FREEEEEEEEDOM!!!!

I am writing in regard to freedom today. That it seems so misunderstood in a country that touts it as a foundational pillar is, to me, one of the biggest indicators that life is nothing but a joke and death is when you finally get let in on it. In this post I will aim to set forth a no bullshit, fully considered and no excuses made definition of freedom that will emphasize personal responsibility and ask an extremely important question about mankind. To start with, this is the best dictionary definition I found for freedom: "The power to determine action without restraint" That's from dictionary.com and I think it's the most spartan and effective definition you're likely to come across. But what I noticed most when I was reviewing the different definitions is that all of their verbiage indicates a lack of something. It's always without, never with. Or maybe absence, but never presence. From this perspective the losing your chains metaphor really works best for freedom. Sure you're now without your chains but that doesn't mean you earn a prize. In the first days of freedom you have less than you did in your recent days of wearing fetters. It's up to you to be strong and focused enough to provide more for yourself. This brings us to my main point: freedom is not about having choices and the amount of choices you have aren't a representation of how free you are, despite how much it's idealized as such. You will always have choices and the amount of choices you have will always be limited by circumstance. Freedom is about responsibility. To declare your freedom is to declare yourself capable of managing your life without the need for direction. To a society it signifies that you are capable living your life without infringing on theirs. On a personal level it means you are capable of living in a way that fulfills your genius, or whatever marker you set for what you want in life. Like I said earlier, the amount of choices you have aren't a representation of how free you are. In other words, you can't measure freedom by counting how many options you have to choose from. You can only measure how free you are by assessing the qualities of the choices you have. You should have choices that possess as many qualities as you can imagine, a full range of good, bad and everything in between. Which brings us to the crux of the issue for me. Humankind has so much potential, for both good and bad, but that potential is limited and capped by authority. A central authority that presides over a group of people is a replacement for each of those people's personal responsibility and that is said to be necessary because you just can't trust the people around you without something to keep them in line. But what no one mentions is that authority, no matter how scaled back, encroaches not only on your freedom but on your responsibility for yourself. History has shown that human authority systems, once established, tend to seek an equilibrium and promote a homogenous citizenry. But human consciousness is not homogenous. If you set it free you will always get something unique. If you subject it to moral status quo's and/or an over reaching government then you limit what it's capable of. And yeah maybe it won't always be beautiful if you set it free, but look at the world around us today; it's barely holding together. I think it's time we truly realized what freedom is and ask the only question that matters in my opinion: As a global population are we ready to handle true freedom and democracy? I'll attempt to answer that question next week.