Freedom is Nebulous

2/5/2019

No word is as nebulous as freedom. An amorphous shape shifter, it strikes a pose, lures in its prey. Siren song lulling while its surface glimmers, a thousand mirrors reflecting all the unsuspecting wish to see. Desires fulfilled; toils ended; power gained; spoils victored; vengeance had. Drawing in, it tugs towards its depths, to the vast, beckoning sea. It demands commitment; surrender. Once attained, it dissolves into shapelessness again and reveals new, unexpected forms. The rocks appear under the foam. The mirrors splinter. The vessel is destroyed and all watch in horror as the song begins anew, luring other ships to the rocky shoreline.

Unease grips me when I see the freedom banners raised, when the word is marketed as enthusiastically and persuasively as the latest dishwasher soap. I am in awe at the utter indefiniteness of freedom, for it can seemingly mean anything, to anyone, at any time. The greatest declared evil is its lack. Without freedom, we are told, only black holes remain. Ominous, roaming, dumb, gaping monsters devouring light; extinguishing even the hope of light.

Freedom must be fought for. Died for. Freedom is human. Freedom is divine. Humanly divine; divinely human. For we are not cogs, nor ants, nor mute stones in river beds being pushed by currents we can neither see nor control. Not born to be oppressed, we must struggle like convulsing fish in a net.

Yet I have always felt freest when all was declared unfree, and the most unfree when all was marching bands, smiling faces, and endless confetti rain. I have told many that I write to be free, that each scribbled word in a notebook was a spoonful of dirt extracted from the tunnel I am digging underneath the prison. Each sentence, a file grinding away at the cell bars.

But I might have it wrong. The shape shifter may have fooled me. Perhaps I am just a Jacob Marley, quietly and ruthlessly forging my own ponderous chain, word by word, link by link; and perhaps one day I will be forced to lug and drag my word chains with me as I haunt the Earth, driven onward into an eternity without reprieve.

I am weary of your vagueness, Freedom – the shapelessness of your lawyer speak and public relations and ritual murders. Freedom fighter one day; terrorist the next. Lies wielded as truths. The formless chimeric dreams you offer from your shadowy depths.

I yearn for the definite – pure form. The honest transcribing of soul to paper. Not Hamlet and his words, words, words, but rather for an end, followed by the original beginning. For true Freedom. For the Word.

5 Comments

Bruce Charlton

2/6/2019 11:05:17

@Francis - I have been thinking about freedom this morning, as well! Sparked by some discussion towards the end of this (very long, but worthwhile) YouTube Lecture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=LVR7fNjC7Ag

TB says that the English idea of freedom is very material, like not being prevented from doing something, not being physically imprisoned. Whereas the German Freiheit is about thinking with (I suppose) agency, autonomy - not brainwashed, not thought-controlled.

The first is the unfreedom of 1984 or slavery, the second is the unfreedom of Brave New World or addiction.

Your freedom here is mostly about thinking, partly about the physical words-on-paper - but, perhaps for both of us, the writing is ideally a part of the thinking?

Francis Berger

2/6/2019 12:02:28

@Bruce

Thank you for the link. I will certainly have a look.

This post was inspired by a headline I noticed yesterday in which some think tank had downgraded Hungary, the country I call home, to partly free while claiming all other EU nations to be free. My first instinct was to write a post rebutting this nonsense, but I resisted the urge and began thinking instead about the contemporary notions of freedom. In this instance, the Establishment have been and will continue to use freedom as a weapon of attack by pointing to something and saying „look, they are not free; hence, we must free them.” All the while, the countries they have branded as free are becoming increasingly totalitarian and unfree.

So yes, the unfreedom represented through 1984 and Brave New World were certainly on my mind. However, my reflection on freedom inevitably made me consider the freedom inherent in thinking and creativity.

To be honest, I was incredibly inspired by your post “Some new thoughts on consciousness” and the lucid egg image you employed to describe Consciousness and the Self. I have always believed my writing was a total expression of freedom, but as I looked back on some of the thoughts I have had and the things I have written, I quickly realized that some of these were my pumped up Consciousness imposing itself on creation. Thus, the word chain trap I mention (alienation). Writing definitely is a part of my thinking, but I am starting to pay closer attention to making sure my thinking emerges from, as you state “the primary source of the self,” and not allow “the consciousness to distort or compel what happens between the world and the Self.

I am not sure if my post did this justice, but it was worth a shot all the same.

2/6/2019 12:36:06

@Francis - Aha!

When I wrote that egg metaphor, it popped into 'consciousness' fully formed - while I was thinking-by-writing, in the way that happens when I am impelled to write something 'for' one of my blog readers - and sooner-or-later, nearly-always, I find out subsequently Who it was Intended For (e.g. by a comment, or an e-mail, or as now).

This is a common, but 'mystical', experience for me - And the thing that keeps me blogging: the way that I Know that the writing is not always futile. It also fits the egg metaphor, because it is conscious but I do not have control of it.

Epimetheus

2/9/2019 01:45:53

I like that - spoonfuls of dirt for an escape tunnel. It's sometimes hard to remember why we write, especially when we have nothing material to show for it. Why should we write in notebooks that no-one will ever read?

Re. freedom - modern liberalism is founded on a demonic half-truth: that freedom is intrinsically good, and oppression is intrinsically evil.

The truth is: goodness should be free, and evil should be oppressed.

Flowers should be free to blossom. We should let them flourish. It is good.

Some other things, like cancer and murder, should be oppressed.

The forces of evil, of course, want to be free to do as they please, and this requires that goodness be constrained, imprisoned, beaten back.

The three step process of demonic liberalism:

1. "Freedom is good." Translation: you should let us do evil.

2. "Oppression is evil." Translation: you shouldn't fight back against evil.

3. "Goodness is oppression." Translation: good people are evil, evil people are good.

I think it might really be that simple. It's all baked into the cake that is liberalism.

When liberals begin to fight back against evil, the dark forces accuse them of being oppressive, and since liberals have already accepted that oppression is intrinsically evil, they surrender to evil, shame-faced and intimidated.

If that same person attempts to raise a moral principle higher than freedom, they are answered, "Who are you to tell us what is good? You just want to oppress us!" This is usually done in front of an audience.

Repeat ad nauseum for all modern politics. The only way out is to bite the bullet that, well, liberalism is false - evil shouldn't be free.

2/9/2019 08:35:03

@Epimetheus- Thanks for the comment. Good points made.

Much of what you have described in your comment can to linked to the root verb "vert . to turn." I plan on writing an exploration of this in a future post.

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Freedom is Nebulous

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