Take the concept of Freedom. We champion it, but what does it mean?
When we say, "Canada is a free country", how do we define that?
I think it's fair to say that most Canadians would agree with me that these qualities, these tangible attributes, define our Free Country....
I've been thinking about freedom in terms of possibilities, as in: how vast is the spectrum of possible actions at any given time -
Or freedom as knowledge base - as in, you are only as free as you can conceive yourself to be
So if you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the freedom - and that's true.
If you don't know about possibilities, they don't exist for you. Relativity in action.
By extension, if you can't afford possibilities, they don't exist for you either...even if you know about them.
So for those of us who were born at the bottom (of the top..) - we have to start learning, and earning, and quick.
School is one way - and works until about junior high. After that, you can choose to keep going to school, or you can learn out in the World. Two very different places.
Either way, there is only one thing to do: Work. At a job or at a class. Just get to work.
It's the same deal even if you decide to leave society and fuck off out into the woods by yourself and just eat grass and hunt and sip from a stream and hang out all day. That is still working your ass off.
What are we free from? Oppression? Sure, it's not gang rape, but working full-time at Wal-Mart is an affront to rationality.
Can that be a rule? "If it involves doing something you hate - to survive - it's oppression."
Does our Freedom free us from responsibility for the products we use? I know, that sounds gay.
I'm just fucking around. We are more free than Zimbabweans.
But the people of that and other exotic vacation destinations are also free...
They are generally free from some of the more devious mind pollution that we are subject to...
Free of illusion....
Not quite sure what I'm getting at....but I do know that every day, I thank God that I won the Earth Lottery, and was born here - fed, sheltered, cared for.
And I imagine that, if I was a kid somewhere different, that I would think about what a kid in Canada would be doing - all the amazing things at his fingertips - he could be at a movie, or shopping, or out in a park...or playing computer games...he could be... not in a war-torn husk of a nation with no infrastructure and limitless corruption....trying to build a future from mud...
