Freedom and the ability to live one's life as one chooses is the highest, and most threatening, calling of human individuality and spirituality. We live in a world of conformity, and it is getting worse, not better. Someone always demands you see the world through their eyes and filter one's religious and political beliefs through their filters. Organizations can demand that one obey their set values or loose your status in that organization. Voters demand that one man be all things, which is impossible no matter what the Apostle Paul said, to all people. Anyone that can please everyone, or be whatever they need them to be so THEY are comfortable, is duplistic and inauthentic to the extreme. You could never trust a man or woman that literally practiced "being all things to all men."

The Government can make you feel unpatriotic for questioning the wisdom or lack thereof in their policies. When we say "their policies," we usually mean the ideas of a very very few human beings that have stopped asking "we the people," if they should do what they want to do. And if we say, "no you should not," they simply find a way around us and lie about it.

Fundamentalist types can make one feel that if you don't go to church, much less, their church, you are defective, lost, damned, unchosen, pagan and doomed. They feel free to shove their perspectives on world events as revealed in their ideas of Bible prophecy come alive, but if you say one word that even hints at you thinking they might try not reading their Bible like a newspaper, you will spend eternity in the hot place. (It's ok, that's where my real friends will be anyway.) Try this, when someone gives you a religious tract, just say "NO Thanks," and observe the disdain and pity they have for you. If you gave them a tract countering their idea, they would get livid. I once tried to give a book written by a well educated, highly credible read, female theologian to someone who was talking through their hat. They saw the author was a woman and simple said that nothing a woman had to say could interest them. What an intellect!

If you see both sides of some issue where only one side is acceptable, you are out, if you choose the wrong side of the coin. Of course, if you don't realize that the Israel of today is God chosen nation, as in the Old Testament, and as one man told me, "God will not tolerate anyone messing with Israel," well...they are coming to get ya! Memes, memes, memes...

So let's make a little list of things that you can use to measure whether one is dis-empowered as a thinking, caring and "that's fine for you, but leave me alone" human being.

1. You might be dis-empowerd if someone is forbidding you to read the books you find interesting.

2. You migth be dis-empowered if you have to justify the movies, videos and media you enjoy, to others.

3. You might be dis-empowered if you have to agree with a President who thinks stem cell research is akin to murder and not bring up how many hundreds of thousands the presidential dynasty has actually empowered others to murder in their name.

4. You might be dis-empowered if you have to account to others as to why you don't attend church, any church or THE church. This includes not being able to look them in the eye and say that you don't go because you don't agree with it.

5. You might be dis-empowered if you have to smile politely when religionists tell you how it is, who God really is, how he, not she thinks, what he demands, the rules you must obey that constitute "God's Law," and what true doctrines you must accept...and never be able to say "well, that's all very nice, but I don't agree with that."

6. You might be dis-empowered if you let them crush, behead , torture, dismember, slap, shun, disfellowship, imprison, scorn, mock, ridicule, judge, or penalize you in any way for not abiding by their imagined truths and requirements for you to adhere to.

7. You might be dis-empowered if you have to kill people you don't know in countries you don't want to go to, in an army you never joined volutarily, for ideas you completely disagree with.

8. You might be dis-empowered if others get to read your mail, video you at work, secretly check up on your performance, know your personal failings, pry into your finances, keep a list of what you watch, read and sites you visit, or in other ways invade your privacy without your express permission.

9. You might be dis-empowered if you think you vote for one candidate but have a lingering doubt that your vote counts or will be counted accurately and professionally, reflecting the true will of the good people in your country.

10. You might be dis-empowered if you live in a country where you have to ask, "what is voting?"

11. You might be dis-empowered if you are pastored by a narcissistic dictator who uses the Bible to bash you into fearful, shameful and guilt ridden religious behaviors, that in your heart you know is bull shit, but are too afraid to not belong to, "just in case he is God's chosen man of faith and power."

12. You might be dis-empowered if you have a boss that is making your life miserable and you have NO safe way to point out the man or woman is out of her league with working successfully with other human beings for a common goal.

13. You might be dis-empowered if you yell at the TV, radio, newspapers and magazines on a regular basis where no one who is doing such crap to everyone else in the world can hear you or cares.

14. You might be dis-empowered if you don't feel you can speak up, go to a protest or write an honest editorial in your community without reprocussions.

15. You might be dis-empowered if you feel you have to own a gun, which you never have before, but it just seems like something you just have to do and you don't know why and really can't afford one or know how to use it. You ask yourself..."would I really use this thing on someone?"

16. You know you are dis-empowered when you can't dress as you wish.

17. You might be dis-empowered when you, as a woman, can't look a man in the eye and say, "that's stupid, I'm not doing that," without feeling that your life might be in danger.

18. You might be dis-empowered if someone else is selecting your friends and forbidding you to have friends outside of their circle of approval.

19. You might be dis-empowered if you want to speak up in writing, or literally, but somehow you know the price will be too high, so you don't.

20. You might be dis-empowered if you find yourself standing up for yourself on the INSIDE, but sitting down on the OUTSIDE so as to look compliant and keep your job, status, money, family, stuff or sanity,

21. You might be dis-empowered if you see both sides an issue and dare not express the side that disagrees with those that pay, feed, protect or love you. This includes phrases like, "well can ya blame the Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese, children, women..." and such and so on...

22. You might be dis-empowered if you have to ask, "Just where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket?"

I think we all know when and under what circumstances we feel that it is others who hold sway over our feelings, ideas, expressions of those ideas and desire to be ourselves without tribal, religious or governmental approval. Being oneself is not fashionable these days and it is going to get worse and worse as ideologies clash and you are told that you are "either for us or against us." Now there is a stupid idea that leaves no room for other perspectives or solutions to difficult problems! It happens to be the meme that is firmly in place even as we speak and is why so many feel so dis-empowered.

The solution? Practice saying what YOU mean, and meaning what YOU say. It matters not if you are right or wrong and that may be relative anyway to the truth of the matter. Someone once said, and it is harsh, that "true freedom will only come when every King is strangled with the intestines of every Priest." That's pretty harsh to be sure, but it does make the point that dis-empowerment of the individual is so often perpetrated in the name of government and religion that the average person, who fears both and rightly so at times, has no other way to express the frustration for group think and it's effect on real human progress.

Without skeptics and those who question authority, there can be no progress. We have done that at times in history and always end up with the Dark Ages until enough is enough and the sun can rise again on freedom, until the next time it threatens the ignorant.