Updated: Silence Implies Consent

Update 1/28/2013:  A friend pointed out this article (which I hadn't read) which came out a couple of days before mine along similar lines of thought... only comment that I would make on Zen Gardeners article is that knowledge alone will not get you there, connecting with your heart with that knowledge will...  -AK

Silence Implies Consent
by American Kabuki

Many people do not understand the difference between free-will and consent.  Free-will is what you do and whether you lend your consent or do not consent to an action or experience affecting you or others.  What do you decide you are going to create for your experience on this planet? 

The entire illusion around you has been carefully crafted by others to make you believe you have no option than to consent... whether its the threat of a gun, social ostracization, or contrived personal economic hardship for the non-consenter... What do you choose? What world and reality will you live in?

Adapted slightly from: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SilenceImpliesConsent

"Silence implies consent" is a concept of social interaction, which states roughly that people tend to assume lack of response to an action as tacit approval of that action.

An example of the thought process: If nobody complains about the plastic gnome I placed in my front yard, then it must be that nobody's bothered by it. In fact, everybody may be bothered by it; they're just being silent. You can't be sure that their silence truly means they are consenting to it.

On the other side of the coin, if you are being silent about an issue, be aware that others may very well be interpreting that as consent.

The Latin maxim is "Qui tacet consentiret",
the maxim of the law is "Silence gives consent".
-Sir Thomas More

This phrase survives in several languages Wie zwijgt, stemt toe (Dutch), Quien se calla, otorga (Spanish), Qui ne dit mot, consent (French), Quem cala, consente (Portuguese). Metaphorically phrased as "You snooze, you lose".

In matters of politics, silence implies consent. If you disagree with those attempt to exert power, you have to speak up. If you do not, you have no one to blame for the results but yourself. This goes for the State as well as online spaces like Wiki as well as the office. Unfortunately, people generally don't have enough spirit to speak up. 

In Roberts Rules Of Order, the majority is determined by the number of votes cast. In effect, abstention (silence) does imply consent. Whatever is decided is done so for you.

Silence is an active part of communication.
As active as any verbal statement.

Its been long observed the "partners in contrast" on this planet telegraph their moves before doing them.  That is because they operate under, and are constrained by a contract on this planet, a contract controlled by the divines.  That contract requires your consent before any major action can be taken against the in-body-ments of eternal essence they claim to rule over and derive energy from.

If you open a business, you must advertise the creation of your business in the legal section of a newspaper.  If you go bankrupt, your filing will similarly be publicly filed in the legal section of a newspaper (often in obscure seldom read ones to meet the letter of the law) so that other businesses can know the state of your finances.  Same principle applies to the partners in contrast.  They have had a limited contract to provide contrast on the planet, and the contract is up... the post-Atlantis lessons have been learned... but unlike many contractors, they have control on money creation (but not value creation - only YOU have that power) and they do not want to stop.  But they can be fired by simply not renewing the consent.  There's more of us than there are them!  Think about the famous Club of Rome and UN Agenda 21 depopulation agenda... what was that really about?  Simply controlling the consent by removing a huge chunk of the population from the equation... and intimidating what anyone else that survived.

What has been engineered however is a clever set of propaganda, bureaucracy, and procedures to give the appearance that you have no power to withhold consent.  A good example of this is the software end user license agreement (EULA) where you are required to consent before you can even use the software and no option is given to strike certain words from the EULA as in a normal paper contract. Huge corporate buyers DO negotiate private EULA with suppliers, but the average person is not given that option unless they exercise their buying power.

When the police pull you over and ask if they can look in your trunk, they are asking for implied consent, and when you don't give it, they pressure you with "what are you trying to hide?" If you doubt the police practice intimidation to gain consent, watch how they behave when they accidentally pull over the mayor who has the power to have them fired... or a lawyer well versed in the laws, the behavior is quite different.