What does freedom look like? I don’t think I can fully comprehend it. Our lifelong friend Merriam-Webster defines freedom as:
the quality or state of being free: such as
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE
c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous
I started wondering about specific freedoms; personal, societal, and emotional were the first. Our other good friend Google shared a few articles that noted physical, mental, geographic, cultural, spiritual, economic, psychic, and relational freedom as well. It’s a bit overwhelming to imagine. The premier sidereal astrologer Dayna Lynn Nuckolls often states that “freedom begins in the imagination”. So what do I imagine freedom to look like?
If I start with the world currently and how it runs, white supremacy and its spawn must expire. Racism, capitalism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, transphobia, fatphobia and every other bigoted view at work. There isn’t a single person unaffected by them. I believe that we all suffer under them. We’re either denied our humanity and dignity or benefitting from the dehumanization of others and possibly living in the delusion of superiority. Even the people with the most privilege are suffering, contorting themselves and their minds to justify or rationalize behavior that supports the status quo. I have no pity for them, but it must be exhausting to twist yourself daily and stomp down the part of your soul that knows what is best for the collective. What would it be like if we collectively decided to stop breathing life into the -isms and -phobias?
To stop viewing other people as wrong, worthless, or less than for how they look or dress, where they live, the languages they speak, how they speak, how they eat, what they eat, how/where/who they worship, for loving and worshiping themselves, how fast they move, for what their bodies can or cannot do, who they’re attracted to, or how they identify their true selves. I could go on forever. Is the drive insecurity or desperation to belong? We’re devouring each other for illusions. We are gaining nothing and losing everything.
We’re losing our humanity and compassion. We are losing breathable air, drinkable water, stable land mass. We are losing future thinkers, wonderers, scientists, artists, musicians, writers, researchers, farmers, and builders. There is no logical or moral reason for this. What is the end endgame? Why do we do this to each other?
I feel like we can’t imagine freedom until we acknowledge everything that is malignant. We lie about or ignore history and make it seem distant or erase events entirely. We attempt to ignore the obvious parallels and blatant copycats. People who are harmed are portrayed as the wrongdoers; be it all survivors of abuse, employees whose wages are being stolen, victims of random violence, people who are poked at until they snap back, etc. I am overwhelmed regularly by how bleak things appear or are. I fear there’s no coming back from this because so many seem either too scared, too entrenched, too complacent, or too conditioned to make a move. Currently our survival feels dependent on our compliance with the status quo. It feels like 10 tons of viciousness adds on daily.
What does my first take on freedom look like? First, fully acknowledge the breadth and depth of atrocities and evil enacted on any group in the name of domination and superiority. Second, we stop fueling and carrying out those patterns and beliefs. Full stop. I understand the concept of unlearning but for the sake of my thought experiment we go cold turkey. Question your motivations and thought processes. If you must contort your mind to constantly believe the worst about a group at every turn, something is amiss. We could explore our galaxy, save our own lives, and the environment if we stopped perverting our purpose.
In “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, he says that the artist can’t live hierarchically and must live territorially. When you turn away from your calling you insult the Muse and the powers in the planes above us. That moved me to think that we’ve perverted our purpose by living and acting hierarchically and equating it to morality. We should be idea based and creating. Caring for each other because there are enough inevitable life events to deal with as humans, we don’t need to make it harder. We’re a collective, one person off their path diverts and harms others. Persecution, denigration, and dishonesty are not a calling. Freedom requires accountability, honesty, and detachment from our long-held delusions.
If freedom begins in the imagination, I see us deciding to take the time to fully recognize, accept, and honor each other’s humanity. The wholeness of each person and what makes them who they are. Their experiences, background, history, culture, and pain. Their joys and their suffering. View the lives of others as valid without making excuses for ourselves. From there we do away with every current system in place. We start addressing our true needs. A warm, safe place to live. Food to eat to nourish, sustain, and please us. Spaces that educate and prioritize our mental and emotional wellbeing. Accessibility so that we can all share spaces and experiences. I’ve probably missing other immediate needs but this is what came to me first.
Awareness of those hellbent on keeping things as they are is always on my mind. My imagination also includes the Earth bottling them up. Massive fissures filled with magma open and swallow them whole, never to disturb us again. This is extremely unlikely, and I have no constructive idea on how to deal with them. Anyone obsessed with rigid hierarchy, status quo, the good old days, or how it used to be. I’m past believing in them experiencing a change of heart.
I am not looking for a utopia. We’re human, we seem wired to misstep. We’re going to make poor choices or mistakes. But I know we can do better than what we have. I am tired of the systematic mistreatment of people. Societal structures built for the few and not the many and the many told that it’s their fault that they suffer. The suffering is unnatural, it’s manmade. If we made it, then we can destroy it and make something else.
I hope we’re at the place where we can adapt before complete global, societal collapse. We don’t have to go there, it doesn’t have to happen but I am afraid it will. Even at my job there are people who don’t want to address or fix internal issues, just wait until it breaks. That is madness and cowardice. Society is broken and it requires an overhaul. It’s unfair to leave rebuilding to weary survivors. Take preventative measures by evaluating your movements in the world and how they affect people you currently have status over. I can imagine better for us and hope the ideas turn to actions.
In Search of Freedom
