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True freedom is inside!
There’s a nice comment from Citizen Candy Cane on my recent post about enlightenment, the mind and government. Candy writes:
I am pretty sure elves and nature spirits exist. The government can’t control them! Nor can the gov’ fully control humans, the inner world can not be conquered! It is filled with rebellion and non-conformity, true freedom is inside!
Whether you accept the notion of spirits and elves, I think this notion of true freedom existing inside is a common one. One which I’m personally no longer sure I agree with. Or maybe I’ve just begun to see a certain thread of danger within it. Let me try to articulate it.
As I said a couple days ago, I think we’re approaching a time when our concepts of outer freedom will be vastly challenged and changed (pervasive tracking, surveillance, wire-tapping, data-mining, etc). I expect that the natural reaction to this will be for all of us to retreat further inside into our own private worlds of fantasy and imagination. Within these worlds, we will not only have freedom, but a feeling of absolute control. So we’ll develop rich inner lives, what’s wrong with that? More than likely, corporations will offer us exciting technologies (immersive VR networks) to enable us to completely indulge in these private fantasies.
At which point two things happen: we retreat from the battlefield and the all-important challenge of the world that we can’t change or control, and we become bathed in effusive self-indulgence. We become slaves to our own inner whims, fantasies, desires, and unconscious impulses - because we know with absolute certainty that they can be fulfilled through the magic of our imaginations coupled with the power of our (hypothetical) technology. And then we are not truly “free” either.
Maybe the danger I’m articulating is the one Buddhists have been talking about for ages. We tend to equate “freedom” nowadays with “doing what you want.” But wanting things doesn’t make us free; it enslaves us. We project the completion of our identity onto the acquisition of some object, the fulfillment of some desire. Whether that desire is internal or external seems to be incidental.
- Freedom Definition #1
- Protecting Our Freedoms
- We Are All Aliens
- Is The *Illusion of Freedom* Freedom?
- A sampling from Ran Prieur
- Prev: Theme Tinkering
- Next: We Are All Aliens
May 11th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
[…] What a weird family life they must have had… Great stuff though, and very relevant to what we were just talking about (plus some other older stuff too). Read Similar Articles: […]
May 11th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
That is excellent, I haven’t heard that idea before.
May 11th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
1.) That is so neat that my comment got picked! Wheeee!
2.)I think an apsect of freedom is being aware of one’s conditionings all the poop you are filled with as a child, and being aware of the social forces which influence you. And in turn not being a slave to convention or conontation.
3.)If it gets to the point where corporations offer such fantasy technology, than to be inwardly free one must deny themselves such technology and go about it the old-fashioned way such as reading enchanting books.
4.)Freedom is such a multi-dimensional word! if one can not speak from their heart, or live from their heart because of fear or of social conventions than one is not free.
5.)Freedom in my own life is ‘following my bliss’ as the great cliched statement goes. My bliss is not in ambition, or money, but in childlike things such as the birds, sunshine, laughing, and being aware of all the magic.
6.)And I think right now there is an inner poverty in so many people because they get too trapped inside their heads with all these material ambitions or because of the fear of death.
7. The concept of Moksha is interesting! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha
May 11th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
The Buddhist concept of freedom may be just as enslaving as it, too, is inwardly focused. I can’t count the number of times I have heard Buddhist masters say things suggesting that true freedom is not dependant on external circumstances. It doesn’t matter if you are in prison or a concentration camp. True “freedom” is freedom from desire. A zen student might make a model prison inmate.
I’ve toyed with thoughts like the one you are exploring here, but not sure where it leads. You hit a wall once you try to define just what the hell freedom is. We Americans seem to think freedom is freedom of choices. You can go anywhere, be anything, etc. But, again, it’s freedom to do what you “want,” when what you want can be easily perverted by corporate and other interests.
I think “freedom” is a catch-phrase. It’s something we don’t know the meaning of, we don’t really have, but we love to think we have it and we’ll do any damn thing to get it and to force it on others. (Talk about messed up logic: conquering people to give them “freedom.”) It’s a word our polititians can flash at us to get us to do what they want and corporations can blare to get us to buy what they want and in the end the word doesn’t mean a damn thing.
May 11th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
This freedom is the freedom to make choices from our Arterial or Authentic Self- and all choices are good.
Hopefully we will all develop a strong sense of self.
May 11th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
True freedom is the freedom to decide what your next immediate experience will be.
Since most experiences are in fact inner events (well, OK, we’ve been discussing whether or not this is true, but let’s take it as a given) this, for the most part, means the freedom to decide what your next thought will be.
Desire circumvents this, and allows autonomous mental processes or other people to gain a toehold into your consciousness and make the decision for you. In my view, this is why in Buddhism one strives to extinguish desire.
May 11th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
freedom is awareness of the distinction between external conditioning and internal conditioning. freedom to choose the means to acquire different consumer products is a trap based on external conditioning.
i think………..
May 11th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
It would be an interesting experiment linguistically and culturally to try and stop using the word “freedom” altogether since the definition has become so muddy, and maybe start using something different like “Free Will” in place of it.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:30 am
i think the free will mechanism is an endangered species considering the pressure of media to think like everyone else, and believe that choice of prizes from the showcase is actually life worth living.
“tell them what they`ve won!” that `s the whole media redux right there. answer a few culturally relevant questions (trivia) and win the prize. it`s the american dream……and you have to be a sleep to dream. and to actually want to be a slave to consumerism.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Here’s a thought:
What if “true freedom” and “free will” were just metaphors for a two-sided choice:
Faith or Reason
Let me put this into more specific terms. Freedom or free will is the ability to choice when to use faith and when to use reason. Reason stems from order and natural laws, and thus choosing Reason is another way of saying that one chooses Determinism. Faith stems from trust in the unknown, the unseen, or in other words, chaotic probabilities or randomness.
Thus, free will is the choice between the two ways philosophers have tried to eliminate free will: Natural Determinism and Chaotic Randomness.
In order to freely choose between the two, one would have to remove oneself from both determinism and chaos, in order to choose which step to take at any given time. That being said, I believe that only a small percentage (0.5% ?) actually possess free will.
May 12th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
non-attachment from the binding of material possessions etc. that make a consumer society…………not even what we have now so much as what we could get if we toe the party line.
May 16th, 2006 at 12:19 am
the whole thing is a trap, like imagining not being aware……….that`s why i like it when alan watts asks things like what “is” raining. and then laughs. all of life is funny. if it wasn`t it would be too serious to contemplate.