The Nature of Freedom
Contemplative thought is a lost art. Many of my most generative periods result from plenty of time in which I am free to ponder the world, the nature of ideas. Writing down thoughts turns them from ephemeral musings to intellectual scaffolding which can be used to build beautiful things; exposes them to the light of the world, and only then can they bear real fruit.
A sense of potential arises as they clarify, a foundation building which can take new ideas, reconcile contradictions and yield new and beautiful insights. My last post spoke primarily to the necessity of strong friendships, family, and community bonds. A friend who reviewed it prior to publishing noted the way in which my thesis was opposed to freedom, casting it in a harsh and unfavorable light. It seemed misguided in his eyes, and that my concept of freedom was lacking. I agreed with his assessment, and considered more deeply the concept of freedom I was using. When using the word I, and much of popular culture, conceived of something much more trivial than the freedom which was imagined at, for example, America’s conception. Here I’ll try to expand on some ideas of freedom.
As a child I would drive by open rolling pastures, and from my backseat window imagine riding a horse through them; galloping freely through hills on my steed whose will was one with my own. This scene occupied my mind as a place of divine freedom. The feeling I have when traveling brings me somewhere similar. Something deep inside of me feels renewed, able to move and act with confidence and spontaneity. I can feel the inherent goodness of the wildness, this unbridled joy and sense of possibility. This drive seems innate, seems like such an intrinsic property of life. Just watch birds soar and twirl, or dogs run free in fields. Even watch a cat lazily prowl it’s terrain, or a child glory in a newfound ability to walk. These all embody a deep freedom and vitality in their own way. Still, something is missing. I know these things are only a small glimpse into something larger.
Is the freedom captured in these moments different from the freedom we seek which causes much of the damage I wrote of in my last peace? Which leaves us middle aged, childless on a cruise ship in a foreign country with no personal assets or path to meaning and stable life? I wonder about the nature of freedom, what it really means to be free. It is clear to me that the drive for freedom can corrupt the soul and impoverish a person’s sense of meaning.
Seeing this corruption prevented me from seeing a deeper meaning in freedom for a long time. I used to see freedom as largely instrumental, making the distinction of ‘free to’ vs ‘free from’. The first is purpose driven, and the second is not. Of course, the second may be employed in favor of the first, but without a purpose to becoming free it does us little good. A woman attempts to remove all bonds and responsibilities in an attempt to liberate her soul from the oppression of discerning family, yet finds herself homeless and lost. A woman cultivates her mind in order to attain freedom to understand the nature of reality, and comes to live a fulfilled and beautiful life. This dichotomy doesn’t quite sit right anymore. First of all, a person could seek to free themselves to do something quite unworthy, and this would have similarly harmful ends to someone who sought freedom from all constraints without aim. Further, I now believe freedom is something much more complicated.
I don’t believe freedom can be pinned down to a utilitarian endeavor; to do so is to render it null. To say the intense swelling joy I’ve felt on long bike trips through beautiful lands is simply a poor conception of freedom would be painfully reductive. However, it’s not simply ultimately good. People who endlessly seek freedom through travel or the relentless preservation of optionality rarely find it, or at least not in a form that is satisfying. There is some apparent contradictory mechanism through which our commitments make space for new freedom. A man with property, while having duties which may restrict his movement, has much more freedom to build a life, and whatever he likes, than one with no assets. Similarly, a person who puts great effort into gaining skill and capacity has much more freedom than one who is lazy and uneducated. The landscape of options changes the more capable you are, and commitments often create capacity. These commitments may come in the form of mental discipline, restrictions on time, relationships, or place.
A friend shared an insight with me recently: frequently the moral rules are best understood as conditions of conduct that create freedom for the soul, rather than as restrictions on an already free soul. This articulated something I had been unable to fully grasp until then. Freedom requires strength and hard work. You might experience a brief euphoria from some experience which gives you a taste of it, but freedom cannot belong to someone who does not work to earn it. Here I think may be the crux of the issue. St. Augustine said “Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices”.
When speaking of freedom, there are many possible implied concepts which tag along. For example, the concept of self which is to be free. The self is a complex thing, and has many warring, deceptive, and nefarious factions contained within it. Of course, it also contains cooperative, generous, and virtuous parts, but when we are attempting to free the self we must consider what is becoming free. Is it a whimsical freedom of any passing passion? If these are freed, what parts are being neglected at their gain? I believe it is all to easy to deceive ourselves into pursuing the freedom which seems easiest, least troublesome, or requires the least commitment.
If we pursue freedom without the cultivation of the mind, body and soul, we are chasing a feeling, rather than a reality of circumstance. Freedom cannot be borrowed, it can only be owned. As a child, I did not imagine my steed galloping through the hills would be rented or borrowed from a friend. It was mine. What becomes yours then, any domain you truly master, is a new realm of freedom. I now see this as some greater spiritual arena for which the human soul yearns. We mustn’t in this yearning however, forget that we must work to earn this state - for it is a state of reality which is felt in the mind. To chase the feeling is to deceive oneself.
