ON FREEDOM(part11)

I lament this world, and relament what could have been had not layers of lies and illusion been sublimated, perpetuated, growing and swelling with each new birth and every new communicative device serving as instruments of propaganda and oppression. If I have a lot of money, or imagine that I have control over people because they do what I tell them to do, or I trace my historico-geneological thread back to some family of authority, blood of royalty, aliens from another planet or dimension, I am still a brand new, free being. The world has never seen me before now. I am independant of all expectations that could have been recorded. The many ways that I can conduct my behavior, or choose my actions in this world are too numerous to quantify. I exist now. I can think, be honest, comport the freedom that I am. Or I can merely calculate, lie, and act as though I am under the control of others. Elites, secret cabals, masters of the universe are old fictions that have been reinforced with new energy today and constitute for some a basis for reawakening. After years of dormancy, these illusions free beings entertain of gods on earth controlling the world, many accept. For some it is a true though, hidden fact newly discovered again. Stories of brainwashing, mind control, and computers that think, are all about creating wonder and fear of their power. Computers don't think, they calculate, they can not empathize, nor can they doubt. How can a mind be controlled? How can you accept that a mind can be defined? I at first thought brainwashing may have it's origins in christianity as in washing the sinful dirt from, but christians are concerned with a different organ. Descartes imagined for reason's sake, a chimera creating illusion after illusion, so that one may even question their own existence. He doubted such impossible illusions, and in his doubting he realized that no matter what illusions may be brought to bare he was not tricked into forgetting that he was not a slave to illusions. He would not accept illusions any longer from either his Jesuit pedagogues, nor ghosts of the imagination. Rene Descartes was free. Like you and I now.

More ON FREEDOM (part 3.1): The Beauty Of A Changing Mind, or How To Resist Slavery

More ON FREEDOM (part 3.1): The Beauty Of A Changing Mind, or How To Resist Slavery

A response to: ON FREEDOM (part 3) by Relament, posted 6 May 2009

I ask an Other: "Do you believe in abortion?"; "Do you believe in God?"; "Are you a republican or a democrat?" … or maybe even, “Do you love me?” Relament points out, I think keenly, to the reinforcement of illusions through the language of acceptance. When we ask someone “Do you believe in x?”—what exactly is it that we are asking? Are we asking what they think, in that very moment, about whatever is the subject matter of that question; or are we rather inquiring into what may be called the essence of what that person is/thinks? Do we accept that what they tell us in that moment, in fact, can only be of and at that moment? Or do we often record that data for future reference, which we will refer to when we want to hold them in that position? Do we celebrate when someone changes their mind, or do we condemn them for it?

Many of us, raised to create worlds of pre-defined roles and beliefs and actions and attitudes, are rudely-but-beautifully awakened when our perspective finally embraces that the world (because it is created/contains Free Beings) is not form (or essence or soul), but Change. The world is Fluid. It is Dynamic. It is Responsive. It is CREATED. By us! It is NOT rigidly categorizable… divisible… nor is it predictable (because of those damn pesky free beings, including me!).

I’m totally just mooching off of Relament’s positions now… but I shall scream alongside: “Hesitation… Illusion… Embarrassment… Be Gone!” If the alternative is (falsely-apparently) Secure Slavery, I’ll err on the side of Fanatic Freedom.

Image by Sergio | http://www.flashquake.org/archive/vol5iss1/

More ON FREEDOM (part 2.1): The Truth of Freedom; The Fallacy of Rights

More ON FREEDOM (part 2.1): The Truth of Freedom; The Fallacy of Rights
A response to: ON FREEDOM (part 2) by Relament, posted 7 May 2009

Forget standing up for your rights! BE free-ly! The ongoing debate over the "loss of freedom" in the US is a dangerous misnomer. Freedom IS, and cannot be taken away. RIGHTS, therefore, are not the same as freedom, as they can be taken away. Rights, in fact, do not even exist in the real, immediate sense that Freedom does. Are YOU not Freedom Incarnate? I shan't even acknowledge that it is possible for others to grant and withdraw permission for my actions... they can't have any of the freedom that I create. As some may try to maintain the illusion of destruction, I shall continue the creation of my free life.

Image from public domain

ON FREEDOM(part10)

The 'State', does not exist. I read about the existential threat to the state. Loyalty oaths to the state. Mandatory service to the state. There is no reason to allow the existence of the state in any serious discussion. Free beings lie a lot, that happens, and people forget things, but even if I decide to play a game for a few hours, I am quite aware that I don't have to play the game. I am free to stop acting, wishing, and hoping. I can leave the fake world of illusions, which only occurs when I choose it to occur. I am not speaking of vibrations, frequencies, or other solipsistic notions. This is not red pills or blue pills or rabbit-holes, it's not a case of dual worlds. It's chosen illusions. Peer-pressure, traditions, culture, and history are choices not determinations. I can say that a neurologist, a psychiatrist, a priest, a profiler, an expert in DNA analysis, and my Mother determines what my character can do or not do if I want to play a game. Freedom is not simple. Occam's razor doesn't apply to free beings. I choose when I want to stop playing because I am free. The only existential threats are to free beings. Loyalty oaths are threats, as are mandatory services. Threats to free beings.

A note to Aphorista...

While I go through and criticize the layers of illusions that I find to prevail in one form or another covering up freedom, you clearly expressed being free in your response to part1 of 'On Freedom':
"How may I uncover those hidden illusions I hold of which I am not aware?
Be. New. In this moment. Now. No Illusion-Shattering Required."

ON FREEDOM(part9)

From crusades choosing which gods will be worshiped, to the latest athlete thanking one of their personal gods for choosing them to score a goal, free beings have said 'no, thank you' to freedom in favor of oppression, slavery, and ignorance. There are even those who create gods that they say represents freedom, with ritualized gratitude following therein. God, jesus, satan, the gift-givers of the imagination, brought into the world to help free beings forget about their freedom. The theists love and/or fear gods and obediently worship and praise their creations. The atheists are not happy with gods and rebel against the notion by even claiming in front of everyone that gods don't exist because god just wouldn't act that way if he did exist. The agnostics don't know if there are gods and don't decide on the matter because 'anything is possible'. All three positions drink at the same bar. Many free beings go into that bar for spirits and souls, but it is just a bar. After a few drinks all three positions can be quite dangerous to be around. Lying, hating, and clueless all intoxicated with their limits, their burdens, and their ignorance, disclose power and expose weakness in one another until they part. They sleep with angels and demons and fantastic possibilities awaiting at their door ready to tie another one on. There are as many reasons as there are circumstances in ones life for negating freedom to live at that bar. In liberating myself from gods the world did not welcome me with a celebration. The world closes and opens as always. There is no one and nothing to thank for realizing that I have always been free.

More ON FREEDOM: Empathy & Imagination | Being With & Being Alone | Freedom Overcomes Illusions

More ON FREEDOM (part 1.1): Empathy & Imagination | Being With & Being Alone | Freedom Overcomes Illusions
A response to: ON FREEDOM (part 1) by Relament, posted 6 May 2009

The capacity and desire to “imagine anything and any situation” is an essential component of the endeavour we call empathy. Empathy an endeavour, rather than an emotion or a mode of determination, because trying to feel and understand the mind of an other is an intrinsically endless occupation. We can reach and pull, question and answer, dig until our nailbeds bleed, yet one can never fully explore the unplumbable depth that is each and every human being. Relament is a battery of empathetic tools and empathetic desire. I can think of no one I have conversed with in my life who has made more of a charter out of Empathy than he. Yet… at this moment… he chooses to be (pretty much) alone, even while still on his empathetic quest. Odd choice? Perhaps! Is that oddness a bad thing? Hell no! We each choose, and thereby create, our freedom. The world of free beings IS an odd place, and that’s just alright with me…

But what are the limits of one's freedom? (We’re not gods; or are we?); or rather, does freedom have limits?; or rather, am I not establishing the limits of (my) freedom through my choices? To take a bit of a tangent from Relament's thesis, let me say that what I have found to be the case in this life is that any and every limit to freedom, once recognized and subsequently ignored, is then no longer a limit. We can argue nature vs. nurture vs. freedom and independence all day, but it is in reflection combined with action that we can eliminate those limits that, once boiled down, are merely habits which are malleable and under our control, if we choose to remain (un-)conscious of them. We create our own limits and our own freedom. Our freedom is limited only by how we are willing to, and actually do, ACT.

Illusions [can be] --> Limits [are] --> Choices [create (enrich or inhibit)] --> Freedom / Life!

• What illusions are necessary (if any)? What illusions are dissolvable (if not all)?
• What illusions are desirable to me (if any)? What illusions do I desire to shed (if not all)?
• How may I uncover those hidden illusions I hold of which I am not aware?

Be. New. In this moment. Now. No Illusion-Shattering Required. Human Beings ARE Free!

ON FREEDOM(part8)

I live in a world where worship and slavery has been in a struggle with freedom and responsibility for the moral conscious of free beings for centuries. The avoidance of freedom and responsibility has been a tragic banality, with ever more elaborate fictions continuously introduced. The individual is supposed to adapt and belong. Verily, the theories provided to the new minds of this world are made to oppress. Self-consciousness is triggered through inadequacy and embarrassment. Trying something new has become declaring something to be, subject to hypocrisy and ridicule. Free beings just trying anything without approval and acceptance, is deluded and dangerous. What do genetic codes, evolutionary theories, and gods have to do with freedom? What does race, nationality, and mankind have to do with free beings? It is all very clever determinations for those wanting to be slaves, and those wanting to be obeyed and worshiped. From the tenured professor at a university, to an emperor of a continent, free beings have been participating in mutual oppression of the moral conscious for quite a long time.

ON FREEDOM(part7)

'I have a box. Only I can know of it's contents.' Is this the genesis of communication? This metaphor leads thinking into a cage. Possession, ownership, what is mine in this world. Generation after generation, seem to easily know what freedom is and discontinues any thoughts on the subject. Their high values wrapped around 'things'. Enchanted to the point of illusion. Possessing things become their sole inspiration to imagine. They begin to enjoy the cage, while immediately forgetting that they had built it. Free beings revere adapting. They create metaphysical constructs where 'freedom' becomes interchangeable with 'control'. 'I have a box, and I will use language to describe the contents', deforms language. Language becomes a game filled with secrets, lies, laws, possessions, and oppression. What can I do? What can I imagine?, becomes, What do I have? What can I get? How do I stop?

ON FREEDOM(part6)

Empathy is a profound way of maintaining continual awareness and understanding of freedom. I am free. The other beings I live with in this world are also free. By understanding freedom, I understand others. Empathy begins the moral and ethical conduct of interacting with the other free beings of this world. It is quite deceptive to think of empathy, and from there perhaps moral conduct, as a reciprocal contract of necessity. It is more like introducing thought and reasoning into the world. Empathy has no affinity with the bargaining and profit scheme of 'the golden rule', or the revenge/reward scenario of 'what comes around, goes around'. I have empathy for the plight of other free beings without assuming or hoping other free beings will reward me for it.

ON FREEDOM(part5)

How does one identify oneself with property? What is a self but an imaginary figure that owns a body? When the expression, "My person" is uttered, the floodgates open. It is a subtle expression introducing ownership. This is a common linguistic problem that can be blamed for all manner of
possession. A linguistic problem it remains, for existence is prior to language. Language is a way to communicate to the other free beings in this world. At it's inception, language reaches toward others. But we are not language, we create language to communicate to others. Language could have only been created as an expression of thought, an expression of empathy.

ON FREEDOM(part4)

Free beings cannot expect consistent or reliable conduct from others, simply because everyone is free to choose.
The illusion of being secure in a world of free beings has moved from deflective thinking, to artificially induced forgetfulness. Government, religion, and continuous fear have given rise to oppression, slavery, and first-strike mentality. Group thinking is prevalent throughout this life, as free beings fantasize about being secure. It is all so confusing, that one has to admit to years and years of adjustment to what has merely always been the case.

ON FREEDOM(part3)

Free beings have been corrupted with illusions. Reinforcement of illusions is done through the language of acceptance. We ask others, what it is they believe in? We ask them to believe in something. We ask them to stop doubting, stop investigating, stop being free. We say to each other to accept and believe, to forget that you are free. To lie about being free as if it were something to be embarrassed about.

ON FREEDOM (part2)

I live in a country where free beings have confused freedom with rights. Free beings have spoken and written about how free this country is. They now speak of how freedom is being taken away from them. Others cannot take away ones freedom. I can act as though I am not free. It is acting, it is lying. Freedom is something I have been born into and may endeavor to understand within the short period of my existence. Forgetting this and lying about this occurs, often.

ON FREEDOM (part 1)

What and how I post follows a simple strategy: Perhaps I am free. I can freely imagine anything and any situation, as long as I am informed. I try to get away and be alone, to contemplate the whole idea of being free. Being around people, at first, had limited the idea of freedom. Then I started to realize that the limits of freedom were being chosen by me, in order to get, or maintain getting, what I want. But, realizing this, was to be aware that I am free.
A good example of a limit that I choose, is choosing to live. Schopenhauer said that I am subservient to the will to live. An involuntary volition, to maintain life. Others have added an instinct to survive. I don't agree. I don't agree with the many examples these people cite in nature when reacting to an immediate transgression is an example of this will or instinct to live. Because I want pain to stop does not mean that I'm fighting for survival. I have seen a film of a man, who has lit himself on fire, and while overwhelmed with flames, and skin dissolving from his limbs, he continues to try to kneel, and keep his hands together in some expression of prayer. He chose to do this. A wolf , who's leg is trapped, chews his leg off. The wolf chooses to get away from the trap. I can't infer some involuntary will or instinct to live.
In a world where everyone is free, there are illusions, but none are necessary. The world has always been filled with free beings.