Self-governance, holding one’s own life in one’s own hands,
is a real step in the direction of legitimate freedom. Not this watered-down ration
of state-chosen freedoms that all governance offers to the people it claims to govern.
All forms of governance trade some freedoms for others. Each barters for a hold
on the people by promising to open more windows in the house while keeping the
doors locked.
This is the nature of all government, be it democratic,
communist, socialist, republican, liberal, secular or capitalist. All
governance seeks power through control, and that is control of large groups of
people. Nations are in the business of trading people, resources, influence and
services.
What was once a solution, or rather an alternative, to the
problem of human expansion, evolution, ingenuity and control, remains plaster
that covers many cracks though failing to stop the crumbling. And so
governments are now spending much of their efforts plugging holes in the cement
instead of finding the real solutions to the real problems.
In a world like ours; where change is always now and each
bright morning will lead us all into night, we have to remain aware. Aware of
our progression, influence, effect, disruption and evolution. We have to find
the light within our own souls, lest the torch in our hand dies out.
Freedom is not a collective concept where a single way of
life is determined to be suitable for the bulk of the people in a given space.
Freedom is personal. It is found in all life and in all manners of life being
lived. It is not the popular discourse or the ruling stereotype or code of
governance. It is choice.
Freedom can’t then be one thing. It is specific to every
being. Freedom is believing in something different, living different and
choosing different. It is made manifest in our thoughts, words and deeds.
Freedom is left in the marks we leave behind; marks of progress, science, light
and death.
And it is only when individuals are free that communities
and nations can be free. A culture that measures, rations and manipulates the
freedoms of the people is one that enslaves its people and seeks to employ a
system, corrosive to the people and world around them, beneficial only to the
culprit.
A free world, then, cannot be a place where people’s
freedoms are taken, traded, rationed, stolen or suppressed. Real freedom does
not exist in degrees or classes.
Namaste
