What It Means To Be Truly FREE:

February 25-2006:

What It Means To Be Truly FREE:


Today I was contemplating this concept, and I was finally able to comprehend the gravity of this perception. So here are my views on this concept.

True freedom connotes the total ability to determine the Alfa and Omega of being. To be truly free is to be devoid of any external control, influence, or jurisdiction. This concept could be equated to time itself. Meaning that humans created the concept of time, therefore, time does not exist in the comic, because the universe is what it is. No beginning, and therefore no end.

The concept of the 'Alfa & Omega' (beginning and end), is only possible when their is something that created that concept. It is like the creation of humankind. There has to be some mind, or some intelligence that conceived this idea, to make it happen. This intelligence need not be matter. It could be invisible energy, existing in nothingness.

When humans began to organize themselves into communities, clans, groups, or tribes, their freedom ceased to exist. When humans roamed the earth, foraging for food, ate when they liked, or could, slept when they wanted, and mated when they felt like it. That was true freedom!

But when the situation came to fight for limited food, limited hunting grounds, and limited space to roam, then they had to contemplate the concept of self defense, and self preservation. When that necessity became evident, then FREEDOM no longer existed.

Freedom took on a different meaning since then. In order to be safe, one had to stick with the group or clan. In order to survive the winter, and other clans, one had to fight for the protection of self, and the tribe. In order to ensure enough food was available when there was a drought, one had to ration the amount of food per person or family, in order to survive as a group, until the season changed.

With modern society, freedom had another twist to it. One had to obey the rules/laws of that society, or suffer the consequences for breaking it. Prisons were built for those who broke the rules/laws. Guilt or innocence were determined primarily by those who made the rules, or established laws. And innocence or guilt, was also determined by those who chose to be the judge, and enforcer of those same laws or rules.

To ensure that your so called freedom was not compromised, you had to have someone represent you, (a lawyer), he or she had to have some understanding of those laws, and recognized as qualified to represent you in a court of law. And even there, there was no guarantee that you would be found innocent of the charges against you.

Institutions for the so-called mentally ill, was also established for those who seemingly did not have any intention to obey, or could not fathom their responsibility as citizens of that society. Either through violence, anarchy, or disregard for the society at large, or the laws of that society.

Individuals may be held in one of those institutions we call the 'asylum,' where he or she would be medicated, beaten, physically restrained, or just locked up, in order to protect the same society that created that situation.

In situations of imprisonment, one is physically no free. But in time, depending upon the length of stay there, he or she might eventually feel mentally and psychologically un-free.
When the individual feels mentally and psychologically imprisoned, then the physical aspect of his or her imprisonment seals the deal.

Thus one could surmise then, that he/she has totally lost freedom.

Therefore, it would be rational to contend, that in modern, civilized societies, no human is free. Because freedom implies the absence of all rules or provisions that restrict movement, thought, speech, sight, and sustenance!

Om Shanti.
Derryck S. Griffith.
Educator-Advocate & Blogger.
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