RFK Jr. vs. The Man of System, Part 2

The Abuse of Power

In Part 1 of this essay, I explained that if RFK Jr. is to be successful, he and we must overcome “collective illusions” and the “man of system.”

The man of system we encounter in the world reflects our internal battle against our own man of system—our inner dictator, a dictator that creates constant conflict and pain for us.

This past summer, during an extended interview with Lex Fridman, RFK Jr. related how he overcame his drug addictions and found God. To do so, he had to stop abusing his power.

Using the word God can be controversial because when we hold an image of God, our image frequently conflicts with those of others. When I use the word, I am speaking of the Love and Intelligence that is the fabric of the universe and to which we are all connected. We can never break our connection, but we have the power to block our experience of God, just like clouds block the sun that never stops shining.

If we take a more expansive view of addiction, RFK Jr.’s journey has something to teach us all. We may not be alcohol or drug-dependent, but very few of us escape addictions that limit personal effectiveness.  Author and minister Jon Mundy explained,

We are addicted to our “mindset,” to our ways of seeing and being in the world. Habits and addictions often run our lives with little or no awareness on our own part. We do things regularly, ritually—routinely. The word “addiction” comes from the Latin addictus meaning something we yield to, something we are devoted to, something that we crave. The daily, repetitive use of any habitual activity can hurt or help, retard, or facilitate our physical, mental, and spiritual being. To allow mistakes to continue is to make additional mistakes.

In her book Healing the Hurt Behind Addictions and Compulsive Behaviors, Carol Howe argued that a person with an addiction is “one who uses any substance, activity, or way of relating to the world to obscure fear, pain, or terror, loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy and alienation.”

Howe counseled, “If we are ever to live in safety and peace, we must look carefully and without defense at the ways we spend our time, the activities in which we engage, and the matters which preoccupy us.”

The purpose of our addictions and compulsive thought patterns is to enable us to avoid the introspection Howe advised.

We are always choosing to attend to one of two voices in our head. Our wrong mind, the ego, always speaks first; it is loud and gives voice to our addictions. Then there is the still, small voice, our right mind, that speaks of love and intelligence. Howe observed, “Nobody makes us focus our attention and in a way we choose not to. We may pretend others ‘make us do it,’ but that is only an excuse for not taking responsibility for what is happening in our current affairs.”

In As You Like It, Shakespeare wrote, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” Not that adversity was necessarily a good thing, but we could choose to use it well. In this light, Howe suggested a reinterpretation of pain:

What if pain, rather than being interpreted as categorically undesirable was seen as a warning signal, much as your automobile has built-in signals to warn you when you need gas or when a system may be failing or malfunctioning. Drivers don't decide those warning lights mean they themselves are not okay, only that corrective measures must be taken with the car. In the same way, pain calls for a correction in our attitudes and perspectives about ourselves and others, not more punishment.

In short, “pain or lack of peace is a warning signal, not a pronouncement of defeat.” In other words, when we try to distract ourselves from our pain via an addiction or compulsive behavior, we miss the opportunity to change.

With Fridman, RFK Jr. explored the introspective journey he took. I found his candid insights inspiring. Kennedy’s searing honesty, without feeling sorry for himself or condemning himself, is a necessary condition for change.  

Kennedy told Fridman, “When you’re an addict, you’re living against conscience. And when you’re living against conscience, I was always trying to get off of drugs, never able to.”

RFK Jr. experienced that willpower was not enough:

When I first got sober, I knew that I did not want to be the kind of person who was waking up every day in white knuckling sobriety and just trying to resist through willpower. And by the way, I had iron willpower as a kid. I gave up candy for Lent when I was 12, and I didn’t need it again until I was in college. I gave up desserts the next year for Lent. And I didn’t ever eat another dessert till I was in college… So I felt like I could do anything with my willpower. But somehow this particular thing, the addiction, was completely impervious to [willpower]. And it was cunning, baffling, incomprehensible. I could not understand why I couldn’t just say no and then never do it again like I did with everything else.

RFK Jr. saw he had lost faith in God. Again, to keep this in the most universal terms, he had lost his faith that there was something more than the ego narrator in his head. For each of us, that ego narrator floods our head with an average of 50,000 thoughts a day.

Kennedy reflected on a friend who had overcome his addiction:

I was living against conscience and I thought about this guy…. Reflecting my own prejudices at that time in my life, I said to myself, I didn’t want to be like a drug addict who was wanting a drug all the time and just not being able to do it. I wanted to completely realign myself so that I was somebody who got up every day and just didn’t want to take drugs, never thought of them, kissed the wife and children, and went to work and never thought about drugs the whole day.

So what did RFK Jr. do? What can we do to restore our awareness that there is something beyond the voice that speaks for our addictions? Kennedy shared:

So then the question is how do you start believing in something that you can’t see or smell or hear or touch or taste or acquire with your senses? And [Carl] Jung provides the formula for that. And he says, “Act as if you fake it till you make it.” And so, that’s what I started doing. I just started pretending there was a God watching me all the time. And kind of, life was a series of tests. And there was a bunch of moral decisions that I had to make every day. And these were all just little things that I did. But each one now for me had a moral dimension. Like when the alarm goes off, do I lay in bed for an extra 10 minutes with my indolent thoughts or do I jump right out of bed? Do I make my bed? Most important decision of the day.

Kennedy continued to reflect on how small choices lead to wider choices:

Do I hang up the towels? When I go into the closet and pull out my blue jeans and a bunch of those wire hangers fall on the ground, do I shut the door and say, I’m too important to do that. That’s somebody else’s job or not? And so, do I put the water in the ice tray before I put it in the freezer? Do I put the shopping cart back in the place that it’s supposed to go in the parking lot of the Safeway? And if I make a whole bunch of those choices… I maintain myself in a posture of surrender, which keeps me open to my higher power, to my God.

By relying on the loud, raucous ego voice in our head, we are abusing power. RFK Jr. saw, “So much about addiction is about abuse of power…. All of us have some power, whether it’s our good looks or whether it’s connections or education or family or whatever.”

Kennedy discovered that his addictions were lifted as he stopped abusing power:

And so, I had a spiritual awakening and my desire for drugs and alcohol was lifted miraculously. And to me, it was as much a miracle as if I’d been able to walk on water because I had tried everything earnestly, sincerely, and honestly for a decade to try to stop and I could not do it under my own power. And then all of a sudden, it was lifted effortlessly. So I saw that early evidence of God in my life and of the power, and I see it now every day of my life.

Given how widespread addiction is and how few people take an inner journey, is it any wonder that politicians abuse power? The Founding Fathers, understanding human frailty, gave us a Constitution with checks and balances designed to prevent abuses of power.

Have we lost respect for our great nation's guiding principles because we are abusing power in our personal lives? Abuse of power by politicians reflects our personal choices. If we cannot stop abusing our power, why would we expect politicians to stop abusing theirs?

RFK Jr. is a moral leader of the freedom movement because he has stopped abusing power and attends to his right mind. If he is to become president, there will have to be a critical mass of Americans ready to follow his example.

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I support your work because I am aware of my silent crucifixion of my autonomy in being a doubter/questioner and hiding in the shadows to avoid the shock, criticism, and judgment of others. As I am now in recovery, I reach out for support to stand tall and be proud of choosing the truth.

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If you missed Part 1 of this essay, you may find it here:

RFK Jr. vs. The Man of System, Part 1