I was born a slave. Sure, I know, I know. Abraham Lincoln and all that… The Emancipation merely took ownership out of the equation, it didn’t abolish slavery, that was just the way that the media and government framed the concept of owning another individual. But slavery was and is alive and well and lives virtually everywhere on the planet. True freedom is something that all of us misunderstand because we have been conditioned into believing a set of conceptual farces.
Actually, freedom isn’t as comfy and attractive as people might think. True freedom means that we have to take complete responsibility for everything in our lives. I know, it’s hard for you to swallow the idea but it’s true. Real freedom entails anarchy. Okay, I hear what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Anarchy isn’t of itself a negative concept. We’re just taught to think so because it makes the imparting of government restrictions easier to accept. Facts are, that people cannot be free when they are subordinate to any governing body outside their own personal resourcefulness and capabilities. It’s amusing to listen to people talking about freedom, because the very idea of any shared political mantra also includes suborning to someone else’s ideas. Freedom can only exist when individuals are totally individual and separate; but even people in that situation are still slaves to the requisite of the environment. If the truth be told, the only people who are free are also quite dead.
What people call freedom is actually the desire to be able to make one’s own decisions while the government enforces their right to do so, and while providing them a structure of support and protection. We all may say that we want to be free, but it is human nature for people to congregate in groups and then to set up a pecking order within those groups. There really is no such thing as freedom as a wholistic concept. Instead, what people refer to as freedom is merely levels of privilege within the social groups to which they associate. If freedom is to exist, then the ideas of leadership with followers cannot. Keep this in mind as you listen to those who try to explain to you that following them will bring you to freedom. It won’t unless you ignore the meaning of the word in favor of a fallacous definition.
In political terms, the idea of freedom is a laughable one because government is the establishment of structure with power to enforce the ideas of others on those with its sphere of influence. When freedom comes up within the context of a regulatory body, it refers to exemption from some facet of the regulations imposed by the governing body. Again, those demanding freedom are just seeking privilege. So regardless of how much any idea of government is polished, it’s really only a form of slavery with a clever paint job. Slavery means subordination to someone else’s whim. When William Wallace called out the word freedom before he was beheaded, all he was really saying was that he wanted his fellow Scots to dictate the rules rather than to be subordinate to England and Longshanks.
Many might say that I am talking in semantics, and I would agree. But then again, just because something has an element of semantics doesn’t make it incorrect. Nor does everything I am asserting fall into the realms of semantics. The fact is that human beings cannot get along in groups without some sort of protective structure. Without it, we have a situation where many people who’re more physically powerful exert their will on others. The application of government just pares down and consolodates the power to force people to do things into an entity that one hopes is either benevolent, or one in which they have some say. But no matter what, rules will be involved and rules, by definition, are the opposite of freedom. Thus, when we talk about freedom within the concept of a structure of rules, we are talking about the privilege of exemption. Consider this when you hear someone claim that government is too big. All they are saying is that they want the ability to skirt a set of regulations inconvenient to their making a profit of some kind, usually financial –but not always.
The United States claims to offer greater freedom because it is a democracy. Except that it’s not. In a democracy all people have a say in the regulation that impinges on their freedom. We live in a republic, in which the power to control the governing body is vested in the hands of a few. We claim to be a democratic republic, where the masses elected those within whom the power to govern was seated. An the electoral system in place, America became just a plain republic and the idea of democracy was diluted. Popular vote could sway the choices –but wasn’t really empowered to make them. We saw this in exquisite detail four times, most recently during the Bush-Gore contest when the masses elected Al Gore and got George Bush instead.
It took all of this prologue to present the concept that I wanted to impart today. I wish to express that we have been too tolerant of politicians, corporations, and the media that tells us about them when it comes to clarity of information. We often blindly accept what it is we’re being told in spite of the obviousness of fallacy in what is being communicated to us. This is a root cause for problems of government, health, and education. If we all were to demand that everything be stated clearly, using the appropriate words according to their definition instead of crafted malaprops, we would find the world a much less confusing place. That lack of confusion –and ignorance– would improve the lot of all because when properly informed, people make better decisions and choices about what is right and what is wrong because it is much easier to identify the good and bad in any concept. I believe it would effect a more level playing field by making truth easier to differentiate from lies, and create a greater overall equality of people. By the application of equality we diminish the abuses inherent in a system which grants more privilege to a few over the majority, and brings us all closer to the prize we cherish most: freedom.