Here lives a free man. Nobody serves him.
- Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)
The concept of freedom has as many interpretations as there are people who use the word.
We fight wars in the name of freedom. We insist that people who have been wrongly convicted and incarcerated be freed because freedom is a basic human right. What the concept of freedom means is confusing.
Politicians manipulate our thinking on various subjects by hinting or clearly stating that our freedom will be reduced or confined if we do not support the action they advocate. It motivates fear, which is what gets them elected.
Freedom is a great political football because nobody is clear about what it means. Most times the word is used, it means whatever the user wants it to mean.
Whatever freedom is, the concept exists between the ears.
Is it worth fighting for? If you can't think for yourself and tend to take your view of the world and your opinions of the parts of it that affect you from others, it's not worth fighting for. You have given up your freedom voluntarily already.
Freedom as a tool of political persuasion is only used--can only be used--with people who have already given up their right and ability to think for themselves. When we see how many wars are fought in the cause of freedom, we can see how many people don't think for themselves. Many people don't think at all, they just follow.
People such as The Mahatma, Mohandas Gandhi, who was jailed many times for annoying the British with his peaceful insistence (resistance) that the UK free India, and democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Ki, of Burma, under house arrest for years, did not consider their freedom to have been removed. No matter where they were (or are) they could think for themselves.
Their freedom to move around from place to place was restricted, but their freedom of mind was not--could not--be taken from them.
Are you free? Because you read, because you choose to seek out information and opinions on various subjects, you certainly are free. Or you have greater potential to be free, whether you adopt it or not.
You may listen to input from a variety of sources, but you don't make up your mind on any subject until and unless you have learned more than enough on which to base a sound decision.
If freedom is based on the unfettered ability to think, isn't everyone free, almost by definition?
By definition, yes. By choice, no. Too many people allow their minds to be manipulated by others who have something to gain by having them as allies or supporters. Look at the effectiveness of most advertising and religions as examples of how propaganda can be used to have people voluntarily give up their freedom.
Follwers listen to one line of thought and adopt it as if it were inherently good and right and the only possible choice. It's like two siblings fighting over something and mom supporting the first one to explain their case to her. The first one to make a good case get the most supporters.
No one can take away your freedom of thought. The only way you can lose that is to give it away.
Why do so many people give away that right? They aren't taught it at school. At home, kids have to follow the ways of the family, at least when they are younger. At school, kids are taught that the teacher's way is the right way. Even at the college level students learn that it's risky to take a position on a paper that is contrary to that of the teacher because a low mark may result.
People who enjoy true freedom of thought generally do not voluntarily go to war. Some may take leadership roles and send others into battle. They don't go themselves because they value their own freedom.
The freedom to think.
We can teach this. The world won't fall apart or be bombed out of existence if we teach freedom of thought and support freedom of expression. It's not just a clause in a constitution. Freedom can be a way of life.
It's only a risk when too many people allow themselves to be persuaded that it's a dangerous thing to allow others to express their opinions.
Freedom of thought and expression is embedded in the constitutions of many countries. Yet people in those countries give away that freedom when they accept the fear mongering by leaders who want opinions that differ from their own to be suppressed.
We have nothing to fear from differences. We only allow ourselves to be afraid when we don't have exposure to all sides or positions of an argument or issue.
Those who limit our exposure to differences of opinion or forms of art or anything else want to remove our freedom of thought, our freedom to make our own choices. The more we restrict our learning of information about differences, the more we sacrifice our freedom.
When we imprison our own minds, all that's left is our bodies. And they are no more sophisticated than the bodies of other animals or plants. Bodies aren't intelligent, they just are.
We can teach the freedom to think. We can teach it in schools. We simply need to teach boundaries with it, such as when freedom of thought becomes licence or anarchy that impinges on the rights of others.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach children how to think for themselves.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Showing posts with label Gandhi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gandhi. Show all posts
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Can We Manage On Love Alone?
All You Need Is Love, according to the Beatles song. What does that mean?
We can't eat love. The sexual version provides a limited amount of exercise, though better if done in bright sunlight so we can absorb UV rays that our bodies can convert to vitamin D. We can't wear it, though love may put a relaxed look on the face of a receiver. We can't buy anything with love.
What can we do with love? Martina McBride sings a song called Love's The Only House Big Enough to Hold All The Pain In The World. It's a good song, but I can't wrap my head around what it could possibly mean.
Can love be everything that is important in life? John Lennon thought so, though he tended to enjoy his drugs (when he wrote the song) so much that we might want to question the value of his judgment.
When we are in pain we do tend to turn to those who love us. But that kind of loving doesn't stick. It's like the bathtub drain loving the feel of water running through it.
Can we ever get enough love that all the pain we might have to endure in life would be dulled or not affect us? Maybe, but I'm thinking of that bathtub again.
Let's see what some famous people have said about love.
"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it." Martin Luther King Jr.
"Wherever there are jars [shocks in your life], wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love." Mohandas K. (The Mahatma) Gandhi
"It's not how much we do but how much love we put in the thing. It's not how much we give but how much love we put in the giving." Mother Teresa
Mr. King, the Mahatma and the Mother were well known for their inspiring speeches. These quotes inspire, but they may be difficult to translate into action.
Let's look at what the recently dubbed richest man in the world has to say. Given that rich people tend to focus more on gaining money than on improving their people skills, we may approach this one with skepticism.
"There's nobody I know who commands the love of others who doesn't feel like a success. And I can't imagine people who aren't loved feel very successful." Warren Buffett
Though Mr. Buffett uses language as we might expect a rich man to use and he has twisted the meaning so it came out backward, I believe he has a more important point to make than the others.
How can we command the love of others? He should have said "have ready access to the love of others." That's what he meant. Love cannot be commanded, in the usual sense of the word.
There is only one way to have access to the love of others without having that unstable bathtub scenario. To get love, we have to give it. That's the kind of love that lasts, that doesn't drain away leaving us empty after the "event."
Despite what some have said, love is not the only thing you have to give away to get more. That's true of most emotions. If we give anger, we will get back anger or fear, for example.
As accepted as this concept of giving in order to get more is among those who know the real value of love, it's not taught to every child.
We assume that every mother loves her children, no matter what. Or we believe that, despite some evidence to the contrary, such as a mother who suffers from severe post partum depression who may seem to want to kill her baby. We assume that every child loves its parents, though evidence is mounting that this is not the case in every family.
These assumptions about love are wrong. Love may be a natural emotion for us, but it has to be taught. If a child does not learn about love in its fullest sense before it's prime learning years are past (by age six, to a lesser extent age 11), then that person will always have a problem giving love as an adult even if he or she learns how to give it and to receive it.
Like an addict who spends the rest of his life "recovering" from his addiction, an adult who learn about love in adolescence or later will have to be regularly reminded about what love is, how to give it and how to receive it.
Our need for love is the part of love that's natural. Knowing how to give it and to receive it in a socially acceptable form is not part of our natural makeup. It must be taught if we want and expect people to know it.
In order for love to be taught to children, their parents must understand how love works before their children are born. Otherwise they may learn to late to teach their kids, then the kids may have problems the parents don't understand and will have no idea how to cope with them.
Given that the rate of divorce in developed countries hovers around the 50 percent mark, meaning that roughly half the couples who have children will separate and half or more of the single mothers and their children will live in poverty, we need to get teaching about love soon. The divorce rate proves that not many newly married couples know about love, even if they do know about romance.
It's all very well to have goals for children of being professionals or corporate CEOs, but if they don't know, understand and appreciate love, they will not have a full life. They could be rich, but not successful at life.
Even the world's richest man knows that. I'll bet Warren Buffett had a very loving mother.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers to learn what kids need in terms of their social and emotional development, including how to love and to receive love.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
We can't eat love. The sexual version provides a limited amount of exercise, though better if done in bright sunlight so we can absorb UV rays that our bodies can convert to vitamin D. We can't wear it, though love may put a relaxed look on the face of a receiver. We can't buy anything with love.
What can we do with love? Martina McBride sings a song called Love's The Only House Big Enough to Hold All The Pain In The World. It's a good song, but I can't wrap my head around what it could possibly mean.
Can love be everything that is important in life? John Lennon thought so, though he tended to enjoy his drugs (when he wrote the song) so much that we might want to question the value of his judgment.
When we are in pain we do tend to turn to those who love us. But that kind of loving doesn't stick. It's like the bathtub drain loving the feel of water running through it.
Can we ever get enough love that all the pain we might have to endure in life would be dulled or not affect us? Maybe, but I'm thinking of that bathtub again.
Let's see what some famous people have said about love.
"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it." Martin Luther King Jr.
"Wherever there are jars [shocks in your life], wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love." Mohandas K. (The Mahatma) Gandhi
"It's not how much we do but how much love we put in the thing. It's not how much we give but how much love we put in the giving." Mother Teresa
Mr. King, the Mahatma and the Mother were well known for their inspiring speeches. These quotes inspire, but they may be difficult to translate into action.
Let's look at what the recently dubbed richest man in the world has to say. Given that rich people tend to focus more on gaining money than on improving their people skills, we may approach this one with skepticism.
"There's nobody I know who commands the love of others who doesn't feel like a success. And I can't imagine people who aren't loved feel very successful." Warren Buffett
Though Mr. Buffett uses language as we might expect a rich man to use and he has twisted the meaning so it came out backward, I believe he has a more important point to make than the others.
How can we command the love of others? He should have said "have ready access to the love of others." That's what he meant. Love cannot be commanded, in the usual sense of the word.
There is only one way to have access to the love of others without having that unstable bathtub scenario. To get love, we have to give it. That's the kind of love that lasts, that doesn't drain away leaving us empty after the "event."
Despite what some have said, love is not the only thing you have to give away to get more. That's true of most emotions. If we give anger, we will get back anger or fear, for example.
As accepted as this concept of giving in order to get more is among those who know the real value of love, it's not taught to every child.
We assume that every mother loves her children, no matter what. Or we believe that, despite some evidence to the contrary, such as a mother who suffers from severe post partum depression who may seem to want to kill her baby. We assume that every child loves its parents, though evidence is mounting that this is not the case in every family.
These assumptions about love are wrong. Love may be a natural emotion for us, but it has to be taught. If a child does not learn about love in its fullest sense before it's prime learning years are past (by age six, to a lesser extent age 11), then that person will always have a problem giving love as an adult even if he or she learns how to give it and to receive it.
Like an addict who spends the rest of his life "recovering" from his addiction, an adult who learn about love in adolescence or later will have to be regularly reminded about what love is, how to give it and how to receive it.
Our need for love is the part of love that's natural. Knowing how to give it and to receive it in a socially acceptable form is not part of our natural makeup. It must be taught if we want and expect people to know it.
In order for love to be taught to children, their parents must understand how love works before their children are born. Otherwise they may learn to late to teach their kids, then the kids may have problems the parents don't understand and will have no idea how to cope with them.
Given that the rate of divorce in developed countries hovers around the 50 percent mark, meaning that roughly half the couples who have children will separate and half or more of the single mothers and their children will live in poverty, we need to get teaching about love soon. The divorce rate proves that not many newly married couples know about love, even if they do know about romance.
It's all very well to have goals for children of being professionals or corporate CEOs, but if they don't know, understand and appreciate love, they will not have a full life. They could be rich, but not successful at life.
Even the world's richest man knows that. I'll bet Warren Buffett had a very loving mother.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, grandparents and teachers to learn what kids need in terms of their social and emotional development, including how to love and to receive love.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
