On Freedom

Published: Jun 9, 2003 by Joe Larabell

"Man has the right to speak as he Will."
"Man has the right to write as he Will."
 -- from [Liber OZ](/oz.html) by Aleister Crowley

I like to think that my personal philosophy rests solidly on the foundation of personal freedom. Of course, it would probably be a bit of a stretch to say that my every action is based on this principle but it does play a strong part in my political and social views, as well as in my interactions with others. And I sincerely believe that we are each only as free as we allow others to be free. Allow me to explain…

Most of what I write today is based on the principles of Thelema and, in particular, on the contents of the Book of the Law. But while this happens to be the context within which I currently think, I have been thinking in this direction since before I ever heard of Aleister Crowley or Thelema. In fact, some of my early writings centered around individual freedom and autonomy. My involvement with Thelema was, in some ways, inevitable – since in effect I was already a Thelemite even before I knew how to spell it.

The basic principle, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” has been so often misinterpreted that it almost seems synonymous with anarchy in the minds of many. But this is so far from true as to be almost laughable. The key word in the phrase, if I may be allowed for a moment to interpret, is thou – an ancient form of the the common second-person pronoun. The speaker who utters this phrase to another is admonishing the other person to follow their own Will. Rather than being a selfish statement of one’s intention to trample anyone who stands in their way, it it an invitation to one and all to break free of the shakles of social convention and follow the dictates of their own hearts.

It is only through the granting of these freedoms to everyone with whom we deal that we can ever hope to gain those freedoms for ourselves. For who, granting that each human has the same rights as himself, would possibly in their right mind seek to trample on the rights of another? The whole thing is so obvious that I am dumbfounded by the mere necessity to explain the principle, much less the objections that arise as a result.

Someone will always say: “Yeah, but if everyone has the right to do what they want, why wouldn’t someone just decide to kill me right here on the spot?” Because, I answer, if they did, they would be affirming that, at least in their mind, the right to live was not a univerally held principle so therefore what harm is there in taking their life in return? Seems too harsh? Perhaps. But our so-called “civilization” has brought with it more harm than good as people struggle to retain their identity in a world devoid of direction. “Do what thou wilt” is more than an invitation to chaos – it is a door to the understanding of oneself. It is an identity and a direction for those who choose to truely contemplate the meaning of the statement.

Now, what does all that boil down to in the real world. Well, in everyday life it means treating people fairly – sorta like the Golden Rule. If you don’t want your personal secrets splattered all over the office, then don’t spread stuff you hear yourself. If you don’t want to be taken to the cleaners by sleasy salesmen, then be honest when you make deals with your own customers. If you want someone to be responsive to your needs then take the time to respond to theirs.

Too much trouble, you ask? Sure – it’s a lot of trouble. It means some of us might have to pull our heads out of our butts and think for a change. It means not relying on years of social circuitry so carefully built up over the years to protect us from having to look the other person in the eye. It even means possibly having to admit once in a while that you screwed up. But the reward is a world in which it is safe to be whoever or whatever you desire – a world in which you do not have to force yourself to conform to someone else’s notions of normalcy.

But to pull this off, we must vigilantly guard against anything that erodes either our personal freedom or our individual autonomy. We must identify and expose attempts to catalog and control us in the name of protecting the public interest. We must resist the constant invasions into our private lives brought about by otherwise well-meaning public officials who want to take the easy way out of any problem by simply restricting everyone. And we do this not by force, mind you – since even these poor misguided fools have a right to their opinions. We do it by education – be raising the level of awareness of the general populace when it comes to freedom, privacy, and autonomy. And we start with the only thing we truely have control over – ourselves.

[Note: Further installments on this rant, as well as links to appropriate groups and individuals who are fighting for the cause of freedom, will be added as time allows. In the meantime, if you have any comments or find any web sites worth adding here, please drop me a line.]

Comments:

The Disqus comments section is currently under evaluation. You should not have to be logged in to post a comment. If you have any trouble or see anything strange in this section, please let me know. Thanks.

It’s funny how, every once in a while, if you listen to the subtle messages unfolding around you on a constant basis, you pick up on a pattern of small bits of information that seem to build into something substantial. That happened to me recently on the general topic of effortlessness. Like many would-be adepts, I have a number of daily practices that I fit into various parts of the day. Sometimes they pay off with feelings of increased awareness or energy but, if I were being totally honest, most of the time they feel like drudge-work… a part of the day that occurs more out of habit than anything else… with the basic idea being one of consistency rather than joy.

I was listening to the latest Sam Harris podcast today and ran across an interesting take on something that should be familiar to most Western Ceremonial Magicians. Eric Weinstein was talking about finding meaning in license plate numbers as he drives around (don’t we all do that when we first start on the Path?) and the way he explained it was:

"...it's important to notice what it feels like to discern meaning where there is no meaning... it's important to get in touch with the "as if madness" experience in order to guard against madness; so I'm hoping to suspend my insistence on Truth for periods of time..."

I’m not sure about the connection with madness, per-se… and I’m wondering if that wasn’t just a ploy designed to wrap up the thought before getting interrupted. I realized when he said that that another good reason for discerning meaning where there is none is to prevent intellectual ossification (my term… it didn’t appear in the podcast, as far as I know). The belief that one particular way of looking at things must serve as the filter through which we see everything else from that point forward seems to be common in most philosophies and pretty much all religions. Adherence to a strict theology makes us less able to evaluate contrary ideas on their own merit. On the other hand, by constantly playing fast and loose with one’s synaptic network, so to speak, one might stand a chance of maintaining enough mental flexibility to recognize a true Epiphany when it finally does come.

It’s ironic that avoiding intellectual ossification was one of the main points that Sam was trying to convey just moments earlier… that there’s no logical reason to use one or more points-of-view which happen to have been elaborated thousands of years ago over new points-of-view developed by one’s own reason in the present time. Of course, that’s easier said than done and when most people start on any sort of Philosophical or Spiritual Path, they’re usually not capable of the kind of deep reasoning that would discern the “true meaning” of the Universe at first glance… so we may need to use ancient philosophy and religion as a crutch for a while… in order to bootstrap our thinking to the point where we can reason with some depth on the Universe and our purpose within it. But I expect that we all have to eventually drop the rhetoric and design our own systems based on First Principles.

I was listening to an interview with the authors of the new book The Distracted Mind on NPR this morning and they touched on a favorite pet peeve of mine that centers on a basic misunderstanding of the term multitasking. According to Wikipedia, the first published use of the term “multitask” appeared in an IBM paper describing the capabilities of the IBM System/360 in 1965. Is is only recently that the term has been used in the common vernacular to refer to the apparent ability of humans to “concentrate” on more than one task at a time.