This is a very tricky thing to write about and I'm not even sure I want to write about it but I will attempt it anyway. The reason I chose 'freedom' as a subject was because our freedoms are currently under attack like never before and I'm extremely concerned about it. A short time ago, in recent memory, we could still talk about what we wanted to talk about in public or online, we could congregate together freely and we could protest against things we didn't like that the government imposed on us or were planning to. All of these things, simple freedoms really, were granted and understood in a so called Western democracy and I say 'so called' because democracy and what it actually means and what it is in actuality are two entirely different things but that is something to talk about later on.
Let's take the last of these 'freedoms', the right to protest. Governments don't like it when enormous groups of people march against unpopular policies. They have to respond to justify their actions and plans and in the past, they would have done but it doesn't seem to work like that any longer. Look at the massive protests against the Iraq War in the UK and many other countries in February of 2003. They were the largest protests in human history and, in the UK, sent a very clear message to Blair and his government and to all the governments that we didn't want to go to war. And what happened? The government ignored the people and in some countries said it did not even reflect public opinion and we went to war. No marches or demonstrations against the whims of power have ever been as big since. The fact that people were not heard, that their strongly held views were so easily dismissed and we went ahead with a brutal campaign that has effectively ruined a functioning country and its people, despite a ruthless dictator at the helm, has demoralised people. Although protests and demonstrations followed for this and other issues, it showed government that they can ride roughshod over the people and so they do.
Now, there is the very real prospect of protests being banned for arbitrary reasons such as noise and public disturbance. Increasingly the police act like the government's very own bouncers, not protecting the people any longer but protecting the government, protecting power. It is a very real possibility that protests may become illegal - well, protests of size and substance that can't be ignored, even though, due to the nature of the current media, they are now being ignored anyway.
The there's free speech. We can still say what we like but it is being vigorously censored throughout the media and social media platforms. The current situation with the Covid virus has changed a lot of things regarding free speech and the terms 'misinformation' and 'disinformation', which have crept into our common lexicon during the past decade or so, are applied liberally. Now, if you say something that goes against a common narrative, it is shouted down using one of those terms and you may even get banned or thrown off those platforms. Fact-checkers have arrived in their unseen and unregulated droves to go through what we say and, you would have thought, check on whether it's a fact, an actual fact. But the truth of it is that they check on whether it is a fact that supports their narrative. There is a term for this, it's called censorship. It's not done to protect the public. It's done to protect the narrative. People have to be protected from the truth. It's Orwellian in the extreme. Even eminent qualified scientists and doctors who really know their stuff and have a once respected scientific opinion and verifiable evidence about all of this can be censored, de-platformed, ridiculed and so on to the point where their voices are only heard on sites that relatively few people know about. Think about having a debate about the efficacy of some health policy or a vaccine or anything that counters the mainstream view? Forget about it. Science fact is only that which wholly supports the narrative and the narrative will be broadcast 24/7 by TV news, online news channels, newspapers and even through other means in editorials and probably, although I don't watch TV or listen to news, gardening programmes and cricket commentary too. It is relentless. It has become the new dogma of our age and anyone who disagrees with it is a heretic.
Think back to the Medieval ages and if you spoke out against the doctrine of the church and suggested say that the Earth revolved around the Sun and wasn't an immobile mass in the centre of the Universe as Galileo did, then you could be subject to imprisonment and torture. In Galileo's case, he was effectively placed under house arrest until he died. Now of course we know that the Earth DOES revolve around the Sun so you get an idea of how views change over time, with new knowledge, and how it is important not to be dogmatic about anything. The Age of Enlightenment brought in a wave of new ideas and thinking that freed up society to a large extent, even though to many they were still not free, but importantly it led to the separation of church and state which had already been happening in many countries where religious freedom of expression and belief had already taken root.
Under present conditions, the freedom to congregate has all but disappeared. During the stricter parts of the national 'lockdown' (a term I still have problems with because of its origins - it's a jailhouse term, why use it?), we couldn't see anyone apart from on a screen or through a sheet of plastic. Now we are able to gather but large gatherings such as weddings, festivals, parties, clubs, race meets, concerts are still banned. I'm not going to get into my own views on lockdowns and vaccines here as this blog today is about freedom but the fact is that this public health scare has ushered in this new clampdown on freedoms. When we get them back or if ever is another matter.
I've only been talking about external freedoms so far, the ones we think about when someone asks you whether you think you are free or not. The ones that most people think about when the subject of freedom arises and there are many more besides these. Freedom itself is such a large subject that I really can't do it justice in this limited blog. It deserves a book or books and there are many written about the subject. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what freedom means in the wider world and how we regulate it to an extent because we almost have to otherwise we'd all be running wild and free.
However, I wish to talk about the most important freedom of all. Your inner freedom. The freedom you give yourself. Inner freedom is something else altogether. It is about allowing yourself freedom to express yourself and simply 'be yourself' in any situation regardless. Most of us are constricted in how we present ourselves to the world. For whatever reason, many of us are not fully ourselves, we feel constrained, we are slightly rigid and this, I've noticed, seems to be more apparent with age. We don't act how we feel, we don't dress how we want to dress, we don't show ourselves to the world for fear of judgement and ridicule based on past experiences and conditioning going back to our earliest formative years. My Mother, bless her soul, was for ever telling strangers that my brother and I were shy. We weren't but we sort of became shy because she said we were. It was my mother who was shy, not us. Now I've been long grown up, I am not shy at all. I'm friendly and engaged but for many years I was sort of awkward in expressing myself. If I had been freer, I would have expressed myself exactly how I wanted to. The presence of a potentially quite critical father however didn't help matters. So I grew up not feeling or being free in myself. As I entered my twenties and the world of work and socialising, I did worry an awful lot about what people thought of me and this translated into trying to look good on the outside and presenting myself in a certain way, especially when I felt awkward or stupid in front of my better educated peers. It wasn't their fault. They acted like they did, well some of them anyway, because of THEIR conditioning and their experiences. They weren't particularly being themselves either. As you enter late middle age, all these constructs begin to fall away and it's like the Emperor's New Clothes in reverse, you are naked but you aren't ashamed any longer. It is how you are. And how you are is fine in my book. It's real. Never be afraid to be your true self. Anyone who tries to shame you or ridicule you is just the lack of freedom, the conformity of opinion, the shallow judgment of others showing itself. It is nothing to do with you, it is wholly to do with them.
When you are free on the inside, you are also by default, free on the outside. You live in the truth of your being. You were not born into this world to be a shadow of yourself: you were born to shine bright. No amount of laws and prohibitions can stop that. You express yourself as freely as you want as long as none of your actions are harmful. If you die like this, then you die free and it is better to live on your feet, than die on your knees. Being free in thought, just like the brave philosophers and scientists were before the Enlightenment, allows ideas to flourish. Ideas of freedom, of expansion, of breathing the air freely and these ideas can change the world.
Be free.
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