May/June 2009 Featured Stories
New Meaning of Responsibility

by Gary Zukav

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die,"
wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson in The Charge of the Light Brigade.

Gary Zukav

I lived Tennyson's words before I read them. My need to enlist in the army while the Vietnam War painfully unfolded, volunteer for airborne training and then for the Special Forces (Green Berets) was moved by the same impulse Tennyson describes - to demonstrate my nobility, courage and worthiness by blind adherence to authority.

I did not question my authority (Lyndon Johnson was president and Robert McNamara was secretary of defense). I did not question anything. I was too much in need of validation, admiration and a sense of value. I held it to be my responsibility to carry out the orders of others, and the responsibility of others to carry out mine. The military gave me a sense of belonging and pride, and they were so important to me that the price of blind obedience did not seem repugnant. On the contrary, it seemed necessary.

I do not see myself or understand responsibility the same way now that I did then, but the power of allegiance to a collective cause that validates the individual who gives it is still very much a live energy current - a powerful dynamic - that continues to motivate millions.

That dynamic had its place and purpose in our past but not in our present or future. It is the remnant of an evolutionary modality that required the control and manipulation of external circumstances (including people) to ensure survival. Survival is no longer sufficient for our evolution. We are changing dramatically and the pursuit of external power has become counterproductive.

Our evolution now requires emotional awareness, responsible choice, intuition and cocreation. Our deepest hunger, even in the most difficult times, is for a different food. Millions of individuals are awakening - sometimes to their surprise - to a hunger for harmony, cooperation, sharing and reverence for life. Their challenge is to create those things in a world of discord, competition, hoarding and exploitation, a world in which life is a cheap commodity.

The dynamic that sent the soldiers of Tennyson's Light Brigade on their charge cannot help these people. It can no longer help anyone, anywhere, at any time. Even outside of the military this dynamic continues to exist. Every collective experience of rigidity, righteousness and common purpose expresses it, including for example, the environmental movement with its heroes (us) and villains (Forest Service, lumber industry and mining industry).

When the underlying bedrock can't-get-any-deeper intention is to manipulate and control in order to feel valuable and secure (for example, to feel superior to people who are not environmentalists, white, black, women, in the military or other groups), the individuals who hold it are in pursuit of external power. When the intention is to create harmony, cooperate, share, revere life, and act with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the individuals who hold it are in pursuit of authentic power.

Choosing intentions that create consequences for which the chooser is willing to assume responsibility is a responsible choice. Responsible choice was not part of the consciousness of the Light Brigade any more than it was a part of mine when I joined the army. But without it, our future, if we have one, is bleak - the continual creation of the painful consequences of intentions to manipulate and control.

Now a new dawn is lighting our sky. This is good news. Soldiers can become cocreators and millions of them are (I am one). "Duty, honor, country," the noble motto of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that served our survival as a nation in a world that evolved through the pursuit of external power, is being replaced with "Responsible choice, authentic power, life," a new credo that gives voice to a new human species that evolves by developing spiritually.

In this time of transition from the old species into the new humanity, old expressions of responsibility, such as "Duty, honor, country," frequently obscure the emerging understanding - the creation of consequences for which the chooser is willing to assume responsibility. For each of us, distinguishing between the two in the intimacy of our personal experiences (no priests, peers, parents or president) is a fundamental first step on our new evolutionary path.

In other words, ours is not to do or die, ours is to choose and know why.

Gary Zukav is the author of the New York Times best seller, The Seat of the Soul, in addition to The Heart of the Soul and The Mind of the Soul, also best sellers that he co-authored with Linda Francis. Both Zukav and Francis conduct their annual retreat, The Path to Authentic Power, on July 19-23 at Mt. Hood. Visit www.seatofthesoul.com.