Am I a Liberal? No, but I am a 'Leave-People-Alone-ist'
How I Balance My Politics
If you have read some of my work, then you might conclude that I’m a leftist or liberal leaning. I can see how someone can draw that conclusion. My recent voting record may support that conclusion. What you probably don’t know is my recent voting record is certainly a departure from my voting strategy early on in my voting life. I would split my ticket because I figured that approach would lead to finding middle ground across all branches and levels of government. This approach actually made it easier for me to not know much about what was going on because in the end somehow everyone would find their way to the middle. This strategy was even easier to execute because we only have two major political parties here in the States.
But there are indeed downsides and limitations to only having two parties. We make the mistake of thinking there are ONLY two sides. We also make the mistake of thinking that to be fair and balanced means we must give credence to both. Well my intent in life is to be circumspect. Which means I look from all angles, not just two sides, then draw conclusions from there.
But if you insist on limiting my points of view to the political spectrum chart, then okay I’m a liberal. Though I wouldn’t describe myself that way. I would describe myself as a leave-people-alone-ist. You see we, as humans, seem to have this ungodly flaw of wanting to dominate people. I call it ungodly because, if you are of the Christian faith, we learn in Genesis 1:26 that God gave humans dominion over animals not one another.
And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
The word dominate lands on my ear differently. I hear it and feel disturbed. As much as I am a supporter of Coach Prime, Deion Sanders, I would cringe every time I would hear him say that his goal is not just for his team to win, but to dominate. I can understand being undeniably the best, but I’m left to wonder why is domination necessary? To me, domination is not necessary. Yet dominion is something that we insist on seeking and having.
In my view domination comes in many forms. Including but not limited to, cheating, greed, harsh judgment, micromanagement, pulling rank, bullying, dictatorship, meddling, inequality, injustice, oppression, bondage, callousness, imposition, use of force, usury, being the center of attention, abuse of power, war mongering etc.,
In short, dominion shows up as an inability or unwillingness to share, to care and be fair.
In my opinion, domination comes from a fear of parity. It is an age-old problem. For everyone to be on par with each other is considered blasphemous in the eyes of many, for a host of reasons. The only way to solve for such blasphemy is for one person, one group, one political party to elevate themselves and subordinate others. That subordination can look like many things ranging from throwing shade to complete subjugation.
Whatever form the subordination takes, it all starts with being meddlesome and purposely disturbing someone else’s peace. And to me this is completely out of balance behavior. When I call behavior out of balance, I’m referring to behavior that results from being imbalanced physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
In my estimation, when we have these internal balances we are not all that concerned, much less threatened, by the freedom of others. We don’t seek to impose our will on others; we don’t seek to criminalize that that has no bearing on us; we don’t seek to make life harder for others. We have no interest in bothering people. We leave people alone. Hence, I’m a leave people-alone-ist.
Onward to Harmonious Balance my friends,
Johanna
**For customized content requests,1:1 coaching and speaking inquiries, feel free to contact me.**