Anarchy

Apart of me is an anarchist. This part of me is persuaded that humanity succeeds only when we acknowledge that our love for (including obedience to) our Creator is entirely up to us. So, therefore, hierarchy of rules and regulations are only a bandaid until this self-inflicted wound heals and the scars remind us not to be unfaithful to our Creator.

This is not accurate as to what I ultimately believe, nor would I teach this to my children. But, if I'm being honest, those thoughts and feelings cross my mind from time to time.

So today I had an epiphany about how that, simply, may not be true.

One of the most fascinating things, to me, about life is how my philosophies - no matter how, seemingly, sound and time tested they are - derail from what is actually true.

What I mean to say is that the epiphany that I encountered has indicated to me that we may actually be designed to be controlled, regulated, "bossed around", etc...

Let me give a few examples:

Staff
If you don't already know, I own and manage a small marketing firm that specializes in internet marketing (website design and development, search engine optimization, WordPress plugin development, etc...), and I have some staff that work for me completing the tasks I assign to them. While my staff is very skilled, respectful and reliable, they're occasionally insubordinate. And when they are, I've tried to reason with them, to help them understand my reasons.

Growing up, many of my teachers (in school and in life) chose to test my knowledge rather than educate my mind. Leaving me with a low GPA and a variety of "learning disabilities". This was aggravating and made me feel helpless. Since then I vowed to give understanding, liberally, to anyone who was willing to accept it.

But I have one staff member who really "soaks up" that "understanding". And it costs me a pretty penny. In fact, it consumes so much time, on occasion, that the work at hand doesn't get completed and the project comes toppling down leaving me holding the bill.

This had gone on so long that I was literally running out of money as a result of falling behind on projects. So I had to choose to either lay off my staff, or candidly tell them I wasn't willing to discuss the topic(s) with them until the task was complete.

Children
I, currently, have two children. And before my son, Owen, was a year old we hadn't really needed to discipline him. Around that time he adopted screaming as a pass time to entertain himself and communicate to us. As you can imagine it's really fun for everyone who listens to it, but something inside us said that it had to stop. Yes, I'm kidding, that thing inside us was actually our sleep deprived consciousness begging for mercy.

So we diligently disciplined him in that area and everything we tried failed. As a last resort we chose to spank him. Apart from it being the worst decision I've made as a parent thus far, after about five days of doing it when he screamed (of course after we told him to stop first), he stopped.

Communities
Recently I posted a reply to someone's feature request for an application we contribute to the development of. I attempted to discourage the development of the feature by stating some subtle facts that the supporters may not have considered. But shortly after I started receiving responses from new people into the conversation challenging my explanation. But what I thought was a technical conversation quickly turned into a blatantly inconsiderate and offense series of comments about how I was arrogant and ignorant.

I was, almost, completely overcome with anger from the pain their words caused me and equally aggravated by, what I perceived as, their ignorance to my posts. Though, I gave a final response I considered why their words hurt and aggravated me so much. They don't know me, I don't believe what the said is true, their opinions weren't enough to affect the goal that my staff and I were trying to reach, so why did that get under my skin?

That was when I started thinking about all of this, and how no matter how many times I choose to trust a group of people to do the right thing, we all seem to stray if we're given freedom for long enough.



All in all, I want to believe that if authority gives it's subjects the freedom to recognize the consequences of their own actions, then their subjects will, surely, come around; in due time. But, unfortunately, I've yet to see that! In fact, I've only witnessed the opposite.

So this life-long philosophy I've maintained is, bitter sweetly, bowing to, what appears to be, the simple fact we're not designed to be free. Rather, we're slaves designed to be controlled. And, lucky for us, humanity's ultimate authority is Jesus.