Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,
Nothin’ don’t mean nothin’, if it ain’t free.
If feelin’ good was easy lord, when he sang the blues,
You know feelin’ good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and Bobby McGee.
(Kris Kristofferson, 1969).
It’s been eighteen months now since last I went to work. The transition went quite smoothly really, going from working afternoon shift, ten hour work days plus an hour or so of commute down to a whole lot of open ended spare time.
Freedom!
I did not know that freedom was actually quite daunting. Losing the ‘corporate-ness’, the thinking in terms of the allocated work, the uniform, relationships more focussed on the workplace than really getting to know people, the guide-rails of judgement to know when things were not quite right. To suddenly lose that sense of belonging, even if there were constraints in place. To lose another form of self definition, that of worker, earner, tax payer, employee, work mate and so forth.
How quickly the time has filled with activities and a connection with community, engaging in community-based activities and the freedom to hook up the caravan and travel, unpressured by time, a closely planned couple of days can stretch into a week or two. The occasional commitment to a family activity, birthdays, weddings, that sort of stuff, and of course the commitment to the various group activities taken on.
Last week we cancelled everything, my partner and I went south the the Margaret River region to visit a number of artist studios during their Open Studios event, to marvel at the creativity of the various artists, the different ways in which these superbly talented people express their ideas through various mediums, canvas, photography, etchings, sculptures, a seemingly endless way of producing amazing works of art. The freedom of expression in art is beautiful.
To see old bits of ‘junk’ repurposed into something beautiful. The creative freedom to imagine and re-imagine things, old bits of rusted machinery or discarded traffic signs made into sculptures, a cheeky looking kookaburra made of recycled copper pipe, stuck on a recycled jarrah fence post.
Or the Flying Monkey, the narcissist toying with the mind of its victim, made from up-cycled gas cylinders and landscape supplies. Therapy for the sculptor perhaps but a fun item to have hanging around in the garden.
But most importantly to have the opportunity to talk with the various artists, engage in conversations about their work, their motivations, their lives. The word ‘freedom’ came up in a number of conversations, freedom in various contexts.
There were a number of artists who really stood out and opened up in conversation about their journey and the freedom, the liberation they found in their crafts. A landscape photographer who collaborates with local artists who reimagine his photographs, one of a boab tree in the Kimberly became the model for a sculpted tree made of recycled steel and corrugated iron, and another artist depicted it on a canvas. The freedom to let creativity flow, to share the experiences which allow others to grow.
Freedom of association was an interesting topic with one artist. His work crosses cultural borders, mixing all sort of images and icons to produce thought provoking work. This one is ‘Superman meets the Archangel Gabriel at the Widgi Sheepdog Trials’. Ah the fun mixing of cultures and times, sheepdog trials, superman and the Archangel? But they work together wonderfully.
My thoughts went to Salman Rushdie who also plays with the interactions of different cultures… and it nearly cost him his life. This artist has not been subjected to a fatwa.
Discussions included the freedom one artist has given to his children as they grew up. They are now adults, but the house was filled with fun activities, photography, art and music, sport, games, adventures. The freedom had some guide rails, but encouraged the children to follow their dreams within the constraints of both family life and engagement with community. But the deepest conversation was with a man who’s wife suffers dementia.
Life brings its challenges but to live with dementia, to see a loved one lose connection is painful both for the patient and their carer. And it brings questions on the freedom to end one’s life.
One of the recent changes we have seen is for Voluntary Assisted Dying to be an option for a sufferer, but the limits to it include that the person must be of ‘sound mind’ and able to willingly take the medication that will end their life. A person with dementia does not satisfy that criteria. They are not ‘of sound mind’ and may not be able to self administer the medication as required by the legislation. Would a ‘living will’ satisfy that criteria, if I were to write a will that states that if I was so far gone with dementia that I recognise no-one, remember nothing and life has become meaningless, that some qualified medical person who would under the current legislation supervise the action, can administer the medication to end my life? Is that a freedom too far?
I guess we really need to look at what freedom really means in the most critical of times, more than just the freedom of expression, the freedom to live life as we choose. One person in the discussion mentioned that someone she knew suggested they should form a committee to demand freedoms, propose it to politicians that freedoms should be legislated, but that appears a littler counterintuitive to me. By demanding freedoms, surely that is freedoms as defined by the committee or the parliament of the day. In fact, such a move could restrict freedoms much the same as ‘morality police’ have done through the ages.
So if the definition of freedom is as broad as the dictionaries suggest, that it is the power to act, speak or think as one wants, should there be some sort of guide rails there? In the case of a dementia sufferer and the freedom to ask for life to end before the dementia established itself to make life seemingly meaningless, is that an unreasonable freedom? And who should decide?
Or is freedom broad enough to allow me to vilify someone who disagrees with me? Does freedom of speech allow an accusation of supporting terrorism because someone sees the inhumanity of war and promotes a humanitarian response to the suffering war brings about?
Or does freedom give license to name call people who you don’t like, whether disparaging racist terms or attacking their sexuality whether out and about in a social setting or on the football field.
Perhaps freedom is singing Me and Bobby McGee as we wander around. But there may be some who would ask us to stop because they don’t like the song.
How free should freedom be?
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Perhaps freedom is a state of mind prior to any conditioning. No man-made rules, Bill of Rights, laws etc can touch it.
The upcoming launch into digital fascism (govt joined at the hip to big tech companies and their delusional love of deleting material they say is misinfo or disinfo or harmful?) is bound to fail as long as one individual stands his or her ground. If all 7+ billion people fall in line and surrender their right to free speech, that’s a different story. Civilization in that case will be dead.
Freedom can be grouped with empathy and love, both which are also devoid of conditionality and any kind of forensic accounting of who owes who what. Freedom without love and empathy is a curse on the person who uses it that way. Unfortunately, some people, perhaps many, have to get to their death bed before they realize it. Encounter with one’s own-created Guardian of the Thresh-hold is something to behold. I have it on reliable advice that it’s better to realize it before the death bed scene unfolds.
That idea is something the fool in the video below could consider:
“Why This Video Of An Imam’s Regressive Lecture To UK Audience Has Created Ripples On Internet” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4QDlIdkjpo
Perhaps ‘freedom’ is ‘good’ only if underpinned by intelligence and love of mankind; and ‘freedom’ is ‘bad’ if used as a pivot for self-justification of one’s weaknesses and hatreds (women in the case of that video).
btw, how has that video not been deleted by YouTube? Perhaps Sharia law good, Christian law bad?
Evan, Freedom of religion is a freedom endorsed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, as such a person is free to adhere to their religion. The guide rails around that would surely imply that even the imam on the video referred to has to respect the rights of other believers and yes, even unbelievers the right to their faith or lack of it.
During our week away, we spoke to one artist who has been disowned by his family since he left the Jehovah Witnesses. It is hurtful that a religious body can impose such a punishment on family members and it grieves the young man. It must also hurt his mother greatly since she has not met her grand daughter from the man’s marriage.
Amazing how people of faith can demand their freedoms but are all to willing to deny that same right to others.
Stevie Wonder wrote the music and lyrics for the song, Free. When asked if he was, he said very few people on earth were free, but he’s working on it.
It’s been observed that social, economic, political & other circumstances often contrive to imprison us, and it’s also been noted that real freedom is a psychological condition, a state of being. All the great teachers taught that man is imprisoned but that we have a chance to be free.
Here is the great Burundi musician Khadja Nin’s cover of that song.
” … and but for the sky there are no fences facing … ”
I said goodbye to paid work nearly 11 years ago; not by choice but for medical reasons. Now life is a little travel with a great deal of bushwalking, photography and gardening, interspersed with helping a couple of mates with writing, editing and (especially) proofreading. It’s seldom thrilling (the occasional awkward moment when out bush notwithstanding) but it is peaceful and rewarding.
Freedom is one of those things that must be self-defined; it differs for everyone.
leefe, re. photography, there’s a local website called AusPhotography, it’s free to register, straightforward to post pics, excellent contributors as well as reams of help pages and more. I’ve been a member for ~13 years, it’s a useful site, if you’re interested in showcasing your work. Used to have a Tasmanian ‘main man’, it was his baby, but he’s recently passed it into another’s hands.
Bert, on freedom of religion.
This term, although it is endorsed with the best of intentions by the UN, is none the less an absurdity comparable to the slogans that feature in Orwell’s Ninteen Eighty-four. The word was intentionally constructed around the Latin word for bonds – ligios, because the purpose of the word was to describe those who were not free to act as they would or as their conscience directed them but were instead prisoners, bound by their faith and beliefs. Anyone who does not concede that they are fixedly bound by the tenets of their faith and not free to act as they would prefer has no justification in describing themselves as religious. Religion denies freedom of conscience, the freedom to act according to what is known.
B Sullivan, yes I agree. I found loosing my religion to be a liberation.
I had every intention of staying away from this discussion. But B. Sullivan’s indiscriminate and ill-considered denunciation of religion, topped with the insouciant conflation of (organised?) religion and (personal?) faith, really set my alarm bells ringing.
B. Sullivan – and perhaps to a lesser degree, Bert Hetebry – you really want to inform yourself before setting out denigrating people and ideas you don’t understand.
B. and Bert, maybe begin by reading, AND CONTEMPLATING, Isaiah Berlin’s seminal reflections on Two Concepts of Liberty (30 page pdf easily available for free on several sites), which I reckon to be the most authoritative review of the subject, even now, going on 80 years since first publication. Note that Berlin does rip a few strips off anarchists generally, and Hegel and Marx especially, whose thought does features prominently in my convictions. But Berlin’s criticisms carry the weight bestowed by deep contemplation.
Building on and extending the kind of considerations raised by Berlin, I set out by asserting that anyone who has not developed any kind of anarchist outlook on political philosophy is therefore still swaddled with the withered and hidebound notions of liberty and accountability that dominate bourgeois politics and law. In most cases without even realising.
Ditto for those who have not yet recognised the need to liberate ourselves from the restrictions of the capitalist economic order – at present, commodity fetishism is a far more insidious cult than most actual religions, and certainly far more prevalent. “Free market capitalism” and “neo-liberalism” are two oxymorons that have enslaved public polity for the last half century, and there’s no end in sight.
Pertinent to these aspects of “commercial freedom” is Bert’s reflection on:
But Bert, you have barely scratched the surface. Continue with your critical investigation. You will find that, as Marx put it so forcefully in the Communist Manifesto:
Full-blown nihilism, in other words.
Italian journalist and war correspondent Oriana Fallaci took it only one tiny step further in her short biographical reflections Nothing, and so be it.
Try to get your head around some of the most foundational questions of freedom, namely Free Will itself. One Oliver Burkeman provided a comprehensive introduction in The Guardian.
Bert, your realisation now that “I did not know that freedom was actually quite daunting” will soon pale into insignificance, and quite possibly develop into full-blown existential despair. You would not be the first one!
If you’re in the mood for some literary reflections on the complex interplay between freedom and responsibility, I could recommend Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lissabon. Like Berlin, Mercier explores freedom in ways which seem, at first glance at least, antithetical to the notions of freedom I try to communicate. But he definitely is that much more illuminating for it.
Speaking for myself, arriving at that nihilistic Point Zero thirty-two years ago lead me, not to lose, but to (re-)discover my religion, and the freedom it bestowed! Yes, it seems like an out-and-out paradox, but in the final analysis Martin Luther was correct: “Man is most free when most constrained by the grace of God!”
Every intention of staying out of this is good, yet.., being wordy, pompous, deluded, keen, interested, patronising, well intentioned, whatever, is as good as you can make it. There is no god that everyone conceives in the orthodox way (there are a few stone and wood types) so there’s no peace, grace, forgiveness, guilt, innocence or mystery hidden. Use the best telescopes and microscopes available. They are better than ever. There’s no photo, fingerprint, police file, confession, signature, DNA sample, personal appearance, Nothing. This superstition, deep unease, typified old ways, fears and ideas. Free yourself and enjoy the “slavery” of…guilt? mystery? studying and quoting? worrying? not actually knowing? But, let the evils cease, of religious superstition.
Phil, you’ve looked at this from a material world standpoint.
From a point in the world of Nature, where we can inspect, dissect, categorise, compare and analyse.
This view overlooks the meaning of “supernatural” — above natural, distinct from natural.
Those who feel the immanence of the supernatural feel no need for material proofs.
I grant you that much evil has been done in the name of religion, but that has been done by those who are/were already evil. They corrupt teachings to facilitate their evil works.
Steve, you may reflect views that are common, orthodox, even “correct”, but irrational observation has hindered us all, up to now, not that much might change. There’s nothing much, even in the corners of this old skull. Superstition does corrupt, empowers evils.
Further to my previous mumbling, alone perhaps.., men of science in more modern times have given us a freedom, and Copernicus does so in patience of observation and in boldness in framing a hypothesis. So, we can now recocgnise that the ancients might have been wrong and that scientific truth requires collection of, and recognition of, facts. He guessed that laws might come from such collected facts, though the leading church types, Calvin and Luther followers, denounced all that. Churches opposed every major innovation which might increase happiness, knowledge, improvement. Thanks to much started by Copernicus and other followers, science has revived human pride. As B Russel points out in one work, “God would punish pride. Pestilences, floods, earthquakes, Turks, Tartars, comets perplexed gloomy centuries.” Galileo and Newton lead us on further, and now, the great Webb telescope might open more eyes. As for “damnation”, surely some imagined creator of a vast universe has more to do??
“This old skull” Phil?
That makes two of us.
As the proud owner of an old skull, I think you and I are doing OK.
Phil, I must add (because you were posting as I was writing) that science has only given us freedom from one form of superstition, that of corrupted religions.
This allowed the dominance of materialism, which then made use of another superstition — the invisible hand of the market.
In turn this gave rise to the commodity fetish that Arnd referred to — the belief that an inanimate object can confer power or prestige or meaning to one’s life.
So what is the constant in this process?
It could be argued that the process itself is evidence for a human need for life to have meaning.
In other words, no matter the extent of material accumulation, the material world cannot satisfy all human needs.
It could then be argued that this is evidence for the assertion that we are not merely material beings, as atheists, I assume, would have us believe. If were are merely material beings then the material world would provide all of our needs.
But it does not.
Phil, in amongst the many useful points to be found in your “mumblings”, there opens up what I consider a potentially highly problematic oversight:
The evils of secular superstition are fine, though? Or, even if not fine, they must nevertheless be tolerated, in the name of mutual respect and civic responsibility?
It’s a subject matter that has been astutely surveyed by Peter Harris in his mildly acerbic take-down of The Enlightenment Of Steven Pinker.
Well, yes, I think so, too! But at any rate, denying God does not make the Problem of Evil disappear.
Arnd, thank you for your response.
I can say with ll sincerity that the existential angst you predict for me is not yet apparent.
I am enjoying my new life, playing music with a bunch of new found friends, discussing many topics in a writer’s group and also in a philosophy discussion group, meeting with friends over coffee or long walks on beaches or in bush lands
I did not imagine that retirement could be this full filling.
Perhaps the cynicism in your response is one you feel your self, but I remain positive and am throwing myself at every pleasure that presents, living each day as if it were my last, but hoping that the last day is still many years off.
As for the question on the end of life, I have that thought included in my ‘living will’, that should I be in a terminal state with mental and/or physical condition that can only deteriorate, please put me to sleep. Until that time, I will live and love.
Arnd, again I must comment on your response to Phil regarding god.
There was a distinct time in history when god was invented, when the myths and stories of beginnings were written down to become holy texts, when equality was wiped from from the relationships between men and women and political power structures were established within societies, and that time was when humans transitioned from hunter gatherers to agrarian based survival.
In Genesis, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden describes that rather well. The battle between good and evil is suddenly something, evil and the judgement it elicits was created then, both as a mythology and in the ordering of changing social structures.
Bert, thanks for your replies, and may you long enjoy your retirement.
As for “existential angst”, I don’t exactly wish it on anyone, and mostly, people seem to be smart enough to keep their philosophical curiosity well clear of personally challenging subject areas.
It seems that I was not as lucky, or prudent, and repeatedly stormed in where “angels fear to tread”. I wouldn’t want to miss it, but readily acknowledge that it might not be for everyone.
Bert, I think you need to reconsider using Genesis to buttress your argument.
You say that after the expulsion from Eden “The battle between good and evil is suddenly something, evil and the judgement it elicits was created then,…”
That came after “There was a distinct time in history when god was invented,…”
Exactly what time was that Bert? It was a distinct time, so you should have no trouble looking it up.
You are using overly simplistic arguments to demolish simplistic beliefs.
It’s not very convincing.
Hi Steve, you criticize Bert:
Otoh, I think Bett is actually on the right track. I, too, consider Genesis to be a rather elegant allegory of, not how evil entered the world, but how humans became aware of the distinction between good and evil, and how they began to game it for short-term advantage, but inevitably at the expense of routinely ignoring the much greater accumulation of long-term costs – also known as “externalities” in modern economics.
With supremely convincing symmetry and conceptual elegance, the subsequent narrative of Christian redemption in the New Testament then instructs how to overcome the problem of ever accumulating “externalities”. Namely by foregoing judgement to the point of deliberately ignoring the distinction between good and evil actions by others, and by repaying with good regardless.
The logical mechanics of this set of instructions have been validated in game theory and investigations of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma: the old-testamental “tit-for-tat” (an eye for an eye) proved to combine cognitive simplicity, unmatched versatility and highly serviceable effectiveness. Over many iterations, however, “tit-for-tat” created a competitive environment which demanded a change of strategy, being outplayed by a “forgiving tit-for-tat” or “generous two-tits-for-tat”.
Thus, it strikes me that biblical wisdom provides access to the profound logical mechanisms governing the dynamics of the human condition at large, and which we all would be well advised genuinely to take to heart.
All of which can be expressed in in a single dictum: freedom begets responsibility. Which is a very simple notion that attaches to all notions of freedom, be they secular or religious, and which, judging by his facile statement concerning freedom and religion in his single post at the beginning of this particular exchange, seems completely to have escaped the attention of B Sullivan.
Arnd, I have no problem at all with your interpretation of Genesis, because you actually argued a position. You put some effort into it. You treated readers with respect.
It’s actually healthy to criticize religion, as long as this is done with energy and determination. And honesty.
My opinion is that anyone who follows that path will end up pretty close to Nietzsche.
Not his “God is dead”, which was uttered for shock value. More his penetrating “God is a dog barking in the street”. An assertion that would not be contested by a Taoist, or a Buddhist, or a lover of the Bhagavad Gita.