Diagram 094

Re Talk: 222

     A smoothly functioning, efficient governing body would require one thing no one can see or take into account.  If this efficiency were to happen, it would require a minimal degree of apparent freedom. (Everything which you imagine would be good and positive, I am lumping under the word "efficient".)  The more you had that efficiency, the more you would also give up, in the widest sense of the word, apparent freedom.  Ordinary consciousness cannot see that.

     Take away freedom and you get efficiency.  Take away all freedom and you get efficiency that is unquestioned.  Then a system will do exactly what it says it will do, and it will do it very efficiently.

     I assume that even if you are new to This, you understand I am not talking about religion, politics, and the family.  I am talking about you.  Can you see any connection between this construct and my earlier one about continually creating new extremes?  When you bring in your extremes to the point that they become the "mainstream you," they are no longer extremes.  You will understand it when it happens.  It's as though a bad habit has gone away, and you don't really think about it until someone points it out to you.  Again, can you see any connection between that and the relationship between efficiency and freedom?

     Let's go back to religion as an example.  Your first thought of religion, once you figured out why your family was dragging you to church, was:  "Somebody knows the answer."  You knew that the parental governing body was inefficient because otherwise they wouldn't blame you for stuff your brothers and sisters did -- they'd know you were telling the truth.  Then you saw religion and you figured, "That guy standing up there knows what's going on."  Until, of course, you tried to go around and talk to him after the service.  Then you (and many other people actually) think, "I hope there are gods, because this clown doesn't know anything."  Until that point you had been willing to pay the price of apparent freedom for the satisfaction of knowing that someone knew the score.

     In essence, the church says:  "Here is efficiency.  What could be more efficient than the gods themselves?  These old gods, outside it all, made everything and know everything.  And this is their organization, here in this life."  Religion tells you exactly what to do.  Nobody can do it, though; the efficiency never comes to pass.  But notice what people are prepared to pay.  The way things are ordinarily structured, they are prepared to give up freedom almost completely.  Humanity is wired up and prepared to apparently give up all apparent freedom in return for apparent efficiency.  It just has not reached that point with the many.

     People attempting to do This are also attempting to live more efficiently.  They are attempting to be used more efficiently by Life.  What you are prepared to do, without having any notion of it, is to give up freedom. JC talk 222