by Chet Shupe
social species, we trusted our lives, as bodies of people, to the human spirit. Institutional subjugation, on the other hand, is based on the “truth” that humans are not trustworthy. Having thereby adapted to circumstances in which we were never meant to function, we have, by our lack of trust, become spiritually dysfunctional. We have thus been programmed to distrust the human spirit by words, acts, and deeds for thousands of years. Though this story is testable, as a result of our long term indoctrination in spiritual distrust, there is no one left who believes in the human spirit enough to want to take part in the test.
With my book Eden, Regaining our Spiritual Freedom, I hope to remedy that situation. That is the dream to which I have subjugated myself – in a world essentially without love, I too am a dreamer. I hope to credibly explain how humans, by our desire to control the future by force of law, came to collectively trust our lives to illusions. The future, it turns out, cannot be controlled; it can only be reacted to. Any attempt to control the long term future is predisposed to eventual failure, and is therefore grounded in illusion. If enough people were to come to believe in human nature, then we may decide to trust our lives to something real, the human spirit. As such, we would again function as bodies of people, the nucleus of which would be sisterly bonds – the brotherhoods would be there to support the women and their children. Then we would know whether my story is true. If when trusting our lives to one another we do not experience intimacy, and thus remain subjects of our dreams, then my truth is false. If, on the other hand, I am right, we will find that when we secure our lives in relationships we will know relational intimacy. By finding fulfillment in the moment, instead of in our dreams, we will no longer be dependent on the “truths” by which we hope to realize them.
Once natural families – families bonded by feelings – form, they will be stable, not because they will be problem or effort-free, idealistic, or utopian. They will be stable because, only by trusting our lives to others who are likewise trusting their lives to us, will we ever know genuine and lasting intimacy. Given access to basic needs, such as food, clothing and shelter, if we have love, then nothing else really matters. And if we do not have love, then nothing else really matters anyhow.
About the Author
Chet Shupe is a successful electronics engineer who once suffered profound attention deficit disorder (ADD). With ADD, social relationships baffled him. After years of bewilderment and depression, his condition was finally diagnosed, and successfully treated by the drug Ritalin. Suddenly, at 43, everything made sense.
Shupe emerged from ADD with a unique perspective on the way society functions. His engineer’s mind forced him to ask basic questions about how the brain is organized, why feelings exist, the origin of good and evil, and the true dynamics of every relationship — whether person-to-person or country-to-country — and how all of this relates to the wellbeing of humanity.
For years, Shupe has pursued his inquiry with passion and conviction, ranging far into the intricacies of the modern social contract to question how well it is sustaining us, both individually and collectively. As a scientist, he bolsters every conclusion with logical and compelling examples. As a person of feeling and intuition, he expresses his hopes for humanity with genuine compassion and sincerity. As a whistleblower to the world, he speaks with urgency about the need to make fundamental, radical changes in our way of life, if we are to assure the eventual wellbeing of humankind.
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Eden Presents an Exciting New Philosophy Based on the Proposition that our Species,’ not the Individual, Lies at the Center of our Behavioral Universe.
Is Our Way of Life Sustainable?
• Can humans control their destiny?
• Do we have freewill?
• Is our species the focus of creation?
Our religious and legal institutions are based on the presumption that the answers to these questions are yes. If we hope to ever again live in concert with Nature, a requirement for our eventual survival, we had better be sure!
Chet Shupe is an engineer and researcher who has spent thirty years delving into these questions. In his groundbreaking book, Eden, Shupe provides answers that may be hard to face. But the gut reaction they produce tells many that he may very well be right.
Sure to engender controversy, Eden provides vivid glimpses of another life entirely—a sustainable way of life that allows humans to live together without sacrificing their spiritual freedom. A life in which living in the moment is as natural as breathing.
This book leaves no sacred cow untouched, yet Shupe’s arguments hit the nail dead-on, time after time. Even outraged skeptics struggle to counter his reasoning.
EDEN IS AN EXPOSÉ revealing the root causes of our intractable social, economic and political problems.
EDEN IS A CALL TO ACTION for those whose instincts have been telling them something is fundamentally wrong.
EDEN IS A MESSAGE OF HOPE about the resilience of the human spirit and its innate capacity for genuine intimacy, trust, and freedom.
“Are we, as a species, blindly spiraling to self-extinction? Perhaps. But by looking at things from the point of view of the species’ needs, rather than the individual’s, Eden unlocks the mystery underlying the issues that increasingly perplex us. It is a real eye-opener that could change everything.” – Don Watson, neurophysiologist, psychiatrist, theorist, author.
Eden – Regaining our Spiritual Freedom: ISBN 978-1-935089-27-8, 360pp, Available at bookstores nationwide, through all major wholesalers, and by contacting Acacia Publishing online at www.acaciapublishing. com or by phone at 866.265.4553.