Recently I have been contemplating the strange reality of people being obedient to laws or rules or policies that they believe are wrong or are not in their own best interest. I think for example of the centuries of women who obeyed husbands who were controlling, violent or destructive to them. Children similarly follow their parents directives even when they are harmful to them. Police and military in dictatorial or fascist states have fired on their own people - on people who are their neighbors sometimes even their own family because they were following orders. People have stayed in jobs they hate following orders or policies they hated or found immoral. Slaves who were not always in chains stayed and did not run away even when raped and family members killed.
Granted threats of violence or economic controls often are insurmountable controls especially if acting without allies. But really when you look at it deeply all these groups of people were socialized to believe that this was their lot in life. In many cases religions or social beliefs taught them they were inferior or deserved to be treated this way - or that God wanted it that way or would punish them if they did not stay in situations that were bad for them.
I long for the day we will not think so badly of God. When we could not imagine that a loving God would ever consign anyone to suffering or injustice. I long for a day when religion would be a force for courage to stand up to injustice rather than to buckle to it and conform. I long also for the day when religion enflames our heart with a sense of what an egalitarian and humanitarian society looks like and when our thirst for justice is so wrong that we cannot be still. If societal norms can keep us in great suffering why can they not induce us to suffer for great good?
Call me a dreamer, but I have been thinking a lot recently what if all the women married off without a voice simply walked out? What if all the government workers in any country who were asked to carry out an injust or oppressive law simply refused? What if all the people in slavery walked off or refused to work? What if each of us refused to do anything that we thought was morally wrong? What if we each felt so much fidelity to our own soul that we would not take on bad karma? What if we believed in ourselves enough to trust our own thinking and our own consciences? Would we then be living in Heaven on Earth? I'm not thinking this would be easy. Some people would die (as they will now also). But maybe it would be revolutionary.
