THE PROOF OF FREEDOM

You are home and the doorbell rings.  You open the front door and there is a deliveryman there holding an African Lily plant.  A card attached to the plant indicates that it is a gift from a friend.  You take the plant inside the house, admire it for a while, and then, in all likelihood, you ask yourself the following two questions:

          

                How much water does it need?

                How much sunlight should it get?

You have never owned an African Lily plant, you do not have a book on plants in the house, so you call the local florist.

"An African Lily plant?" the florist asks rhetorically.  "Water it generously every other day and expose it to natural light."

Now that simple tale about a plant may be the most important story you will ever hear.  It is the key to personal fulfillment, a rewarding life and happiness.  It is the proof of freedom.

The two questions you asked yourself about the plant, regarding the amount of water and sunlight it ought get, reflect your awareness (consciously or subconsciously) that if the plant is to be healthy and survive, it must be treated in a certain way.  That there is a proper course of action to take with regard to it.  Too little, or too much, water or sunlight will harm the plant, perhaps kill it.

And when the florist answered your questions about caring for the plant, without examining it, he was expressing, implicitly, a fundamental aspect of our world:  every species in the Universe is something special, something unique.  Every species has its own identity, its own nature, and if it is to survive, it must be treated in accordance with its nature.  In philosophy, that is sometimes referred to as "The Law of Identity."  A is A: things are what they are.  You know that.  A friend gets a certain type of dog and you say something like, "Be sure to let it run around outdoors a lot, they like that."  That is you espousing The Law of Identity.

One thing further about the plant.  What you or I or anyone else, even the florist, subjectively thinks about how much water and sunlight are good for the African Lily, is irrelevant.  Completely.  The only determining factor, the one and only decider of what is or is not good for the plant, is the plant itself.  The nature of the plant itself.  Our personal opinions about how to treat the plant are correct only if...only if...they coincide with, if they reflect, the nature of the plant itself.

Do you know that the very same points, the very same ideas, apply equally well to me and to you?  To all human beings?  Are you aware that even though we have different personalities, characters and temperaments, we all have the same nature? That we are members of a particular species of life and, like the African Lily plant, and every other living entity, we must be treated (and that includes the way we treat ourselves) and act in accordance with our nature if we are to survive and to bloom...that is, to be happy.

To act contrary to our nature, to deny The Law of Identity as it applies to us, is self-destructive. Literally. In every way...mentally, physically, psychologically, emotionally...we harm ourselves when we do not recognize our fundamental nature and/or fail to act in harmony with it.  We restrain our potential, we inflict unnecessary pain and anguish upon ourselves, we miss fulfilling opportunities of life.  

The failure to act in harmony with our nature kills us.  Or induces us to kill ourselves.

A key, critical aspect of our nature is that we are each a composite of mind and body.  The function of the mind is to collect data about the world in which we live, process it, evaluate it, judge it, and then decide what action, if any, should be taken. The function of the body is to implement that chosen course of action.

Every action you take every moment of every day of your life (other than certain internal involuntary actions, such as breathing and heart beating) should properly follow that very natural sequence:  the mind, consciously or otherwise, choosing the course of action, and the body acting it out. 

Human action is the physicalization of human thought.  It is the bringing of the thought, the idea, into being.  When you follow that sequence of "thought-action," you are functioning as your nature requires.  You are whole and complete, an active, viable, intellectually independent, human being.  You are you, all of you, roaring ahead on all cylinders.

Freedom is a status, an ability to live, without interference, in harmony with your nature, including living in accordance with the decisions of your own mind.  Worth repeating:  your own mind.

The human mind needs to, and likes to, feel functional, competent, efficacious.  It needs to, and likes to, feel that its decisions are meaningful and that they will be carried out.  Since that is the its primary function, it experiences an enormous sense of frustration when the link between it and the body has been cut and its control over the body lost. 

Freedom is the key to happiness because it is natural.  Reflect for a moment on your own life.  Think about the times when you are happy, fulfillingly happy.  When you truly feel vital and alive.  When life seems sweeter than sweet.  Are those not times when you are enjoying freedom?  When you are doing what you deep down wish to be doing?  When you are uncompromisingly acting out your mind's wishes?  

Freedom provides the opportunity for unity, a sense of wholeness, within you because it brings together your two facets as a human being.  When your mind is doing what it is designed by nature to do and your body is doing what your mind is directing it to do, then you are functioning at your optimum, your ideal.  The stage is then set for you to accomplish more, to enjoy more, to be more.

Because freedom permits you to function at your optimum, you will likely accomplish more.  Which, in turn, will motivate you to work harder and to seek even greater goals. That, in turn, will likely result in greater successes, engendering further motivation. You will establish a reinforcing success/motivation cycle with virtually limitless potential.

When your mind and body are in harmony, your life moves ahead on a straighter line.  And thus further.  Into areas you haven't been to before, pleasures you have not previously known, passions theretofore muted or unexpressed.

Today, many (most?) people see themselves not as individuals but as links in a social chain, concerned more with living up to the mores and preferences of the group than those of their own choosing.  Few men consistently think for themselves or consistently act in accordance with their own independently chosen judgments.  The consequence is a half-hearted, burdened life, lacking conviction, devoid of direction, uncertain and despairing...with none of the passion that only a free-spirited, confident, imaginative, independent, mind can spark.

Freedom is what our nature requires, and anyone, any government, that does not recognize and respect that fact, without restriction or limitation, is our deadly enemy and should be treated as`such.

Those who argue that freedom is not an absolute are arguing that some death is better than life.

Not in my world
 .