Monday, July 24, 2017

Wise Enough For Freedom of Choice?

I never wanted freedom of choice. 
If there is freedom of choice, we always run out of it at some point!

    I never wanted to subject myself to someone else and their thinking or their decision making, either. I did want the free space to figure things out on my own. And as far back as I can remember myself, that is what I was trying to do. Very soon on, it was apparent to me that I lacked whatever it takes to make the right choices for myself. It appeared to me that the greatest part of whatever I am, is an unknown variable. I would get the strangest of urges, that would rise up again and again, inevitably and invincibly inside of me, causing me to do things that got me into unceasing trouble. I had no conscious reason for doing these things. For example, I would feel a relentless and unstoppable curiosity to rummage through my parent's drawers, whenever they weren't home. I had no idea what I was looking for. I would pull things out to get at the bottom and the back of the drawers I rummaged through, leaving mountable evidence that I had done it again, despite all warnings, reprimands and punishments. I can imagine how uncomfortable it made my mother feel when she found me playing with a vibrator I found in her closet, while my father was away. God Bless Her Departed Soul.


As a youth, how often did you decide to stop masturbating?

    My parents were bewildered and frustrated, nothing they said or did could make me stop. It wasn't as if I wasn't an intelligent child, or as if  I wasn't smart enough to understand that if I did it again, I would be locked into my room without dinner. I did it again and again, anyway. Ever bewildered at myself, I chose again and again, not to realize these wild rampant urges anymore, unsuccessfully.

      What good is freedom of choice if you can't actualize the choices you make? Or if you find yourself doing things with dire consequences that you have no recollection of having actually decided doing, after contemplation of consequences? The story of my whole life, until today, is paved with such experiences. 
The Freedom Not to Believe in Free Choice Is True Humility and Faith

    I hated to upset my mother, who was by no means domineering or over controlling. To the contrary, she was quite aloof and distant and left me alone with my many toys and the things she gave me to take apart, like old clocks and whatever. But as soon as I was alone for a short while in the house, I was at it again, doing one thing or another that got me into trouble.

 
 The Best Choices Can Go Wrong Inadvertently

    There was the time I poured all the pretty colored chemicals into our swimming pool, forcing my parents to drain it and refill it with fresh water. Very expensive in Phoenix, Arizona. I had been warned to stay away from the cabinet with the water purification apparatus, to no avail. And there was the time that I painted an unoccupied house with red and green paint I had found in a garage outside it. I was the leader of a small group of children who followed me around and did whatever I told them to. I thought I was improving how the white walls of the house looked. The police came and investigated but my mother lied and said I had the measles and had never left the house that day. She didn't even ask me if I had done it. She knew it was me and that it would do no good making an issue out of it. I never learned to stop doing these things. Otherwise, I was a very good natured child who excelled at school and I knew how to read from age three. They put me in a special class for the gifted. As far as I am concerned that was a mistake as I hadn't a clue what was going on there, from the first day. From being the class genius I became the class clown idiot.
 
Who hasn't had an uncontrollable urge?


   There was also my unconquerable fascination with fire. I started quite a few and once set fire to a field of thorns which spread and burned down a wooden shack. Again the police investigated and my mother lied.
   No, I was under no illusion that I was under my own control and knew enough of what was going on inside of me to make the decisions and choices I was told would make me happiest. Despite being fully informed of consequences, I continued to get into trouble and suffer the results I had been duly informed I would incur.
    Growing up, this never changed. To my chagrin, my awareness that I am too ignorant of myself to make wise choices increased to include the awareness that the environment and the future, and hence the consequences of my actions, is very unpredictable.
    Now the funny and ironic thing about all this, is instead of learning to listen to rules and make informed decisions based on available information about consequences, my ever inexplicable and uninhibited urges to break behavior patterns dictated by whatever authorities there be, and do strange illicit things, was constantly reinforced with sensations of blissful pleasure. Also, when I grew older, in retrospect, this quality of mine, the pursuit of the bliss emanating from illicit behavior was finally the eventual cause of tremendous good luck. Or should I say- Blessings?


Drafted into The Army, One Forfeits One's Freedom of Choice For The Government. What About God?

An extreme example of this was when I couldn't control an urge to shoot the automatic M16 rifle I had been given for basic training, at a sprinkler in an orange orchard. I was an infantry soldier in the Israeli Army. It was during a short illicit visit to my old boarding school, on a day I had been granted leave to pick up a pair of glasses I had broken on purpose for that explicit purpose. I already had the glasses, but my officer didn't know this and granted me leave to pick them up. I invited a friend who hadn't been drafted yet to accompany me into the depths of the shadowy grove. I wanted to show off and feel the power of the weapon at my disposal. I was so proud of being a soldier in the Jew's army.
A fighting Israeli! HOLOCAUST? Never again! I was considering a military career in service of my people.
The Freedom of Choice to Kill Strangers Without Moral Consequences, by Government Command?

     I put the magazine inside the rifle, aimed at a sprinkler, pulled the trigger, missed, and was taken in complete surprise by the sheer noise caused by the shot. I suddenly felt a wave of unbearable guilt and quickly, thoughtlessly, removed the magazine from the chamber only after cocking it, leaving a bullet inside. The gun was still loaded, but I didn't know this. This was probably the most important thing that ever happened in my youth, determining the development and course of the rest of my life, to this very day. This urge to illicitly shoot my automatic assault rifle had grave, almost deadly consequences for someone else, but even he was eventually thankful that it happened.
    
Blood On Your Hands? Choice or Accident?
    Feeling waves of remorse, I quickly made my way back to base. My platoon was doing infantry training in a field of thorns, which included crawling in the dust while being shot around by the officer with real fire. I was warned not to go, that it was a hot early Autumn afternoon and the training was humiliating as basic training very often was in those days. This was just a year after the Yom Kippur war. Training was very real and very tough. I went anyways, determined to compensate for the feeling I had that I was guilty of betraying the trust given me, by illicitly taking leave and then
illegally shooting  my rifle in the orchard.

    When I found my unit, things were exactly as had been described. My officer stood on a hill above, while each soldier in turn, crawled in the thorns as the officer shot bullets around their body, fearfully close. When the soldier froze in fear, the officer berated him with insults. "Come on, you cowardly pussy, crawl! Your friends are being attacked and only you can save them, crawl you little frightened pussy, crawl!"

 
We choose to pay taxes  so governments can kill strangers, with no culpability? Choose not to pay taxes?


   I felt a wave of protest at what I saw in front of me. I couldn't accept the necessity for the insults and humiliation. Speaking quietly, I asked the some twenty soldiers near by, to turn around and refuse to be an audience to such abuse. They all complied, without exception. A moment after we all turned around, I relived the feeling of shooting my rifle in the orchard. I hadn't felt the bliss I usually did when doing something I shouldn't do. I was as if under a spell. It was very dream like. I released the safety on my rifle and pulled the trigger.
 

    My gun was hanging loosely from it's strap at my waist. The unexpected explosion in the barrel took me completely by surprise and the recoil drew my attention to what was happening about ten yards to my left. A soldier in my unit, grabbed his left thigh, twisted around and fell soundless to the ground. Everyone was looking at the officer, thinking he had done it. No one had seen it was me. I was myself in complete shock and denial.
 
We love freedom of choice when we can take credit for our choices, but claim our mistakes are unintentional.

    I did understand what was happening to the soldier I had shot, though. I ran to his side and crouched on my knees, removing my battle dressing from my uniform pocket with trembling hands. I was trying to rip it open but my hands were shaking too much and I was fumbling. My officer was kneeling at my side in a few short seconds and he grabbed the bandage from my hands and put it gently down and then he ripped open the hole that the bullet had made in the wounded soldiers pants. A large chunk of flesh was missing and I could see little red dots of exposed veins in the white flesh. The boy was moaning, " Mommy, mommy, help me mommy...." His face was turning a sickly green.


    For the first few seconds there wasn't much blood. But I had hit an artery and sure enough, soon enough, there was blood everywhere arcing out of the hole in the young soldier's thigh. My officer applied pressure to  the wound. He put a tight tourniquet on around the boy's crotch. He was a seasoned paratrooper who had seen action in battle after battle, just a short year earlier. He saved the boy's life. Medics came and carried the boy away on a stretcher.
 
One man's freedom of choice kills millions against their will and choice! Make sense?

    The officer gathered us all together and asked if anyone had seen what had happened. Everyone was silent. I was in such shock and denial that I surreptitiously lifted the barrel of my rifle to smell if it had actually been me who had fired the shot. There was definitely the reek of fresh gunpowder, but still I said nothing. We were released to walk the few kilometers back to our camp and when I got there I counted the bullets in my magazine and two were missing. One too many. The realization of what I had done, what I had caused, was no longer deniable. I walked over to my officer and told him the whole story, after I understood that I would never be able to live with myself unless I fully confessed. He was very calm about it and immediately praised my complete and honest disclosure. A short while later I was arrested and taken under custody to jail for a few days, where I was interrogated by the military police. There had been no animosity between me and the victim of my absent minded negligent accident. I was released after a few days, awaiting trial. I felt a total abhorrence for my gun, as if it were to blame.
 
Exercise freedom of choice! Don't pay taxes to have strangers killed.


      After this I did everything I could to be a good, an exemplary soldier, but my military ambitions scattered like so much dust in the wind. I carried the stretcher during forced marches longer than anyone expected of me, more than my turn and I always made sure that I was positioned in front of everyone else during exercises with live fire.
      However I sank into a deep depression. I spent only a month in prison for my crime as I received recommendations and requests for leniency from all my officers and unit members. I was respected and befriended by strangers.
    The soldier I had wounded was released with a permanent pension from the army and became a medical doctor, at the army's expense. I heard that he was finally quite satisfied with the whole turn of events.
Like it or not, Science Knows this to be true.

     My depression was finally alleviated when I fell in love with the first young woman who seemed to believe that there was something special about me, Nurit. We were unhappily married for less than two years and after having a daughter together, we parted ways.

A short while after our divorce, Nurit had a psychotic break, declaring to one and all that I am The Jew's Messiah. To help her, I signed a five year contract to learn Scientology, which helped me a great deal, but not her.
 



     From then on, one thing followed another in a series of events that has left me completely convinced that my life has been planned down to the smallest detail, with nothing at all ever left to chance and certainly with no regard to any idea I ever had about making the right choices, from a politically correct point of view. Cool
_________________
September 29th, 2017

A Catastrophic Tragedy. Maybe Not!

29283812363938/11=2662164760358

Jonathan Michael Robbins

= 939=

יונתן מיכאל רבינס

No comments:

Post a Comment