The Status-quo. What is the Status-Quo. It is the force by which the wildness of our Soul is domesticated into obedient responsible members of society by the Status-Quo. That domesticating voice of Aunts and Uncles, Parents, teachers, and Professors who always know what’s best (which they always insist on telling us repeatedly). 

The Status-quo controls our beliefs and therefore behaviour.

The Status-quo is the architect of Ego and the creator of Shadow. 

The Status-quo intimidates us through our human need for love and acceptance drives our behaviour.

Acceptance is such a powerful need that we are willing to amputate parts of ourselves it to fit in, sometimes the best part of ourselves.

The long journey to reclaim our cut-off parts is the basis for Iron John story and our own Heroic Journey.

The Status-quo is not a solid thing but rather a collection of ideas and beliefs that run our lives like superstations. On our individual journey through the stages of life, we only become aware of the collective forces that determine our lives when we can get a look at our lives from the outside.  Usually, this is through foreign travel or studies at university, the death of a loved one, loss of reputation or a career. My purpose in writing this is for those individuals who ask why?  The first time we ask why is often when we are disappointed or let down by the system that promises so much. The unwritten contract was broken. The marriage we had such high hopes for didn’t work out and now we are at war with whom we previously loved, we feel betrayed and hurt and want to lash out in our anger.

The Status Quo (society) and our personal relationship to it.

Through

• Ideologies and beliefs.
• Identity politics, the cancel culture.
• Popularism.
• Nationalism
• Theories, opinions, and beliefs 
• Those domesticating Aunties would run our lives by their dictates if we let them.

The idea of the domesticating Aunts I have borrowed from Mark Twain and the story of Huckleberry Fin and his Hero’s journey down the Mississippi river on a raft. Strangely enough in the first chapter of the book “The four Agreements” Don Miguel Ruiz lays out the idea of domesticating Aunts really well and so describes the Status-quo in depth. He speaks eloquently about domestication and the dream of the planet.

When we become disillusioned when we see past the illusion of society, the domesticating Aunties,  and the Status-quo. How are we going to see clearly the forces and energies that have driven life socially up till now?

We see in the image below the concept that our particular beliefs and ideals drive our responses to the world around us and our behavior, what’s expected of us as individuals. It also denies us the understanding that we could stand up on our own. The idea that we are puppets on an invisible string is an uncomfortable idea and can cause quite a violent reaction and denial in us.

 The world now seems to be at war with itself around ideals. East vs West in Ukraine. People are dying and starving due to the application of such ideals throughout the world.

The problem I have is, what not to write. It would be easier to write about politics and society to describe the workings of the Status-quo, of society, of politics that changes so rapidly over time however, I’m striving for an explanation that includes politics but goes deeper than that for the individual journey to escape the dictates of the Status-quo and those domesticating voices.

The concept of the Status quo reaches down to our soul at the very founding of Ego formation. The voice of the Status-quo becomes that internal critic that never shuts up and doesn’t read reviews and never sees any good in us.

the Status-quo is the matrix of our early Ego development right up to beliefs about death and what happens at both those thresholds. 

The Status-quo is the source of our belief system for which we are ready to fight and die. Some apparent truths are so taken for granted that we are ready to die for them without question. 

The Status -quo is not a humongous thing worldwide but varies from culture to culture and geographical regions even vary across suburbs in a big city.  

The status quo: Two Latin words which are not in common usage today and could be exchanged for beliefs or belief systems superstitions and critical internal voices.

Status quo is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, political, religious, or military issues. In the sociological sense, the status quo refers to the current state of social structure and/or values in a given time and place.

Be aware the status quo (society) is watching

The sad truth about our indoctrination system is that the key to our freedom is so close (Soul) but we don’t recognise it for what it is so we reach for the promise of the elusive bread instead of the Key that would release us from our self-made prison. Not knowing the answer we seek is already inside us.

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.   E. E. Cummings.

The “Key” is a metaphor for the key that locks us in the cage, binds us to the beliefs held by the local Status quo.

By the use of the words “The local Status-Quo” I mean that the dictates of the Status Quo vary from, country to country, culture to culture, religion to religion, even region to region, even across different suburbs of a big city.

The Key in the image is the same metaphor used in the Iron John story. The key to the cage is to let wildness out (The Wildman) of the cage. Our Wildness is caged in our hearts by the Ego and its masters the Status-quo.

The Status-quo. What is that? It changes from place to place and time to time. Like the shapeshifters of mythology that move through time and lives. There are some common threads. One of the best descriptions of how we live within the Status-quo is the Zebra metaphor.

There were a group of anthropologists trying to study Zebras however as soon as they moved which one was which? So, they decided to catch one a paint a red spot on its rump. Great now we can watch this one. The lions immediately attacked it and ate it. The Zebra’s stripes are their protection against predators, its hard to pick one out when they all look the same.

For us, as human beings, we stay safe in our local heard by wearing the stripes of the Status Quo. The Status quo grants us protection, our mother followed by our family and peers all see that our Zebra stripes are in place. Otherwise, we are expelled from the herd at worst, or forced to live on the fringes where life can be perilous. 

Acceptability and acceptance is the main driver of our need to belong and drive our willingness to put on the Zebra Ego stripes over the top of who and what we really are.

As a huge generalization Ego formation is done at the expense of Soul during the formative years from birth to midlife. In the second phase of life, the Soul begins to “call us home again” Causing Shadow to hammer on the door of our consciousness using events in our lives to make us look again.

When we incarnate into a family, like a dive it’s choosing a place to dive and a way of diving. Families are like that, families have history and expectations, expectations around roles within the family dynamic, gender roles, career roles, religious roles, community roles, cultural roles, national roles even planetary roles. Each of these roles has requirements and like diving gear restricts our expression, focusing it in a certain direction. In order to be a successful member of our community, we have to learn and accept the rules of that community, being nice. The trick is that to be a nice boy or girl we have to accept the roles and conform to community expectations but also not to give so much of our Soul away that we lose our individuality and the gifts from the other side that we brought for the community that we incarnated into.

Towards a better understanding of society and the status quo here is a link to a video that covers some of this ground.

The Loner’s Path | Philosophy for Non-Conformists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rycIyC_lc-U