Freedom
If there's ever a word that has through repeated usage become cheap and
meaningless, it's "freedom." Girlfriends want their freedom; it means
the ability to make dumb decisions and not be accountable. Boyfriends
want their freedom; it means the same thing, with a sense of excess.
Drug addicts, homosexuals, Nazis, Jews, Christians, furries and
internet mooners all want their freedoms, too. And that's on a personal
level.
On the social level, we fight for "freedom," including the freedom to
have cheap oil and a gallant little ally in Israel, even if it
alienates the entire Muslim world. On an economic level, we want the
"freedom" to earn obscene amounts of money and then pass it on to our
shareholders, who will (if they're wise) invest it well and take it out
of circulation as far as making things better is concerned; investments
seize income and turn it into ownership, where it could be reapplied.
On a religious and ethnic level we want "freedom" too, to live wherever
we want and act as we desire.
You'd think that if it were that simple, freedom versus lack of
freedom, we would have found an answer. Yet the chant goes on,
We...want...freedom, and it becomes interpreted in different ways that
will never reconcile. A pothead wants the freedom to toke up 24-7-365
if so desired, but parents of two-year-olds, even if they smoked dope
back in college, want the freedom to raise their kids far from shadowy
drug use. When we're tired of killing each other for "freedom," we
arrange the sickest of compromises: out of sight, out of mind.
And if we drift away from the concept of freedom, we are generally
taken to the opposite extreme, which is collectivism as a moral
absolute, as in Communism or ancient Sparta. While the Spartans were
clearly far ahead of the Communists, such a society leaves itself open
to competition from easier pastures nearby. There has to be a middle
ground that makes sense. Individual "freedom" is important. Also
important is the freedom to not have the pursuit of "freedom" of others
create a caustic and destructive society like the current one, where
selfishness reigns dominant. These are, believe it or not, both
freedoms: the freedom from a dominant order and the freedom to not be
crushed under its disorganization are both fundamental.
Most of us are familiar with modern societies that strictly regulated
individual freedom to the point of absurdity. This situation occurs
when there is a lack of agreement as to the goals and values of a
society, which means that different groups vie for power so that they
can enforce their mould on others. The constant crisis of this model is
that as soon as one group gains power, every other group feels
oppressed, and the cycle of revolution goes on again and again.
Whatever happened to the idea that if an individual is harming nothing,
he or she should be able to do whatever is desired?
That idea runs into problems immediately because sins of omission can
be as destructive as active counteraction. If I'm taking bong hits in
my house and fail to notice the armed bandits taking turns raping my
neigbhors, I'm still enjoying "freedom," but I'm not taking part in
society. If in a society of bonghitters, I'm taking cocaine, or
worshipping Gods that hate marijuana, I'm causing harm slowly and
steadily. Harm can be defined as whatever goes against the collective
goals of a society; if the values to define those goals cannot exist,
harm is undefined, and almost all behavior becomes harm because none of
it is geared toward order.
With this realization, we finally break into the truth about freedom:
it can only be defined relative to the values of a society-unit, and
for us to have "freedom," we must live in places where what we wish to
do is not considered harmful. There is no society that can exist so
that all behaviors are non-harmful, because the result is a total lack
of unity. This is why both left and right, in the name of varying
degrees of freedom, at their most extreme have found comfort in the
idea of localization, or of small communities of relatively static
populations defining their values through tradition.
"Freedom" is just a word until given such a context and possibility of
being fulfilled. Right now, you have "freedom" -- the freedom to work
long hours, pay lots of bills, and do anything that does not offend
powerful special interest groups of competing intentions. In our desire
for absolute freedom, we've caught ourselves in the crossfire. A more
mature definition of freedom would free us from "freedom," and give us
the basis to construct a new civilization of independent, autonomous
but collaborating local communities.
January 27, 2006
http://www.*****.com/zine/articles/freedom/
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