Freedom

What is freedom? Is it as many would have us believe, that it is nothing more than the lessening of the burdens of choice? The easing from our shoulders of the true weight of decision? Would that I gave a man food, and water, shelter and clothing, warmth and strong walls; he would not be free. Freedom is not in things, freedom is expressed in action and lives in the mind.

                Were you to cut the shackles from a slave, a man who had known nothing but slavery from the moment he was born, and give him land of his own, seeds to grow there and the means to defend it, he would, by virtue of these possessions, be no less a slave. For slavery is learned, and so it must be unlearned. These things: land, food, defense, these are simply tools with which to learn freedom, to learn what it means to be free. It is through their utilization that one practices how to be free. And it is from the mind that all of this originates.

                Action, the expression of freedom is paramount. A mind which views the world one way and see's it another will not tolerate the world outside itself. A free mind demands it be expressed, it demands creation, it demands action. Without action, the free mind withers and learns to free itself only through the superfluous and gnawing acts of spite.

                It is for these reasons that I believe things, and the procurement of things, is vital to human life and happiness. Things are the tools, and a freeman must make use of the tools of freedom in order to learn to be free. But as with all tools, they do not serve a singular purpose and may be put to malignant ends. These tools of freedom, whatsoever they may be, are able to be used to enslave in equal measure, both by their giver and their user. The giver: by making the tools a reward not for work well done, for work chosen by the worker, but as a paltry treat given on whim with no sense of consistency. The user: by seeing the tools of freedom as freedom itself, thus enslaving themselves to transient and inconsistent objects. When your possessions become of greater value than your freedom, you will one day wake to find you have neither. Security is the road of slavery chosen by the user of the tools when put to maligned ends.

               

               

                How to learn freedom though? What are the specific tasks? They are only known to each man, for only he can know his own freedom. You cannot ask someone to be free for you. Even then though it is for each to decide for himself not all men are capable of thinking freely, or in a manner auspicious to its growth. Whether it be something inherent within them, or the slavish nature of their environment is irrelevant. There are some men who simply are slaves, and some who will till their last dying breath refuse the manacles laid upon them, though upon them they may lie. It is unknown when you finally grow into yourself, I imagine it is as certain as any surety where 7 billion people are involved; none at all. What's more, freedom is fluid. It is a thing, for it is conceived of, spoken of, and taught, though its exact nature eludes confinement. By defining freedom to a state of mind, I am in fact releasing it to the hapless chaos of billions of minds at trillions of moments, thus not defining what it is, but rather what it is NOT.

                At the end of all things I admit, I cannot define freedom. But I can say this:  Free Men, will always know one another. Free Men, will always find one another.