Even before the written form of these words appeared there was a general consensus as to an agreed code of conduct. Yet no one was quite sure of the rules. Indeed even today no one is certain. Therefore we needed to elevate certain people who knew.

This began with Tribal and Religious Leaders. As our society has become more complex, it has extended into experts on every area of life. There are people who claim to know the rules about areas as varied as Etiquette to Interior Design. The problem comes not in listening and using these experts advice, but in substituting it for our own. Specialists can save you years in gaining insight without trial and error, but that knowledge must fit in with your overall strategy and approach to life.

An agreed code of conduct now gave us a standard to judge ourselves against. From here on our value became evaluated against these external standards. And here began the centuries old conflict between Society and the Individual.

As an individual you have certain wants, needs and actions that may help you to further along your chosen path.

Yet everyone else from your family and friends, to your employer or employees and Government wants you to do, or believe, certain things. Sometimes it's just because from their limited understanding they believe that your life would be better if you believed or did certain things. Other times, such as the millions of Soldiers who’ve lost their lives in battle, it's because they believe sacrificing you, is worth it for others.

In reality the sacrifice of your time, free will, or even your life is no more necessary than the human sacrificial rites we once performed. It is all based on a belief that the world is not expansive enough for us all to be us. A belief that there is some Supreme Being somewhere who needs us all to conform to his/her plan.

Today we have enough scientific knowledge to override this view. Everything science tells us, from genetics to quantum physics to Chemistry all indicate that order and perfection is built into the system. The world is not a random chaotic mixture. It is a perfect blend that has an inevitable result.

The expansion in size… in complexity and understanding of ourselves and of the Universe is guaranteed. We don’t have to distort ourselves to fit in. Instead it’s all the better if we don’t fit in. Then the world has to grow to accommodate us.

The sacrifice strategy doesn’t work. One of the most common areas we see this used is by Women in the Homemaker role. Society has always told them that they must forget themselves in order to devote themselves to their family. Then their Daughters can grow up to sacrifice themselves for their Daughters and so on.

So who ever gets to live?

The cycle perpetuates itself until we have a whole family line of what could have-beens.

Many people take an attack on the sacrifice strategy to be a call for everyone to do whatever they want at any expense. Wherever the sacrifice strategy is used, the view is that someone must lose. Either the Sacrificer or the Person or Organisation the sacrifice is made for.

Wrong.

It is only looking through the old world view that this is true. As Einstein said;

“The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”.

The situation is a challenge for all concerned to grow. If you sacrifice… it is because you did not act on the prod life has given you to grow, and find a solution that doesn’t require anyone to lose. And at the same time you have also denied those others from making the same growth.

The world is expansive enough for everyone to get what they need. Yet what they want is often not what they need, because their understanding of life is flawed. And so sometimes the fact that you may not sacrifice yourself to fit in with their plan forces them to rethink. This may then be the catalyst for them to create a newer and more refined plan.

From birth Society has trained us to put the good of others before our own needs. To care more for others, than for ourselves. Anything other than this is selfish, uncaring and any other manipulative words that can be used to get you to fall into line. The problem is that it isn’t possible to care more for others than for ourself. We can never feel anyone else’s pain more acutely than our own – however empathic we are. And the less cared for… the less loved we feel… the less capacity we have to love.

So from birth we have a continual fight. A fight between the external world that tells us over and over again that it knows more than us and we must be bad to not agree with it… and our body, our instincts and intuitive knowledge… that screams to us that the world is wrong and what we are doing is wrong.

In the face of such numerical and historical support from the external world, almost all of us give in and dismiss our instincts. Then we tell ourselves that we must be bad. So we hide our real feelings and put on a Social Mask. Although everyone else is going through the same conflict, the fear that anyone else may think we are odd or bad, means that we look at others and think they’re coping I should be able to.

So we trick ourselves into believing that we are really bad and so we need to be controlled. Therefore we need more rules… more regulation… more constraints and less trust. The debate goes back at least, as far as Aristotle and Plato, probably much further. The result is that we have been disconnected from our own source of wisdom and insight, from each other and from the Universe.

The view that we need Religion and Laws to keep us all from raping and pillaging our neighbour’s supports the very institutions that created the view in the first place.

We need order they say or we’ll all behave like animals. Yet animals have their own order. It may not fit in with ours, but it is an order that makes sense for them.

Contrast that to the order we have artificially perpetuated. Year after year crime rates rise… mental illnesses increase… loneliness increases… more powerful weapons of mass destruction are created… more of the world is destroyed… more species are made extinct… more of the worlds resources are depleted.

The planet has been systematically and ruthlessly raped and pillaged. Not by animals, savages or by rotten individuals… but by Society attempting to maintain the ‘Rules’.

Its time to wake up and recognise that we backed the wrong side. Its not our instincts or us that were wrong. It’s Society. And its our instincts that hold the key to growing it into a more enlightened form. Without our higher wisdom, just like a tree that’s growth is blocked, we grew gnarled and knotty.

Now from this point on… you can be responsible 100% for what you believe.

Since you are responsible for what you believe… you must also be responsible for what you say and do.

If you are responsible for what you think, say and do… you must also take responsibility for  your life.