Give Me Freedom

Freedom

/ˈfriːdəm/

noun

1-liberation or deliverance, as from confinement or bondage

2-personal liberty, as from slavery, bondage, serfdom, etc

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

In the thousands of years that human have been keeping records, there has always been a constant. A philosophical concept that has been sought, at one point or another, by every civilization and every man, woman, child that has ever existed. Freedom.

Though there are many definitions for freedom, I believe another word can sum it up the best; Liberation. Liberation from control, liberation from judgment, liberation from finances or liberation from the constraint of the mind. Everybody at one point has thirsted to be released from the burdens of.

It’s sad really that there are so many ways to hold another in bondage. So many in fact, that I know most people either don’t understand the dynamics of it or would rather not even think about it. I know sometimes I’d rather not. Freedom is a word that is thrown around often but do people really understand the responsibility that it comes with? Most people I have observed are quick to throw out the word when they want to use it to say or do whatever they want but at the very same confrontation, deny their debaters the same rights. Government that promote freedom are quick to enslave their citizens under debt or regulations and laws. Religion only allows freedom to those who devote themselves to the servitude of their deities without question.

These examples are very troubling the more I think about it because they are the basic foundations to the very lives we all live. We live within a government, around people and for most, practice a religion.

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility."

Sigmund Freud

We have all, in some form or another been enslaved. Some way more dramatically than others, that’s true, but enslaved nonetheless and are still enslaved. Hundreds of thousands have fought for generation to free themselves from bondage and some have succeeded but only to realize (only some understood really) that they are still slaves in different ways. There have been heros and there have been saviors and there have been martyrs . There have been those who have given their lives for the quest to liberation and those who sacrifice today to fight for this idea. Idea; That’s all freedom really is, isn’t it? an Idea. An Idea that has been around since the hours after we first decided to live together as a civilization.

The quest for freedoms have had a long past. We can only really start from the first occurrence of the word. Sumer has been widely accepted to be the first civilization having been the founders of writing and record keeping. Sumer is located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia in the area that later became Babylonia and is now southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. That’s where the oldest written account of the word Freedom comes from and has been dated back to 5500 and 4000 BCE. The first use of the word was to describe Freedom from debt. The first form of record keeping developed was for agricultural purposes. They kept records of gains and losses and of course debts. So, Freedom from debt turns out to be the oldest form of bondage there is. Every culture understood this and some have used this method to enslave their people. The Kings of yesteryear used to use taxes to establish debt to their citizens. They would keep them so poor that they were unable to afford the necessities needed for any kind of rebellion, Which some became so desperate to attempt anyway, and sometimes succeeded. Just ask Marie Antoinette, The economy of the french back then was blamed on her lavish spending and the people became so enraged by their financial state, they rebelled and ultimately tried and beheaded her and the king.

Freedoms from debt have been so sought after that some would do anything to free themselves from it. To this day, in parts of south Asia, the Practice of Debt bondage is still used. A person will pledge their labor or services as security for the repayment for a debt or other obligation. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation. The abolishment of this practice to the rest of the world does not date as far back as some would like to think. It was used in the colonial United States and only abolished in other countries in the mid to late 1800s. In today's America, the majority of the citizens have become debt slaves. 43% of Americans spend more than they earn and the average American is $75,000 in debt. How? Do you own you own your house? your cars? Have you paid off your student loans? How does that make you slaves? You have to work in order to pay those debts off. You are providing services to pay the debt that you are in. You are working because you are forced to in order to pay for the things you have already bought. You are a slave to your debt.

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

George Orwell

The slavery of man against his will and the idea that a human being can be bought and sold as property has been the most cruel of all other forms of slavery. Though some may think as slavery as only being used by Europeans and early Americans, most civilizations in our world histories used slaves and the slaves they used were of different origins not just African. Though the origins of “legal slavery” goes back to ancient Greece and onto the Ottoman , Mongol and Christian empires, They also date further back to the Egyptians and Babylonians. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, dating to 1700 BCE, makes distinctions between the freeborn, freed and slave. So as long as there has been a written account of history, there has been people who have held power over others and has used humans as property and there have been people who fought for Freedom.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Thomas Jefferson

Though Slavery was a prominent “business” during the colonization of America, The majority of the founding father, though also owning slaves themselves, being handed down by rule of law and also by law being unable at the time to free them, believed that all men were created equal under the eyes of the creator.George Washington once wrote

“ It be among my first wishes that some plan be adopted, by which slavery in this country be abolished by law”.

Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the constitution chose his words very carefully so that future legislators could make the changes needed to free those in bondage. He was also one of the first fighters for abolishing slavery.

“You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade but of the condition of slavery: and certainly nobody will be more willing to encounter every sacrifice for that object.” -Thomas Jefferson to Brissot de Warville, February 11, 1788.

He chose words like “Creator” as opposed to saying God so as not to limit these rights to only those who acknowledge certain religious beliefs. In 1778 he introduced a Virginia law prohibiting the importation of enslaved Africans. In 1784 he proposed a ban on slavery in the Northwest Territory, new lands ceded by the British in 1783. We have all heard of the ⅗ compromise which held that "all other persons” (slaves) only be considered ⅗ of a person. Though most people will look at this compromise as demeaning to the slaves and maybe rightfully so because it was, at the time, solely done with the purpose to restrict the number of delegates each state would have by the number of population. Most of the states in the south had thousands of slaves, non being able to vote but the population giving those states more delegates, therefore giving those states greater voting powers but it was the wording and cunningness from the northern delegates who used the purposes of taxation to make the southern states agree to the compromise that opened the doors to future abolitionists, limiting the southern states voting powers on matters that pertained to partial and total emancipation, the later coming on January 1, 1863 by Abraham Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves. Those actions by the early fighters for freedom paved the way for the later.

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."

Abraham Lincoln

There have been many fighters of freedom in the history of man. Harriet Tubman was a prominent figure that would help slaves escape to the freed northern states through the underground railroad. She was also a union spy during the Civil War. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was a leader in the civil rights movement which in the 1960 fought for the equal rights in the segregated south. Mahatma Gandhi fought for Indian Independence from the British. John Adams and the “Sons of Liberty” fought for rights of the colonies against the british. Jesus and Moses as well as many religious icons rebelled against slavery and persecution. William Wallace and Robert de Bruc fought for Scottish Freedoms. Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution and Cesar Chavez, The civil right activist who fought for the rights of the mexican American Farmworkers. These are just few of many example of people whose very existence was a rebellion. They fought for their freedoms with disregard to the punishments they would receive from those in power. They fought with courage for the freedoms of all others. They believed in an idea that was not accepted by all. That is still not accepted by all.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

To this day we send troops to other countries to fight for the oppressed. We have brave men and women who believe in freedom for all not just some. They are volunteers that voyage to distant lands and fight for those who are not strong enough to fight for themselves. We have those who fight to educate the uneducated. To feed the hungry and to house the homeless. They are all fighters of freedoms.

In our very own country we have those who fight now for the freedoms that were given to us by our Constitution. Those in power now in our government have forgotten what our founding fathers wrote and our revolutionaries fought for . They have enslaved us with senseless laws, taxation and regulations. We are under a two party system, One of which has a complete disregard for the Constitution and the other who will not fight for it. Yes, we have abolished slavery in terms of ownership over another man in most of the world but not all of it. It is said to this day that 20% of the earths populations are still enslaved and the percentage of those who live by some other form of slavery is closer to 90%. Slavery to debt is very much still a thing. We use what we do not have in order to “keep up” to a reality that has been blanketed over our eyes and freely put ourselves in a situation that we become slaves to our own property. Is this not ownership over a person? Every time our race ,makes an advancement against bondage, those in power be it Corporation or Government , find different ways to put the chains back on. Be it chains of the uneducated, Chains of the indebted or Chains of inequality. These are not physical chains. They are chains for our minds. They still weigh us down, burden us and are sometimes the means to our ends.

We now have to fight to free our minds from the reality that has been placed over our eyes to turn us into unknowing slaves. The first thing slave owners used to do when receiving new slaves is “break” their spirits. They understood that they can never really have ownership of another person unless they enslave their minds first. Out of all the forms of slavery there is, I believe that mental slavery is the worst because these chains are ones that can not be forced on. Those are chains that we agree to put on ourselves, most times without even knowing it. The chains of the minds are the ones that bind us most heavily. Our minds create our reality so as long as we are free in our minds, we can never really be slaves. However, we still allow ourselves to be most times. most times, we don’t even know it. Everything we see on television, everything that we hear or read in the news, every song that comes on the air, everything that is presented to us is done so with a purpose to control us. Everything. We buy things because we are told to. We eat the things we are told to. We behave the way we are told to. We listen to what we are told to and we accept the way things are because we are told we should.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

Nelson Mandela

Our governments let us believe that we are still in control but we all know that isn’t true. Little by little we have lost the few freedoms we did have and we did it in the name of security. Those in political power have created divisions, scares, famines, wars and civil unrest in order to take a little more from us and we happily agree so that we can get back to living the lives the corporations tell us we all should live. We have spent our whole lives and history with these pseudo facts being placed in front of us to lead us further away from the truths. The truths that we the people, the masses of the world are really the ones with the power. We have had these subliminal impulses placed in front of us either distract us or create debt. Most people will live their entire lives without even knowing it and even more dangerous, not caring to know about it. The rest of the people are so preoccupied by it that to even make an attempt to challenge those who put those chains on us will crumble their existence. Those will be some of the people that we will be forced to rebell against. Yes, rebell.

"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."

Voltaire

The next rebellion in the pursuit of freedom is coming and only YOU can be the fighter of it. It will be the freedom of the mind. We should not allow ourselves to be influenced to live a life we do not really need. We need to constantly ask questions about all we are told by those in power. We need to have the courage to stand against any and all that is wrong. We need to educate ourselves so that we are not easily fooled by a smile and a promise. We need to free ourselves from financial debts and refuse to live by laws that have only been passed to limit our freedoms. Once we free ourselves from the chains that have been placed over our minds, there will be no other bondage that can harm us but we need to be strong and poise and we need to stand together.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!"

Bob Marley

I believe in freedom and I will continue to work everyday to achieve it. I will forever be a fighter for all that is just and right in the world. I will share the ramblings of my mind with the hopes that others agree. I will rebel against that which is illogical and senseless. Dogmatic views will not be my perceptions. I will ask the questions most won't want the answers to and when I speak, I will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. My pursuit is to expand the minds that I reach. I can only offer you a look into my reality. It’s up to you to decide if you want the Freedoms I offer.

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.

Jim Morrison

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An Unfiltered Mind