situations where people are anxious, and so the Nazi party was voted into power."

Paradoxically, this kind of dictatorial pressure for unity leads automatically to greater fragmentation within groups. A certain percentage of people in the group experience the pressure as a threat to the self, and they then become reactive to this pressure. They perceive that there is less permission for them to be as they are, and feel overwhelmed with the demands of those pushing 'unity' to give up who they are.

Even if Hitler had managed to win the war, his 'empire' would have fallen apart from within, just as did the equally dictatorial communist bloc. The more any one group attempts to impose its will on another group, thus attempting to wipe out that group's sense of identity, the more pressure is being built for a rebellion. THis will be true whether the pressure for sameness is coming the conservative right or the liberal left. It is the dynamic itself that creates this reality, not the politics of the group pushing for sameness.

~ Ronald W. Richardson, Creating a Healthier Church: Family Systems Theory,
Leadership, and Congregational Life, Augsburg Fortress, 1996.

What is going on today, cannot be about politics, it must be about values and principles that as humans we should all see as fundamental core. Things like Honesty, Reverence, Hope, Thrift, Humility, Charity, Sincerity, Moderation, Hard Work, Courage, Personal Responsibility, and Gratitude. Our nation has been socialist since the times of FDR, we just have admitted it. We are now facing full-fledged dictatorship because we have forgotten, because we aren't thinking clearly, because we want so badly for things to be equal and the same. When ever did we learn that life is fair? It's not! But if we get back to our princples and our values, we can live together without losing our individuality, without living with slavery, without condemning our children and grandchildren to a live of servitude to a dictatorial government! We have got to WAKE UP! We have got to start SPEAKING UP! We have got say times are hard and we'll deal with it! We don't want it harder! Stop the insanity and get back to what our country was founded on! History is repeating itself today in America, we are walking head on into Nazi Germany and dictatorship!