Pictured here: Coming soon to a liberal democracy near you. (Brothermouth at left, Guttermouth at right.)
“Part 1” because I have a lot of self contained examinations that I want to give myself (and you) space to expand upon.
I’ve had a LOT of thoughts about freedom lately, and if you haven’t, what the fuck is wrong with you?
So have our enemies.
In doing so I generated enough bullet points to do at least Parts 2-8 of this series, but also found my thinking, probably appropriately, zooming out to the bigger idea of freedom as a concept.
Pictured here: Freedom. No takers this time.
A few days ago, one of the cows in the background, completely disinterested in the offer of liberation because he was simultaneously eating and shitting, got out of the pasture because a door built into that wooden barn wall way near the back of the picture blew open during a bad storm. (Brothermouth has since barricaded it beautifully.)
We only discovered this because he managed to get himself all the way to the other end of the property and was grazing next to the state road when a Concerned Motorist- previously believed to be extinct- drove up to the house to let us know.
As I walked out in the godawful cold of a fucking ridiculous hour of the morning, I began fretting how the hell I’m going to get this steer about an acre and a half in the opposite direction.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to, because once he saw (smelled?) the distant figure of me out on the lawn, he came BOUNDING over at top speed, doing the idiotic bouncy prancy dance he does when I go into the corral with alfalfa treats. Seriously. It’s really gay.
It became clear once he got close enough that he was not in fact coming to trample me to death but was OVERJOYED TO SEE ME SO I COULD SHOW HIM THE WAY BACK INTO THE CORRAL. He was led back through the gate with a minimum of fussing and a handful of treats. He had obviously gotten himself lost and turned around and was very ready for the adventure to be over.
The point of this story, and the picture above, is I frequently ponder my relationship with my various livestock as a relationship with creatures that neither understand nor intrinsically desire “freedom” in the sense that you or I mean it.
Most domesticated animals cannot survive if suddenly abandoned in the wild, let alone if they were simply turned loose in a settled place. My cows and pigs are heritage breeds with far more natural adaptations retained than their industrial cousins (they grow thick coats in winter, their digestive systems are still designed to get good nutrition from forage alone, etc.), but would probably not last very long if turned loose in a state forest- at the very least they’d be completely unprepared to be hunted by humans, to say nothing of other predators.
But they also clearly don’t WANT to. When domestic animals “escape,” they’re typically trying to seek access to a very specific behavior or resource they can’t currently access, like food or water that isn’t in their perimeter or sufficient space to fully move their bodies. They don’t promptly run off on an incredible journey to find themselves or to seek a wild mate or “rejoin the true herd.” Mostly they bumble around in concentric circles around where they got out and get hit by a car or trapped in something or killed by wild predators.
Maybe this describes some people you know. I’m not telegraphing the metaphors here.
“But okay,” you say to yourself, “but WILD animals haven’t been enslaved by terrible humans, and value their freedom intrinsically.”
The problem is, for most animals in the world, this isn’t so. The majority of living things “desire” as much “freedom” as is needed to meet their needs for sustenance, shelter, and reproduction. You can take the proud and noble lion of the savannah and have it live very happily in 1/10th or less of its natural range if you give it unlimited access to nutritious food and social interaction. They will still kill the shit right out of you (seriously, it’s the last thing you do when they start eating you) if you ignore their predatory nature or disrespect them, but short of the kind of confinement you used to see in zoos a century ago, they won’t be mopey and depressed.
They’ll mostly be kind of lazy because they don’t have to hunt.
Simpler animals- rodents, fish, etc.- need even less “freedom.” They’ll stay where the food, warmth, and/or sex is. They will not wonder what more is out there.
The point of all this is that “freedom,” as an idea, is something SPECIAL.
Part of why I love my country so much is that it was created around this very idea. “Conceived in liberty,” as some canceled racist guy said. Regardless of what you think of the founding of the country- whether you think it was just a rebellion about taxes, whether you’re an asshole that thinks it was done because of weird revisionist reasons, or something else entirely- once they GOT the republic (“if we can keep it”), the very first things the Founders enshrined in writing was the notion that Americans were born free. That it was the default state of a human being, and not a gift given by enlightened rulers, and that anything that got layered on top of that was a compromise of that freedom, not to be taken lightly.
So for this Part 1, I’m only thinking about “what is freedom exactly, and what is its nature?”
My education, professional, and life experiences have made me very aware that humans are animals, just like the ones I spoke of generally and specifically above. We have lots of instincts, honed for hundreds of thousands of years (and millions of years before that by our pre-human ancestors) to survive, cooperate, and thrive as a species. As individuals, we accomplish this with a wide range of behaviors, from taking care of our young for an absurdly long time to blowing up competitors for resources with atomic bombs. We are unparalleled in our intelligence and capable of a wider range of behavior than anything alive that we know of; we are also compelled to eat, shit, fuck, and occasionally kill.
We are magnificent animals and should be rightly proud of how successful, unique, and sophisticated we are. We are a magnificent creation, and the more we learn about our minds and bodies, the more incredible we are.
But we are, and remain, animals.
Pictured here: This fuckin guy.
This is Odin/Wodin/Wotan, and a long time ago, at least a few of my ancestors, probably on both sides of my family, probably sacrificed a bull or dedicated the murder of another human being to this guy.
For those of you not familiar with the story, this image depicts Odin hanging himself upside-down from the World Tree for many days without food or water or sleep. He will also go on to sacrifice one of his eyes. He does all of this because he is desperate throughout his existence for complete knowledge of all secrets, because he’s obsessed with figuring out how to defy his fate in Ragnarok, the end of days, where (according to his fate) he will lead the souls of mankind in a vast army in a doomed war against the Jotun, beings representative of primordial chaos, who will defeat him utterly and destroy all of creation in rage and envy and vengeance.
This is an exquisitely, uniquely human thing to do. The Aesir, like the Olympians, are very relatable because they’re like humans turned up to 11.
Only humans are AWARE of fate as a concept, and only humans would have the ego to try to transcend it. Odin makes it clear he will make any sacrifice, go to any length, and betray any oath in service of this specific goal- defying the ordained victory of chaos over life (and the seemingly inviolable law of the universe that not even the gods can overcome fate). This includes doing some things that we in modern times would consider “bad”- that’s how committed he is.
This story of Odin is an allegory about freedom as the birthright of mankind.
It is never, ever “free.” You have to deprive yourself of comfort and sacrifice of yourself to win it, and then fight to keep it.
You have to know when you don’t have it and have a reason to want it.
Wanting it is an act of defiance against your weakest, subhuman instincts- it is hard to be free if you are lazy or indifferent.
There’s a 4) to this, and for it, I’m going to defer to the stories of my Christian brothers and sisters, because there’s an important lesson about freedom that underlies much of Scripture.
Humans have free will, a unique gift from our Creator. You can’t sin without free will, because sin requires choice; however, salvation also requires choice (you have to acknowledge your flawed nature and choose to ask to be rescued from it by a power beyond your own). Freedom is simultaneously the prerequisite for salvation and the means of our own damnation.
So,
If you are free, you are CAPABLE of doing literally anything you can put your mind to, but it does not necessarily mean that you SHOULD or that it is good or righteous to do a thing simply because you want it.
You cannot be coerced, threatened, or beaten into “doing the right thing,” just as no modern Christian would say you can be genuinely saved at swordpoint- you’re merely being deprived of freedom long enough for the “correct” choice to be made on your behalf by your oppressors. This isn’t to say coercion isn’t effective- over time, any animal- humans included- can learn to love their chains, and it requires an anomalous mind (and thank goodness human variety makes sure they happen) to question oppression when no alternative has been experienced.
Maybe this describes some people you know. I’m not telegraphing the metaphors here.
If you’ve been following along this long, a) I’m sorry, and b) something may have occurred to you by now within this thought exercise:
True, pure, total freedom is an ideal that doesn’t exist as a practical state for humans (generally) in a permanent sense.
This is where our “friends” from the Branch Covidians rub their palms, lecturing us about the price mature grown-ups have to pay to live in society and that refusing to accept limitations on our freedom is childish and selfish.
I swear, I have never in my life been lectured so much before now about what “grown ups” do by people who go out in public wearing their pajamas and don’t know how to cook meals or fold laundry.
Pictured here: My moral superiors.
When you are coerced, you aren’t truly free- we can all grasp that even if the fucking dimwits on Twitter that tell us with their vacant bovine expressions that “nobody is being FORCED to take a vaccine, you’re simply making the choice to accept the consequences of being banished from society! Tee hee!”
“Society,” civilization, The Big Show, is an interlocking system of coercive mechanisms. It’s helped us accomplish some amazing stuff and some spectacularly awful stuff (depending on who you ask), and as a rule, I’m a huge fan- civilization as a big-picture idea is the book report for “humanity beautiful and terrible.”
But it’s coercion nonetheless, whether it’s the king’s soldiers showing up to take part of your harvest, the Normans showing up to annex your land, or the state collecting property taxes under threat of imprisonment or impoverishment such that you never truly own your home.
So what do we, as people who love freedom, do?
Remember that freedom is a state of being, not an act, nor a place or time or thing. Freedom exists within your mind and/or soul- it is not external.
So, even if you don’t live in an environment that “allows” perfect freedom (and, honestly, be glad you don’t; your head would probably be on a stick next to someone’s house after the nonconsensual sex got boring and the good parts were eaten), you exist as a free being through your relationship to that environment.
What this means is surprisingly simple (though not necessarily easy):
Be aware of the coercive systems that make you less free. Do not allow the chains to be invisible.
Make a conscious choice about whether you accept them or not. Exercise your free will. There are aspects of society that are imposed upon me that I accept because I think they make my life better. There are many that I don’t. This transforms the thing from a chain to a choice- you are taking ownership of your participation in it. This comes with responsibility.
Be honest with yourself and others about the things you do and do not accept- the things that make you less free. Strive to overcome, escape, surpass, or change them, and don’t lie to yourself about the things you accept because you’re too comfortable or lazy or indifferent but which still make you less free. Simultaneously, don’t be silent or dishonest about the things you refuse to accept; you don’t have to be forceful, but you do have to be sincere. I have, thankfully infrequently, told people that I am only submitting to wearing a mask so I can be present for my father’s medical procedure or consultation and that I am doing something I find useless, irrational, and harmful because it is a condition of something I must do (not in so many words).
As a reward for your attention, patience, and forbearance, at the end of this sentence there is a horse dong.
"Pictured here: this fuckin guy" I'm on my desktop keyboard so I don't have the crying laughing emoji, so insert a couple of those here.
Brilliant piece. Freedom, like faith, is proactive, and it can hurt really bad to exercise it. If we believe in a passive, entitled view of freedom, then all we'll find is the cage. Someone is ALWAYS looking to put unsuspecting, wandering animals into a cage.
https://bherr.substack.com/p/ruling-over-you-in-gods-name?utm_source=url
It's the ones who realize "holy shit, this freedom is MINE by right!" and buck like a bronco trying to be broken when they realize someone is putting a rope over their heads are the ones who will keep it and deserve it.
But sadly, too many are dumb and just want the farmer to feed them the pill that makes them feel better so they can go back to sleep.
Omg😍😍😍. Love your thoughts - actually laughed out loud. My dog was shocked and a little frightened. Thank you for the gift of laughter. Also, the message is helpful in these times. Have run off a few friends and family members by speaking of freedom and other "tin hat" subjects. My faithful pup and awesome folks like you and others on the stacks light up my day💖💫🔥