As I've always said, this constitution stuff is about something much deeper in all of us. You can only live out your constitution as a people successfully by having a lot more other stuff in place behind it. The people have to be in a certain state of consciousness in order to do this! So what am I saying? I'm saying that the very fact that the people don't 'own' their constitution is precisely because of a whole lot of other deep stuff they haven't got in place.
Can we 'précis' that a bit? "'Coz it sounds a bit deep!", I hear you say.
OK, it is - but if we try to keep this simple for a moment, it's about boundaries.
There is a tendency in all of us to be non-confrontational. Put another way, that means we prefer the comfort of being 'agreeable' in a situation when, if we're being honest with ourselves, we're not entirely happy, for some reason. Perhaps, in our desire to be conciliatory with others, we give too much of ourselves away or sacrifice our position over something. Deep down that will rankle us and lead to resentment later on.
What this is, in fact, is not integrating our shadow. Those who have looked into the Yung philosophy will know all about this. The drive that your ego provides is there for a reason and allows you to set your own boundaries and say 'No'; very much a profound word connected with the sacred masculine.
Not doing this is dangerous because, in a sense, it's a lie. You're lying to yourself about your own happiness of the position you have taken. And the problem escalates because not only does it become a habit, but in each situation, you then have further successive situations in which you will have to make consistent or 'compatible' decisions with the one you have already made before. This leads you into a chain of events or decisions in a relationship in which your prior self-sacrifice has entrapped you onto a path of further... self-sacrifice. Your lack of setting boundaries will increase and resentment breads.
Is this not the same thing at the society level too? Is it simply that we, as a collective, have simply not exerted our position and set our boundaries with our own governing administration? The Constitution is really just a set of boundaries for our government. It won't bind them just because it exists; we have to enforce it and make sure that those boundaries remain. As a community...
Now the good news is that when we start to engage in doing that - setting our boundaries, it raises our consciousness. This is important at the individual level but also in the collective. Owning the constitution is restorative and it causes us to become more responsible. This is a win-win situation, the more we do it, the better at it we become!
Alexis de Tocqueville:
The jury ‘Is both the most effective way of establishing the people’s rule and the most efficient way of teaching them to rule’ (1969:276).
de Tocqueville described the jury as ‘a political institution embodying the sovereignty of the people’ and ‘the very best way of preparing a people to be free’ (1988:273 - 274)
Frankly it looks like we haven't been expressing our constitution for probably about 800 years. And given that the lack of boundary-setting backs-up in the way I described above, that means we've got an awful lot of boundary setting to do. 800 years-worth in fact.
Better get on with it then.
WJK