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Freedom

If there's ever a word that has through repeated usage become cheap and meaningless, it's "freedom." Girlfriends want their freedom; it means the ability to make dumb decisions and not be accountable. Boyfriends want their freedom; it means the same thing, with a sense of excess. Drug addicts, homosexuals, Nazis, Jews, Christians, furries and internet mooners all want their freedoms, too. And that's on a personal level.

On the social level, we fight for "freedom," including the freedom to have cheap oil and a gallant little ally in Israel, even if it alienates the entire Muslim world. On an economic level, we want the "freedom" to earn obscene amounts of money and then pass it on to our shareholders, who will (if they're wise) invest it well and take it out of circulation as far as making things better is concerned; investments seize income and turn it into ownership, where it could be reapplied. On a religious and ethnic level we want "freedom" too, to live wherever we want and act as we desire.

You'd think that if it were that simple, freedom versus lack of freedom, we would have found an answer. Yet the chant goes on, We...want...freedom, and it becomes interpreted in different ways that will never reconcile. A pothead wants the freedom to toke up 24-7-365 if so desired, but parents of two-year-olds, even if they smoked dope back in college, want the freedom to raise their kids far from shadowy drug use. When we're tired of killing each other for "freedom," we arrange the sickest of compromises: out of sight, out of mind.

And if we drift away from the concept of freedom, we are generally taken to the opposite extreme, which is collectivism as a moral absolute, as in Communism or ancient Sparta. While the Spartans were clearly far ahead of the Communists, such a society leaves itself open to competition from easier pastures nearby. There has to be a middle ground that makes sense. Individual "freedom" is important. Also important is the freedom to not have the pursuit of "freedom" of others create a caustic and destructive society like the current one, where selfishness reigns dominant. These are, believe it or not, both freedoms: the freedom from a dominant order and the freedom to not be crushed under its disorganization are both fundamental.

Most of us are familiar with modern societies that strictly regulated individual freedom to the point of absurdity. This situation occurs when there is a lack of agreement as to the goals and values of a society, which means that different groups vie for power so that they can enforce their mould on others. The constant crisis of this model is that as soon as one group gains power, every other group feels oppressed, and the cycle of revolution goes on again and again. Whatever happened to the idea that if an individual is harming nothing, he or she should be able to do whatever is desired?

That idea runs into problems immediately because sins of omission can be as destructive as active counteraction. If I'm taking bong hits in my house and fail to notice the armed bandits taking turns raping my neigbhors, I'm still enjoying "freedom," but I'm not taking part in society. If in a society of bonghitters, I'm taking cocaine, or worshipping Gods that hate marijuana, I'm causing harm slowly and steadily. Harm can be defined as whatever goes against the collective goals of a society; if the values to define those goals cannot exist, harm is undefined, and almost all behavior becomes harm because none of it is geared toward order.

With this realization, we finally break into the truth about freedom: it can only be defined relative to the values of a society-unit, and for us to have "freedom," we must live in places where what we wish to do is not considered harmful. There is no society that can exist so that all behaviors are non-harmful, because the result is a total lack of unity. This is why both left and right, in the name of varying degrees of freedom, at their most extreme have found comfort in the idea of localization, or of small communities of relatively static populations defining their values through tradition.

"Freedom" is just a word until given such a context and possibility of being fulfilled. Right now, you have "freedom" -- the freedom to work long hours, pay lots of bills, and do anything that does not offend powerful special interest groups of competing intentions. In our desire for absolute freedom, we've caught ourselves in the crossfire. A more mature definition of freedom would free us from "freedom," and give us the basis to construct a new civilization of independent, autonomous but collaborating local communities.