Fear is Fun, Part 2: Emotional autonomy as a prerequisite to a voluntaryist society

Part 2 delves into the importance of emotional autonomy and its influence on the potential for a peaceful voluntaryist society. Part 1 if this series can be found here: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@healthyhappyhigh/fear-is-fun-part-1

There are a lot of anarchists with much more experience than I have at pulling the statist blinders off proud taxpayers, troop supporters, and diligent voters. Even with my comparatively limited experience, I’m aware that the task of breaking down each illogical objection (but who will build the roads??!!) is one that requires patience in many cases. It seems baffling that a slave would argue for his or her enslavement, but it happens.

It requires patience to free a slave from bondage because it requires an understanding of how and why the slaves came to be so invested in a system that strips them of freedom, holds them in fear and lack, and perpetuates the idea that some force outside themselves is more equipped to make decisions for them than they are themselves.

Dismantling that indoctrination requires a knowing that freedom from external rule is our natural way of being—that self-ownership is natural. This is an idea widely valued in the anarchist community.

I’ve encountered many anarchists who consider themselves experts and advocates when it comes to liberty and freedom. However, when it comes to a particular facet of their existence, they argue for their own enslavement with the same vigor and passion that a statist will demonstrate while attempting to convince an anarchist that voting matters or that taxation isn’t theft.

Allow me to Introduce your Master

Consider all the forms of slavery in existence, that is, all of the doctrines, organizations, and individuals to whom people relinquish their freedom, whether it’s freedom of thought or action. If I pay taxes, I’m enslaved financially by those taking the taxes. If I give my freedom of thought over to a religion and let it think for me, I’m a slave to the confines of the related doctrine—maybe I give up my freedom to eat what I like to eat, maybe I’m enslaved financially because the doctrine says its followers must give money to those at the top of the organization. And so on.

Now consider that there is one form of enslavement more subtle, more ingrained, more widespread, and more limiting than any other form of slavery in existence.

I call it emotional slavery and define it as such:

The relinquishing of power to external factors (conditions and behavior of others) to determine how one feels.
In practice, it can look like this:

Emotional slave: I’m so sick of being broke. Every month I worry how I’m going to pay all my bills. I’m living paycheck to paycheck and I’m constantly stressed out.

Emotionally autonomous: Why not be happy?

Emotional slave: Did you hear what I just said? I don’t have enough money. Until I have enough money, I can’t be happy; there’s too much to worry about.

Emotionally autonomous: Oh, I see. So when will you have enough money?

Emotional slave: Probably never, at this rate. I work so hard and I can never get ahead. I haven’t had enough money in a long time. My car is about to need repairs, too. I don’t know how I will afford that.

Emotionally autonomous: Oh, so you haven’t had enough money in a long time, so you’ve been unhappy for a long time. And, you don’t know when you will have enough money, so you’re planning to be unhappy indefinitely?

Emotional slave: I mean, once those conditions change, I’ll be happy, but I can’t be happy until then.

Emotionally autonomous: Why not?

Emotional slave: Are you not listening to me?! I said, I don’t have enough money, and I can’t be happy till I’m not stressed out and unhappy about being broke!

Emotionally autonomous: I’m just a little confused. I’m not understanding how the concept of not having enough money is in control of your happiness. It’s not in control of my happiness, and I’m certainly not rich by most people’s standards.

Emotional slave: But how can you be happy if you don’t know how you will pay your rent or buy food?

Emotionally autonomous: Because it’s a choice. The circumstance is what it is. I either have money for rent or I don’t, and I can either feel fear and stress or I can feel happiness or hope. I can choose to feel anything at any time, and happiness is more fun, so I choose it regardless of the conditions in front of me.

Emotional slave: So you’re saying just pretend it’s not a problem and go around having a good time, and then I’ll get evicted, and then what?

Emotionally autonomous: Acknowledging your physical reality is useful. Allowing it to dictate how you feel is not useful. It’s only you believing it’s a problem that makes it a problem. It’s only you choosing to believe it’s stressful that makes your experience stressful. For example, in this moment, you have a place to live, you have a car that gets you where you need to go, you have friends you love and who love you back, you have food to eat, and you have a comfortable bed to sleep in. Tell me again why you can’t be happy right now?

Emotional slave: I’ll be happy when I have more money.

Emotionally autonomous: So I can show you conditions about which many people would be happy and I can tell you to be happy, but you are still choosing to be stressed out and fearful?

Emotional slave: Yes.

Emotionally autonomous: In that case, you acknowledge that you are making a choice to be fearful and stressed out?

Emotional slave: Yes. I mean no. I can’t help it. It’s a stressful situation.

At this point, it’s fun to grab a mirror and have the slave look into it to meet his or her master.

Emotionally autonomous: If you can choose to feel stress and fear, why can’t you choose to feel love and happiness? They are all emotions. If you can choose one emotion, why can’t you choose another?

The conversation often doesn’t go this far because when the radical idea of controlling one’s own emotional state regardless of conditions is proposed to someone who has spent a lifetime having emotional reactions to situations, it causes the same type of dissonance a statist experiences in the face of someone logically dismantling the concept of government.

How is this fun?

This is where it gets fun: using any instance of unpleasant emotion (fear in whatever form: annoyance, sadness, anger, etc.) as an opportunity to identify and leave behind a limiting belief and thus attain a greater level of clarity. As I was writing a response to another post, in a zone, thinking, typing, inspired, one of my cats interrupted loudly, demanding attention. My initial reaction was to get annoyed, which I promptly stopped to examine. Why would I get annoyed that my cat, who I love and appreciate, got up from a nap and was so excited about the beautiful day and the birds outside, and being alive and healthy that she requested to enjoy it with me? I wouldn’t. I think that’s awesome, and I think she’s awesome.

The annoyance was an indicator of misalignment. My reaction to the interruption was to identify with a fear story about not having enough time, of having too many things to do, of being overwhelmed. Stories straight from the mouth of my emotional slave master. Taking 30 minutes to sit outside and feel the sun and watch my cats be happy and ridiculously cute wasn’t going to make or break my schedule and goals for the day. “I’ll never have time to get this done” or “I have so much to do that I can’t afford an interruption” are just stories that our emotional slave master tells to keep us in a fear mindset, from which the emotional slave master gets its sustenance.

I chose (and continue to choose) not to feed that bastard. I stepped away from my computer, took my cats outside, and we basked in the sun. In the course of that unplanned break from writing, I received two powerful insights that changed the course of what I was writing in an exciting way, which is the really really fun part of all of this:

The less you feed your emotional slave master, the more time you spend aligned with your higher self and the more access you have to the infinite intelligence from which you came into this physical world. The more you are aligned with your higher self, the more you hold yourself in alignment with the things and experiences you want, and the more you do that, the more evidence you will have of that alignment.

Maybe it will be something small, like arriving home after an hour in rush hour traffic to realize that instead of being drained and stressed out, you are energized because you didn’t allow the circumstance to open your ears to the emotional slave master. Maybe it will be receiving insight when you take a break from writing. Maybe it will be earning $15,000 from a Steemit post.

The fun part is knowing your alignment determines what manifests physically, and the really really fun part is knowing that you and you alone influence and determine your alignment.

Thanks for reading! Please feel free to post questions and comments.

Part 3 of this series will address common arguments in favor of feeding the emotional slave master