I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of freedom. I think it’s important to try to understand the privilege of the life I live. For I have few scars of suffering and little experience with oppression. At the worst times of my life I still had food on my table, a roof over my head and a loving family. In my struggle to identify freedom I repeatedly find myself instead identifying the things from which I am free: slavery, exploitation, ideological oppression. But these are merely man-made things; if freedom is truly something universal there must be something more.

Are the animals of the African Serengeti free? Free from the captivity of a zoo or circus, perhaps. The nomadic Inuit peoples of the Arctic, are they free? Even they are no longer free from the influence of global commerce, politics and terror. Yet these too, are all man-made things. Is it possible that the idea of freedom itself is man-made?

Civilization as we know it accounts for less than one percent of the history of human activity on this planet. Until about 10,000 years ago humans numbered less than 10 million, barely making the top 100 of most proliferate species earth. They were free, though I wager would have no understanding of such a concept. Not for lack of intelligence; the oft-underestimated ‘prehistoric’ people possessed a highly developed intellect and mastery of exceptionally advanced technology. From crop rotation to brain surgery, these were not people who sought desperately for their next meal. Then why do I suggest they wouldn’t be able to comprehend such a simple idea as freedom? Why? Because the human mind comprehends through comparison. Put simply, you can’t have black without white. Freedom is like salvation — if you are not in trapped or in danger then you really have no need for them. They are not things that you can hold in your hand. By themselves they are useless as concepts.

If you live in America your freedom is from censorship and slavery and oppression. It is not, as most people think, the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. We are not free, from our responsibility to other people. Ours is a tremendously socially interdependent species, upon which we’ve built a tremendously socially interdependent culture. Our freedoms are collective freedoms that we can each enjoy, not individual freedoms that we each possess. Wielding selfishly one’s right to freedom is getting something for nothing. If you’re not sharing then you’re taking away and that creates inequality. Wait, but that’s supposed to be something we’re free from.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2004 at 7:17 pm by Philip Loring and is filed under Anthropology, Rhetoric. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.