Argument 4: Democracy and Addiction
Saving Democracy from Itself
This is an updated version of the article published Nov 12, 2024, no different than its republished form on April 27, 2025. Keeping both published is to preserve restack links.
Houses of knowledge are places of spiritual freedom, the antithesis being houses of addiction. Our journey reveals that addiction exists in spiritual blindness on different levels, personal, national and worldwide. Contribution 2: Addiction in the Democracy of our World Suneidesis explains how it works.
Feelings Based on Moral Standards
When moral standards govern our conscience (suneidesis), with or without religion, we feel good about ourselves when we keep our standard and bad when we do not. But our recognition of blindness is nil or limited, depending on how much the moral appearances we form of others blind us. When our suneidesis1 responds only to good or bad feelings based on our moral standard, we become addicted to successes and the democracy of our suneidesis becomes centered on making ourselves more important in order to succeed. This works on the personal, national and world level of our suneidesis through the political level, creating a civil-war like mentality of spiritual warfare.
Suffering from the partial loss of reason and will, we are like two alcoholics in this spiritual civil war. Flying the flags of our moral standards, we judge each other’s failures as willful acts, starting with the failure to keep our standard against excessive drinking, symbolic of every addiction. We often fail to consider any generational addiction in each other’s past and may even use the surface appearance of gender or race in some twisted way to judge each other. But none of this takes spiritual blindness into account. Thus, both sides have their moments of guilt for judging the other, but when we are faced with the alternative of learning the principle in the democracy of our suneidesis, the canons fire again through the broken windows of our houses of knowledge.
Israel and Palestine
Transitioning to the principle and breaking addiction on all levels requires knowledge of the ancestral blindness between Israel and Palestine. For the suneidesis of the entire world has witnessed their disregard for the value of human life. But we have done so without understanding how the ancestral addiction to spiritual hatred in their suneidesis works from moral standards. Their blindness is the enemy of our own suneidesis until we can recognize how it triggers addiction in our own blindness. They themselves are not our enemies.
Transitioning to the principle requires recognizing how the spiritual warfare between Israel and Palestine triggers addictions in the spiritual civil war of our own country and ourselves individually. Making Israel and Palestine more important as best as we can in our suneidesis, without being against ourselves, exposes our addiction through the moral standard still governing a part of the democracy in our suneidesis. Reason this through with the principle.
Placing our moral standard secondary enables us to maturely discern who is right, Israel or Palestine, in what way at any one moment—according to the maturity of our morals working under the principle. The side that is wrong in our perspective should be seen as being blinder. Both of them will remain blind until they love the other according to the principle, with being against themselves, recognizing that each side’s blindness is an enemy of both of their suneideseis (plural).
The Least Among Us
A democracy is free from national addiction when its citizens are free from moral standards governing their suneidesis. The different moral standards of its diverse groups should work in them secondarily, united by the principle governing them all. This way we can vote on laws for the common good—while protecting everyone’s wellbeing, especially whoever we each think are the least among us.
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Suggested articles:
The Eyes of Democracy (Introduction and Index of Articles)
Suneidesis, pronounced soon-eye-day-sis, is a Greek word that joins our natural awareness with our sense of conscience. Click on the link for a detailed explanation. It is central to this teaching. Using this foreign word regularly in discussions helps us get accustomed to experiencing something new and positive working in our awareness itself. When the word conscience is used, it will refer to the aspect of suneidesis that involves right and wrong, but this aspect cannot be separated from our co-conscientious awareness of all things.
If I understand that my awareness of something as simple as a cup includes co-conscientiousness, I do not allow myself to get blinded by the cup alone but know it as part of all creation at the hands of the Creator or the universe, depending on one’s beliefs. Spiritual maturity does this naturally.
The repetition of suneidesis is meant to challenge you to consider this dimension in your awareness. Apologies, but it will only be a necessary annoyance until it becomes natural.