Freedom - written in the Socratic method

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion” – Albert Camus

Over the past five years of world travel I have had many conversations much like this one between myself and Ari (Any Random Individual).

Ari: Wow! You’ve been traveling the world for years?! It must be great to have such freedom.

Me: Yes, it has been an amazing experience, though anybody can be free. You don’t need to travel to have freedom.

Ari: I don’t know about that. It’s too hard to make money here to go anywhere.

Me: Well, as I said, you don’t need to travel to be free, though it certainly is a good representation of freedom. But many travelers are not free either. Actually, most people are not free because they don’t know what freedom actually is.

Ari: What do you mean? In Canada I assume everybody is free. There’s no slavery and there’s democracy and everybody is rich right?

Me: Welllll….everybody is certainly not rich in Canada.

Ari: Really??

Me: Yeah, I grew up without much money. A lot of Canada is very rural. I actually grew up in a town of 700 people.

Ari: Hahaha! There are thousands of people living just here in one block! So everybody knows everybody, right?

Me: Haha, yes, it seems crazy, but it was nice too. Our only close neighbor was my grandfather’s house and we had the ocean at our front door and a forest at our back, and the air was always clean. And, yes, most people knew almost everybody in town.

But anyway, even though there are many who struggle to get by, there are lots of opportunities for people who work hard. And the money they make is a lot compared to the rest of the world but the cost of living is one of the highest in the world too and not necessarily any better. For example, here (non-western country) the public buses are exactly the same as they are in Canada, though they come more often here, yet here they cost about 8 cents to get on and there they cost maybe $3 or $4 or more - forty or fifty times more expensive for a service that’s not as good as what you have here.

Ari: Oh my god. That’s crazy!

Me: Indeed. And, there’s no official slavery, of course, though I’m sure many people feel that they are slaves to their situations or jobs, much like you said you feel.

Ari: Ughh, yes.

Me:  And, yes, there’s democracy and freedom of speech though it never seems like there’s anybody really worth voting for. And while there’s freedom of speech, there’s nobody saying anything new or original because they’re all a product of society. Their thoughts are not their own – which can be said about everywhere.

Ari: So what’s different about you?

Me: Well, about 8 years ago I went through a very hard time in my life which made me re-think everything I knew about everything and I eventually came to the realization that the problem was that I wasn’t free – that I wasn’t in charge of my own life. My life was being directed by everything and everyone but me and throughout my whole life there had been something in the back of my head telling me that it was wrong. And I don’t mean that anybody was forcing me to do anything – I mean, I always felt like I was also free – it’s just that everywhere you turn there are people, advertisements, culture, the government, and society with suggestions for how to live “a good life”, and like a “good person”, I complied.

So, the only difference with me is that I noticed it and took a conscious effort to become free. As I said, anybody can become free; it’s just that most people think they’re already free and aren’t trying to gain freedom.

But as soon as I had this realization, the entire world turned on its side for me. I mean it was so powerful that it was literally almost a physical shift of the world. Every connection in my brain gave way and became…free. I was untethered. Immediately I went to the military and told them I couldn’t be a pilot anymore – being a machine operator wasn’t for me.

Ari: But being a military pilot is a dream job! It must be so cool.

Me: Yes, it is very cool to learn how to fly but eventually it becomes a job. And I’m sure you can see that my interests are things like psychology, philosophy, humanism…freedom...my place isn’t in an airplane.

Ari: Yeah, I guess. But what did your parents say?

Me: Haha…well, as you can guess, my father was hugely disappointed and said that I was throwing away a great career, and it was a bad decision, yadda yadda, etc etc. But, with my new control over my life, I told him that I respected and understood that he wanted the best for me but that it wasn’t the life I wanted and that I had to be free to make my own life.

Ari: Oh my god, I could never say something like that to my parents. What did he do?

Me: Well, all he could do was to accept it, and I think over time he came to respect it as well. But the thing you have to realize is that your parents aren’t always going to be there. If you live your whole life for them, what will you do when they are not around? Or do you live your life for your parents until you have children and then live your life for them? So in the end you’ve never lived life for yourself? As far as you know, you only get one life, and the only thing guaranteed to be in your life from beginning to end is you…it’s ok to make yourself a priority.

Ari: But my parents love me and have given me so much. I owe them to do what they want.

Me: Well, I don’t know your parents but ideally a parent gives so much in the hope that they’re giving you the best opportunity to live a great life and to discover love and happiness. Hopefully they’re not just making an investment that they hope will pay off later in life. If that’s the case, the money spent to raise a child from birth through university could better be put in a retirement savings plan.

Ari: Haha, but they love me too.

Me: Well…I’ll go into “love” another time, but the point is that they don’t own you.

Ari: But they’re older and have become successful so they know better what’s best for me and I should listen to them.

Me: Well, they know what’s best for them, and they learned it by living life and making their own mistakes. Also, being free doesn’t mean divorcing them - you can still have a great relationship with your parents and listen to their suggestions - it just means that the final decisions are yours. In fact, as free people you can have better relationships. Relationships without freedom rely on dependence, be it financial, emotional or physical. When you become free, you still have the relationship but without the dependence, which means that you can contribute positively to the relationship as opposed to taking from it.

And of course, I’m not just talking about parents. These pressures come from everywhere – teachers, friends, family, governments, culture, etc.

Ari: Ahh…ok…I can see what you mean, kinda. But I still don’t understand what, exactly, is freedom as you mean it.

Me: Freedom is independence. Of course, independence is not being dependent. And, freedom is creativity. Creativity is thinking and acting in a way that originates from you.

Ari: Independence, yes, I see what you mean, but lots of people are creative - musicians, artists, writers…

Me: To have a skill is not necessarily to be creative. Does everybody write songs that are completely unlike any other song or paint or write in revolutionary styles? Most musicians, artists and writers are following a template, though they may not realize it. But, yes, of course, there are those famous people who revolutionized music, graphical art, and writing, and those are examples of people with freedom. They stepped outside of what the world told them to do and did what came to them from their “soul” - I guess we might call it.

Actually everybody is creative at one point in their lives, at least. We often wonder where babies and small children get their personalities when they seem to be doing the craziest, most nonsensical things – this is because they haven’t yet been taught to conform. Once they reach the stage where you start telling them, “Good little girls and boys act like this…”, and they receive constant reinforcement, eventually they automatically learn to quell their creative tendencies and to do as one “ought” to do.

Ari: Wow! I never thought of that before but it sounds right.

Me: Yes, but be careful not to just take my word for it. Don’t be afraid to challenge me. Also look and see what other psychologists and philosophers say on the matter. Take information from all sources and you’ll see where they all align for you based on your own experiences. Giving up society’s idea for another is just transferring your slavery from society to something else. Hippies, are a good example of this.

Ari: Oh, yeah, hippies, what do you mean? Surely they must be free too.

Me: Well, can you tell when you see a hippie?

Ari: Haha…yes! They usually have long hair, sometimes in dreadlocks. They smoke weed and always talk against the government and society…kind of like you are doing now.

Me: Haha, yes, exactly, though I don’t smoke weed or look like a hippie, do I?

Ari: No, you definitely don’t look like a hippie…you look like the opposite of a hippie.

Me: Exactly…looking like a hippie actually takes a lot of work for people who are trying to look like they don’t care about what people think. I’ve tried growing my hair long and growing a beard but I don’t like it…it’s not comfortable. I keep myself exactly how I want to be because it’s comfortable and it works for me. Maybe the original hippies were free, but since then it has created another society that people have enslaved themselves under to the point where they try to look, talk, act and think like a hippie as opposed to being free.

Ari: Ok, I see what you’re saying. So then, how do I become free?

Me: Ah ah ah…I can only tell you how I can become free…only you can tell yourself how you can be free. But there will be many similarities…

Ari: Haha, ok, so tell me how YOU became free.

Me: Ok, well, to be honest, it’s not easy. The first barrier is something that I didn’t realize as much when I first decided that I wanted freedom but I recently read a very interesting book which describes it, and that is that people are afraid of being free. The book is Fear of Freedom by Erich Fromm and when I read it I saw that, yes, the reason I didn’t grasp freedom earlier was because I was afraid of it, just like you’re afraid of taking control of your life away from your parents. The fear is not just because you’re afraid of the confrontation with them; part of it is that it’s easier to have somebody else making the decisions for you, to have somebody telling you how to live. Society gives us rules to live by and sets preferable paths for us so that we don’t need to think for ourselves.

Ari: Yeah, I guess it is easier having somebody else making the big decisions for me. I don’t even know what I would be doing if my parents didn’t want me to do this. Since it is so much easier to have somebody else make the decisions, why would I want this freedom?

Me: Yes, it looks scary out there in freedom land. It’s like you’re in a bus on an African safari and they tell you to keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times…and then you see somebody walking freely outside the bus, among the lions and hyenas. Your first instinct is to shout, “What?? Are you crazy?!? Get inside the bus and be safe like us!! Join society!!” But you’re inside the bus looking at the animals through a window much the same as a tv screen while the person on the outside is experiencing the African savannah.

Ari: But I’d rather be alive than free, if that’s the case!

Me: Haha, but if he lives, do you agree that he’s enjoying the safari much more than you are? He’s immersed in the real world and is able to go anywhere he wants, do whatever he wants, when he wants, while you are confined and on a schedule.

Ari: Haha, yes, if he lives, but I don’t think I would survive in that situation.

Me: Well that’s where the next part comes in. The first thing that you need to overcome is the fear, and then you need to learn to survive.

Ari: Ummm…shouldn’t you learn to survive before getting out of the bus??

Me: Well, experience teaches much better than a book. And since we’re talking about how I learned freedom, I’ll say that it’s much more fun, interesting and educational to learn from the fear of not surviving than from a safe viewpoint. When you’re safe, you learn if you want to, but when you’re vulnerable, you have to learn.

Ari: Still...you’re not making freedom sound very beneficial here.

Me: Haha, no, I realize that. But, once you do learn to survive, you build up a diverse set of skills to survive any situation; you find that you don’t need to depend on society anymore, because you can depend on yourself. Everything that society once gave you, you can provide yourself…without any of the negative aspects of having to rely on something outside of yourself.

Ari: What kind of skills?

Me: Well, you need to survive. While the ideal would be hunting, growing or foraging, I think that’s a bit of a stretch, so I guess you need to be employable.

Ari: I went to university. I already have a job.

Me: Yes, but if you are only employable in one sector, you are dependent on society allowing you to fit into their design. But what happens if something changes in society or the economy that your type of job is no longer available? Or if you want to work in another country where they either don’t take foreigners in this position or your credentials don’t transfer over?

Ari: I don’t know.

Me: Exactly. So having more employable skills, so that you can survive, is essential. It allows you to use society to your advantage as opposed to being manhandled by society. “Sector A” in “Country 1” isn’t working for you anymore? Ok, try “Sector B” in “Country 2”. This is where having multiple languages helps to make you more employable as well. I’m lucky that the world wants native English speakers to teach English, so I have that to fall back on. However, if something changed in the global paradigm, I also teach math and science, have a management background, am a Thai masseur, life coach, and can teach yoga or fitness, can do physical labour, and if all of that fails, at least I have things worth writing about. But I’d always be willing to pick up other employable skills as well. The result is that I don’t have insecurity about my survival.

Ari: But that’s too much! I can’t learn all of that.

Me: Well, if you notice, most of those that I mentioned center on healthy living. So if you take an active interest in yourself and actually take the time to research things to help you live better, you’ll learn many things to help others live better as well. Not to mention the fact that you’ll be increasing your chances of survival in wild freedomland if you’re healthy and pick up self-defense skills as well.

Ari: Haha, yes, I suppose I don’t pay enough attention to keeping myself healthy and I have no chance of defending myself against most people.

Ok, then, so what else?

Me: What else, what?

Ari: What else do I need to know to become free?

Me: Well that’s completely up to you…just be YOU!

Ari: But how do I know what it is that I am if you’re saying that I’m not free?

Me: You’ll find out during your survival. As you build up a strong, diversified self, your true self will start to come out. But again, don’t take my word for it, try it and see for yourself…and let me know how it goes!

Ari: Haha…we’ll see…

Me: Still afraid, aren’t you…?

Ari: Yes! I have to admit, I don’t think it’s something I can do! I think I’m different than you.

Me: It is hard. It was very hard for me to take the leap as well…I was almost at breaking point so I was pretty much forced to do it. But it can work for anybody. The theory is sound and the results are more than worth it.

Ari: I dunno…remind me again what’s so good about this freedom…

Me: Of course! I would say the greatest thing about being free is the power you have over yourself to make positive change. Imagine if somebody came to you today and said they were making you the president of China or the US tomorrow…you’d freak out because you think you don’t know how to run a massive country such as those. Initially you’d be stressed out all the time because the learning curve would be so high and you would be a slave to the job…but imagine if you caught up to it and found yourself comfortably in control of a world superpower…the things you could do with that would be limitless. It’s the same thing with your own life. Yes, the learning curve is high as you adapt to the freedom, but once you have it, you’re on the outside of the bus, you’re the global leader, and you’re YOU, in complete control of everything that happens. Your successes and your failures are your own. Pressures from the outside are nothing – all motivation and direction comes from within.

But also, more importantly than this, most people also don’t know what real love or happiness is, and it’s because only with freedom can you learn love and happiness.

Ari: Whoa…wait…so now we don’t know love or happiness either?? So what’s love and what’s happiness then? And how do you know what order they come in?

Me: Well, I don’t want to go into it right now but freedom is creativity and independence. Real love is a giving, never a taking. So if you’re dependent on a relationship - whether physically, mentally, emotionally or financially - you’re taking - so it isn’t freedom and it isn’t love. So love requires freedom and then a lot more understanding of relationships. Also a large part of happiness is love and security, and even though you think you feel secure without freedom, the things you depend on are outside of your control so it actually creates insecurity, preventing happiness. So if you are the source of your own security and you’re confident in your ability to survive, it goes a long way towards the development of happiness.

Ari: Hmmm…I guess that sounds right…but you’ll have to tell me about this later.

Me: Well, you won’t fully understand them until you understand freedom. To learn anything that follows a sequence requires learning the preceding parts first. I teach calculus and if the kids don’t understand limits or tangent lines they’re not going to get derivatives.

Ari: What? I hate math.

Me: Nevermind…but the point is that you need to learn things in order. You can’t fully understand love or happiness until you understand freedom.

Ari: But I think I do understand freedom now.

Me: Are you free right now?

Ari: Umm…I don’t think so.

Me: So you don’t understand it yet.

Ari: I do! I know that freedom is having control over your life and learning how to survive and being yourself.

Me: So why aren’t you free yet?

Ari: Well….I’m not ready…Oh! Plus you said not to take your word for it! HA! I should look in other places and create my own answers based on my experiences and understanding of the different answers.

Me: Yes! Good for you! But that still means you’re not ready for love or happiness yet.

Ari: Oh, right…hmph! Ok, well if I wanted to take the first step towards freedom, how should I begin?

Me: Awareness is probably the first step.

Ari: Awareness of what?

Me: Awareness of where you aren’t free. You need to find the divide between you and society’s version of you. You need to find all of the untruths and dispel them.

Ari: You mean like finding what I want to do versus what my parents have convinced me that I want to do?

Me: Yes, that’s one example, but it’s much bigger, it’s almost everything. It’s your cultures, your nationalism, your hobbies and interests, everything.

Ari: My hobbies and interests? How are my hobbies and interests getting in the way of doing what I want to do??

Me: Actually, many people take part in some hobbies or take interest in certain things because it’s expected of them. Analyzing them all will help you to see which ones are genuine interests.

Ari: Ok, I can see that. But what about nationalism? I’m proud of my country and my culture!

Me: So you don’t want freedom?

Ari: Well I’m still not sure, but why can’t I be free and proud of where I’m from at the same time?

Me: Where are you from?

Ari: (Any random country)

Me: And all the people of this country are your people?

Ari: Yes.

Me: Even people 1000km away who have no effect on your life?

Ari: Yes, we are similar but of course we’re not the same.

Me: What about people 1000km in the other direction but live in another country?

Ari: They have a different culture, so we’re a lot different.

Me: How are they different?

Ari: They look different, they speak a different language, and they eat different food…they’re a lot different.

Me: And everybody in your country looks similar?

Ari: I guess not…we do have different ethnicities in our country. We’re proud of our diversity.

Me: So I guess everybody doesn’t speak the same language then either?

Ari: No, as I said, we have many different ethnicities

Me: And does everybody eat similarly? For example, does everybody like spicy food, or dislike spicy food? Is everybody a meat eater or all vegetarians?

Ari: No, no, our country has many different kinds of foods…again, we’re very proud of our diverse cuisine as well.

Me: Right. Ok, so your country is made up of many different kinds of people who look completely different than you, speak a different language than you, and have completely different eating habits than you, yet they’re ‘your people’ and the people from your neighbouring countries are not your people for those same reasons?

Ari: But it’s different! We have different cultures!

Me: But don’t you have different cultures within your country? And the neighbouring countries will have different cultures within their country and some of the cultures from yours are bound to be very similar or the same as those from the other?

Ari: Yes, but still…

Me: But still, nothing…you’re creating groupings and divisions that are not there. The fact is that ‘your people’ are the people who have influenced your life and everybody else in the world is a stranger – all equal in their strangeness to you.

Ari: I don’t know if I can agree with you on this.

Me: I can understand that. Sadly, this is one thing that is best learned through travel, though you can still learn this at home if there is an international community in your city. The more experience you have with people from different countries, the more you see that the differences aren’t only created along national lines. You can find people very similar to you in other countries and people very different to you on your own street. In the end, we’re all people and with globalization, national divisions are becoming less and less real every day.

But getting back to culture, what does your culture say about these other people? Does it say that your culture is better?

Ari: I guess so; yes…every culture would say the same about their own.

Me: Exactly, so which culture is right?

Ari: I guess none are right.

Me: Exactly. They’re all actually wrong…but most, if not all, cultures do have some very good things about them. However, most people who follow their culture keep the good and the bad. As I said, freedom doesn’t mean leaving everything behind, it just means becoming independent of them – independent from them yet still a part of them - and when you’re independent of them, you can be a positive contributor towards your culture, helping to curb it away from its negative aspects.

And for nationalism, to say that you’re Canadian or Peruvian or German or Russian or Chinese is to limit yourself. You are not defined by your country. While it greatly influences you, geopolitical borders were never meant to define your personality. Yes, you can be proud that you have the influence from a certain culture or country in you, but also be proud for distinguishing yourself from it as well.

Another thing that defining yourself based on culture or country does is to alienate others who don’t fit into the same background. Three hundred million Americans will say they are different than thirty million Canadians, and vice versa, even though they are interested in the same food, sports, music, movies, etc and generally have the same way of life.

So, no, freedom and nationalism don’t really go together.

Ari: Hmm…I see. Why is culture and nationalism so strong anyway?

Me: That’s another reason why people are afraid of freedom. Being part of a relationship or a family or a culture or a country, gives us identity, gives us something to belong to. Most people don’t want to feel like they don’t belong anywhere. We naturally seek connections with other humans and feel completely lost - cut adrift - without them. We actually need a connection to our species to survive mentally. Our identity is usually defined by our place among our peers and our perception of how we’re perceived by others, so without it…lost. With constant advertisement and encouragement, your country and your culture are easy things to feel you belong to. And since we don’t actually deal with official representatives of your entire country or culture, we never get the feeling that we, specifically, don’t belong…which is possible in smaller social circles.

Ari: So, again! Why do we want freedom if we’re going to feel lost??!

Me: Haha, well, yes, you won’t feel like you specifically belong anywhere anymore, but at the same time you’ll feel like you belong everywhere. You lose your connection to your country and your culture and create a connection with the entire human species.

Ari: Well, that sounds good. Sounds like globalization.

Me: Exactly, we can already see that this is inevitable. Who knows how long it will take but eventually all borders will dissolve and we’ll be a global nation someday.

Ari: A long time, I think. So then we’ll all be automatically free?

Me: Haha, no…there will still be families and cultures and governments and societies telling people of the right way to live. But at least, by then, hopefully they’ll have a better idea of how to live.

Ari: Haha, yes, hopefully!

Ok, so let’s see if I have everything now. To be free I need to consciously decide to be free and this means analyzing everything that makes me who I am and seeing which things were embedded by outside things like parents, society, culture, and the government, etc, and then I get rid of everything from them –

Me: Well, you don’t have to get rid of everything…just analyze it and see if it benefits you in your search for freedom, love and happiness.

Ari: Right...but if I’ve been brainwashed, like you say, how do I know?

Me: Well if it contributes to your health, it’s obviously good. If it’s basically a distraction that serves no beneficial purpose, then you have to re-examine it. This will take a long time of analyzing things as you experience them to see if it’s positive or not.

Ari: But what kinds of things are distractions?

Me: TV, for one. I don’t think that needs explanation. Being a fan of things as well. For example, it’s one thing to watch sport or listen to music to learn how to play or to simply enjoy the sound, but it’s quite another to have part of your life taken up by following the lives of people or teams involved in them. If you want to be a good musician or athlete, or whatever, take methods from everyone and find what works best for you - but to spend time or resources towards being a fan of people you’ll never really meet is not productive for your life.

Ari: Telling people that being a sports or music fan is bad for them will not be very popular…

Me: Haha…I know. But I’m not trying to be popular…trying to be free, remember?

But anyway, things like this are distractions. And unfortunately, most people just look to distract themselves until they die, never really living life. And I’m not saying that music and sports are a distraction – they are very important to our lives. But being a fan of a team, an athlete or an artist – following their progress or life in tabloids, etc, is far from productive. If you want to be a good athlete, study all great athletes, if you want to be a good musician, study all great musicians. From your diversified study you can create your own style unique to you instead of mimicking somebody else.

Ari: Yeah, I guess I see what you mean.

Ok, so I pick and choose what is healthy in my life and weed out the rest. I also need to learn how to survive, and then by living healthy and learning to survive and being free, my real self will start to shine through!

Me: Yes! Very good! That’s not so hard is it?

Ari: Haha, yeah right. Just one more question though…If everybody became free…wouldn’t society kinda collapse? I mean, if everybody is doing what they want, there will be many things not getting done right?

Me: O..K…so I see you’re still not clear on what freedom is and what the result will be, so I’ll recap. A free person isn’t wandering aimlessly around without concern for anybody but themselves…that’s a lost person. A free person is in search of universal truths; is in search of who they are and how they relate to society. Are they dependent on others emotionally, physically, financially, or mentally? Or are they positively contributing to the well-being of others? When the free person starts finding the truth about who they are and which parts of them have been injected by society but are not natural, they will shed the unnecessary and let their real self shine through.

Once the free person reaches this state, it’s not like they’re going to turn their back on the world. We need other humans in our lives for our own mental and emotional health. As I said earlier, we perceive our identity in how others perceive us. The difference is that the free person doesn’t look to attach itself to others – to drain from them. Instead they share their lives, in a giving mindset rather than a taking one.

There will, however, be changes in society if people start looking for freedom ‘en masse’. Western society promotes dependence and commitment. Very few people aren’t under some sort of financial commitment like debts or contracts. It’s an extremely normal thing to have a 3 year phone contract or a 5 year lease on a car or a 25 year mortgage on a house, and if you miss a monthly payment here or there your credit will be affected and great limits will be placed on you. These commitments make change look extremely risky. Changing jobs, quitting work to go back to school, or taking some time off to travel puts you in an insecure position when you have debts and contracts. The free person would most likely try to avoid these enslavements in the first place.

So, if society changes will it fail? No, it won’t. For the collapse of economy, as I said, freedom requires survivability. The jobs that nobody wants to do are done by people who can’t find other jobs…this situation will always exist. But by having more and more skills, it just gives you a better chance of always being able to find a job. And the difference is that the free person who’s in a survival situation will appreciate the job more and contribute more to it. And just as companies try to take advantage of the current, society-induced desire for stability, they will equally try to take advantage of the freedom-induced desire for flexibility and new markets will arise. New methods of training and education will appear too - which is actually something I’m working on right now.

But, the question is not whether society will change, but whether it should change. Right now: society promotes voluntary enslavement to debt; education systems focus on employment as opposed to awareness and higher learning; crimes committed out of desperation are common; it is widely accepted and encouraged to poison ourselves regularly with alcohol; the general rule is to take as much as you can from society, when you can; distraction from looking closely at our own lives is the main goal of society; and the list goes on.

So, yes, society would change and should change but it will not collapse. Do you understand now?

Ari: Hm…a lot to think about…and I can see you've thought about this a lot.

Me: Is there anything more important to think about - besides eternal love and happiness, of course?

Ari: Haha, you will have to tell me about this eternal love and happiness someday. This is interesting though…you should write a book or something.

Me: Haha..yeah…we’ll see.