The price of freedom is constant vigilance. Or, so the saying goes. He who wants to be free must constantly guard himself against the encroachments of other men upon his freedoms. To be free one must choose to take freedom over slavery. It I the first choice you will ever actually make, or the last choice you will never make. In many ways it is only the paranoid who will keep their freedom and, perhaps the insomniac who cannot go back to sleep, and so he watches with nothing better to do. Or, perhaps, some it is combination of the two.
Why, freedom, though, I have asked myself repeatedly. Why is it better to be free from these attachments (thank you Buddha), addictions, persecutions (which may or may not exist), and all that, ad absurdum? What good does freedom do, anyway?
If we are born slaves to ourselves, our desires, and our wants is it not natural that we wish to be free of these things? Is it not right that we wish to rise above the scum that floats on the surface of our life like some disease?
Perhaps we only want freedom because we think it will cure us of our ills. It will free us from sadness, depression, anger, and all of those ,Äúnegative,Äù emotions. We seek to rise above our Paleolithic mentalities to make ourselves something more then human, something more then we are.
Who are we kidding? We piss, shit, burp, and eat just like the pigs we think we are so far above. We animals in the crudest and most vile sense of the word, and at every turn we are confronted with the pure viciousness of the world we live in, yet we hide behind our offices, and our clothes, and computer screens and scream that we are more then animals we have evolved from, that we are more then the creatures that we subjugate, that we are more then the jungles out of which we walked. And, yet, we are none of it. We are not free until we choose to be.
But, being free does not dismiss our weaknesses, and animal persona,Äôs, being free means having a choice about that matter of whether to stoop to your animal self, or to rise above it. What we rise into I do not know, some higher power, some infinite void, or some state more painful to the eyes then red-hot pokers.
All I really know is this, I,Äôm not paranoid enough to be free. Yet.
"No matter how cynical you are it's never enough to keep up."
-Lily Tomlin
With a litttle fine tuning, that could be a rant worthy of Graud.
Quote from: eroticWith a litttle fine tuning, that could be a rant worthy of Graud.
Well someone has to foot the bill since we ate Graud during the last barbecue.