Political and religious systems often treat us as dangerous, needing control. But rules are just recipes — the real nourishment comes from direct experience.
Most political systems are built on a basic assumption: people are dangerous. Left to ourselves, we’ll cheat, steal, or worse.
The answer, we’re told, is to surround us with laws, regulations, and punishments to keep us in line.
Many religions operate on the same principle. Without commandments, rituals, and doctrine, people will wander off the “right path.” So the rules get stricter, the interpretations more rigid — and the assumption of human badness quietly shapes the whole structure.
But what happens when you build a system on mistrust? You get obedience, maybe — but rarely clarity, kindness, or genuine understanding.
Frameworks Have a Place — But Only as Tools
Rules, like recipes, can be useful. They give structure, they prevent chaos. But structure isn’t the meal.
A recipe can describe the flavours, the textures, even the joy of eating. But no matter how beautiful the description, you are still hungry until you take the first bite.
Sacred texts are like that: they can inspire, they can guide, but they are not the experience of truth itself.
The Interpreter Problem
In both politics and religion, there’s always someone standing between you and the meal — the “chef” who decides how the recipe should be followed.
Their interpretation becomes law. Debate shifts from tasting the food to arguing about the recipe’s exact wording. Over time, the meal gets forgotten altogether.
This creates dependency: on lawmakers to tell us what’s moral, on religious authorities to tell us what’s true. The risk is obvious — we become fluent in theory, but starved of direct experience.
Obedience Isn’t the Same as Understanding
External control can stop certain behaviours, but it can’t make people compassionate. You can force compliance; you can’t force connection.
In the same way, you can memorise every page of a holy book and still never feel the peace it describes. Words point the way, but only experience nourishes.
A Different Starting Point
Imagine if our systems began with a different assumption: that people are basically good, but disconnected from their own goodness.
Politics would focus less on control and more on creating conditions where kindness and cooperation naturally emerge. Religion would focus less on “right belief” and more on helping people taste what the words point to.
The Real Work
Frameworks can guide us. Recipes can inspire us. But they are not the meal.
And the meal — whether you call it peace, truth, or connection — is the whole point.
Until you take the bite yourself, you are only reading about food. And no matter how fine the recipe, reading will never fill you.
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