Becoming a "Majority of One"

I came up with the title to this blog while driving home from work one evening.  I was pondering how completely unfair and undemocratic it is that a simple majority can decide to strip away something as fundamental as the right to marry.  It's called the "tyranny of the majority" and our founding fathers were wise to protect us from it.  They deliberately established a liberal democracy,  meaning it's based on a document ("liber" is latin for "book") that esures basic human rights, instead of a direct democracy, which has the disadvantage of easily falling into mob rule.  There is a vast difference... look it up. 

Kinda funny when you think about it, but America's architects clearly expected us all to be liberals, in the literal sense of the word!.  Take THAT Glenn Beck!  Why do you hate America?!

For me, being a Majority of One simply means that I have the inherent right to be the majority of my own life.  My god-given free will grants me not only the right, but the responsibilty to act morally, not because I live in fear of punishment, or because some cult leader says it's "the right thing to do", but because I've taken the time to fully examine the motives and consequences of my actions.  Blind obedience strips away the moral value of your actions and turns them, at best, into simply "following orders, sir!"


I was searching around Google today and I came across this essay on Becoming a "Majority of One".

quote:

There are times and places where one's voice needs to be heard above the clamor of others who may think differently or wish to go in a different direction. The need to raise one's 'voice' is not a call to shout or to shout down others, but to preserve one's integrity of belief and feeling so that one can become a 'majority of one'.

Such a majority does not depend on numbers or on the approval of others in order to gain legitimacy. It does not seek to sway others to its own point of view in order to gain momentum for holding its own. Rather, such a voice is based on the firm foundation of spiritual integrity, and feels a moral calling to declare the beliefs by which it lives – beliefs which no other can undermine or alter through outer pressure, but which can only be altered through a change in inner perspective. ...

It's a great essay and captures perfectly the point I'm trying to make with this blog.  Regardless of whether or not very many people ever stumble across my posts, it's my hope that I can be a "voice of integrity and vision that exists within the larger majority of numbers."

I'm posting these links and essays because they each strike a chord within me.  The act of committing them to "paper" is a way for me to focus on what is important to me.  Perhaps at the same time they will inspire you, or at least give you food for thought.

Peace,
Jeff