Freedom

I wanted to write a little on what the word "freedom" meant to me. I've been struggling for a little while trying to find the words to do my thoughts justice. Finding words, forming sentences to explain my thoughts - "autosaved "by Blogger at 22:52; I hope my words find those good folks well - cause me great difficulty, to a point where I am often deemed "stupid", so bear with me as I attempt to share what I've learned about "freedom" - autosaved again at 22:54; they must really like what I have to say.

Ahem...

What does "freedom" mean to you? If asked, some might answer financial independence from any and all employers, or lack of government intervention in one's life, or the liberty to fuck as many people as one pleases. I can't help but ponder the absurdity of our notion of "freedom", for said freedom always seems to be dependent on something. For instance, how can one claim to be "free" with an insatiable desire for money or sex or both? How can one be "free" when she or he is being told what is "right" and what is "wrong" by someone else who likely does not know what it means to be her or him?

I realize I'm using an awful lot of quotation marks. I was taught to use them to surround words whose definitions carry interchangeable criteria. This is part of the absurdity to which I alluded earlier. But I digress...

What happened to "freedom" from dependency? Granted, we do have needs - nourishment, safety, love, compassion, to name a few... there's a reason we, like our canine counterparts, travel in packs - but how much more beyond the essentials? Why does buying a television set and a cable hook-up give us a sense of "freedom" when they do nothing more than affix us to our comfortable furniter for copious amounts of time? How would we feel if we found ourselves cut off from coffee or petroleum for the day? Fasting is more than doctrine to get you to behave: it's to remind us of our dependencies and (hopefully) teach us restraint. That's "freedom" for you.

What happened to "freedom" from ourselves? Literally. I'm not shitting you. We're so consumed by ourselves, our desires, our aversions, we have little or no sense of the desires and aversions of those around us. Face it: we can each of us try to live in isolation, but it's not that much fun, especially when we're maiming and killing for the luxuries of said isolation. Luxuries? They're manufactured on lies, sold by lies, and allow us to lose ourselves in lies.

"Freedom", in the conventional sense, is one great lie, but it doesn't have to be, not if we free ourselves from ourselves, from what has been ingrained within each of us, and we only start doing that when we start listening to one another and the world around us. I may be the centre of my own existence, but I'm not the centre of existence.

I hope my words succeed in illustrating my thoughts and feelings. I can't always find the right things to say, but I have to say something.

I wish to leave you with the following on "freedom". Those who have seen Easy Rider may recognize this one:

That's what's it's all about, all right. But talkin' about it and bein' it, that's two different things. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free, 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are. Oh, yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em.

Pleasant dreams, everyone.