flicted upon the human organisms’ life force. I call this effort “the battle for the new humanity.” It is a battle, because anyone who tries to make changes in institutions affecting human life, such as birthing hospitals or schools, will soon encounter obstacles and blocks from persons in power. Wilhelm Reich described the nature of this opposition in his book, “The Murder of Christ”. He defined a character type, “the Emotional Plague” individual, who cannot tolerate letting others find their way to full, free-flowing life, and who must always interfere or exert power, brainwash or control others. This plague is infectious, and is handed down from generation to generation. However, I am finding that the chain of transmission can be broken. For instance, parents who were battered and beaten as children, can, if they become conscious of their own past pain due to mistreatment, stop beating their own infants. They can overcome the compulsion to hand in their own script of an unhappy childhood. It helps to recognize one’s own unconscious life script, which has the nature of a hypnotic command.³ The principle of self-regulation affirms that nature is not chaotic, but organized and is in a state of dynamic balance between opposite trends. Furthermore, selfregulation does not result in chaos, but eventually in a state of fluid order. Self-regulation and responsible freedom must be encouraged from infancy onward. Freedom cannot be imposed later on human beings who have grown upunder authoritarian rule. Self-regulation demands that people who are affected by institutions should also have a voice in their function. Procedures and rules should grow out of experience, and not be arbitrarily handed down from the old to the young. The reasons for rules must not be forgotten, Every generation should have the right to question existing rules and try out new ways. Grown-ups owe children a safe environment. For instance, Paul Ritter, a city planner in Perth, Australia, and author of The Free Family4 has designed a suburb in which, from the backyard of each home, children can walk or bicycle for miles without crossing motor traffic, through a system of over- and underpasses. Human priorities should come first in all design, and Life needs should have priority over present Death expenditures. Life’s self-regulation also requires that at no time should every member of the human community be forced into the same mold. Since each varies from the other, though all function according to common life principles, institutional structure whether state, local government or school—must allow individual expression within the limits of “not hurting others”. The alternative is an ant—like society, waging interplanetary destruction. We must guard the right of the underdog, the minority, 16 Eva Reich The Battle for a New Humanity the alternative voice to be heard in the land, A society which shoots its own critics or brainwashes them with psycho-political electrical shock to the brain, is anti-life. The group which practices communal living and group sex, while holding property in common, must allow their own children, on growing up, to choose private life in a two-lover, small family, if they desire, operating by the law of opposites to change their lifestyle from the previous generation. The law of opposites is my term for describing the process in which youth, in separating from parental lifestyles, may either incorporate the parents’ way of being or change it to an extreme alternative. An example would be the general change toward longer hair and beards, influenced by the Beatles around 1960. Another example would be the change in America from a desire for “romantic love” with marital expectations to a position of “non commitment” among the “cool generation” of college students living in co-ed dormitories and practicing sexual freedom. Our planet contains varying degrees of human liberation. I do not believe a truly new kind of unarmored human life can arise on earth in one section while elsewhere totalitarian repression of human rights is practiced in America; the Equal Rights Amendment for the rights of women, after fifty years, has not yet become law. A bill of children’s rights needs to be proposed as well. Many countries, including Australia, lack any declaration of human rights in their constitutions. Because of the irritation which armored life feels in the presence of unarmored life, there has been a war going on between grown–ups and against children, throughout the history of the Western world5 . It was Wilhelm Reich who finally understood and pinpointed the details of this war, and who pointed out its motivation. The extremely restrictive Sparta attacked Athens. Hitler attacked the Netherlands. Once the shooting starts, there is little time for the slow changes which allow for a new kind of life to make its appearance. With the incredible reality of nuclear war and overkill, at the push of a button facing us today, we can lose nothing by trying the new, unarmored way; it has never been fully tried yet. Traveling around the globe, l have had the opportunity to study human structures bioenergetically. I have convinced myself that as yet there exists no country on earth where life is not distorted by external pressure. Though each country varies a bit in exactly how and where it causes armoring to become a necessary survival mechanism, the end result is the same. Everywhere I meet human beings who have suffered unjust tortures of one kind or another during their growth period, and who now wish to liberate themselves to undo the results of previous conflicts. From each situation, I try to
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