FREEDOM MEANS UNDERSTANDING WE HAVE EVERYTHING LEFT TO LOSE BY NOT HAVING IT

HOW TO KILL A FREE SOCIETY - OR TO PREVENT IT FROM EVER EXISTING

HOW TO PREVENT FREEDOM AND AGENCY

Forward:

In my very limited experience so far the largest factor in knowing how to kill off - or prevent from occurring - freedom and agency among a people - is to find a way to get them to stop asking questions - and to get them instead to become quite certain and convinced of what they know.

No need to ask questions when we are already convinced of what we know - and no reason to give up the certainty of knowing for the uncomfortable state of not knowing.

Education offered by the tyranny of the nation state is limited by regimented, didactic - and passive - learning techniques.

It does not dare offer more Socratic methods where learning is a creative - highly active and dynamic pursuit - and where nothing is regimented.

It does not dare to do so - because the active and Socratic engaged learning model - threatens the highly organized tyranny of the tightly scripted ideas which support it.

The active participatory Socratic method is as distinguished from the regimented, passive and robotic style as is night from day.

The difference between the first style and the second is the difference between engaged - eager to learn - questioning students and teachers - and the dead - lifeless - drudgery of passive, robotic and unquestioning acceptance.

This helps explain why real dynamic, active, inquiry-based and engaged education is required of free society.

Freedom is not free - it never has been - and never will be.

Freedom is a participatory process and either welcomes free speech and questioning or dies a highly organized death from the cancer of tyranny.

HOW TO MURDER FREEDOM

Submit the children in a society to an educational system where everything is already known and decided.

Teach the children to become good citizens - those who sit passively by as the accepted wisdom is poured into their passively accepting little brains.

Praise them when they successfully parrot back the accepted wisdom to the proper authorities.

Stifle the child’s creativity, imagination and natural tendency to ask questions about everything.

Educate the teachers to teach the prescribed agenda and to stick to the prescribed curriculum.

Initiate a testing system which guarantees that the prescribed curriculum is being taught.

Create a hierarchical system where those who do well on standardized tests - demonstrating their allegiance to the prescribed curriculum - are promoted as successful.

Or - even worse - begin promoting those who subscribe to certain belief systems - without any criteria at all to prove capability or intelligence.

Either way is a sure path towards a thoroughly homogenized society where everyone is in a state of being throughly convinced of some truth or another.

And it is the bare bones of how to create a homogenized - state-of-the-art - cult of convenience - one which leads directly to tyranny.

Passive robotic learning results in society where everyone is encouraged to have a particular agenda - to take a particular stance which then becomes tied to their own identity and social circle and family.

Because the entire identity of each individual then becomes dependent on defending these beliefs.

Doing otherwise not only means losing their own identity but the loving companionship of the social circle and family.

In the continuing battle to deny freedom and agency - discourage questioning - and the uncomfortable state of being unsure about being convinced of a set of beliefs

Promote a communication system where the main way of being successful is to be right about one’s own beliefs - and to be skilled at convincing others of ones beliefs .

The above definition describes the vaunted pinnacle of modern success - to be an INFLUENCER.

Successful influencers abound on college campuses, in think tanks, in organizations, in social media, in business, in politics, in religion and in government.

We have become a society run by successful influencers.

Successful influencers followed - each in turn - by a group of followers.

Influencers and the influenced in one negative feedback loop after another - all equally unaffected by the inconvenient presence of questioning and inquiry.

Our entire society is divided into camps of true believers who follow one or more influencers who faithfully reinforce the divisions.

The goal in life becomes - not to continue to question and grow wiser - but to become further convinced of the rightfulness of one’s own belief system and identity.

And because questioning this makes people uncomfortable they avoid doing so.

Freedom and a free society cannot survive in such an environment.

FREEDOM HAS A VERY HIGH PRICE

Freedom is uncomfortable and means not being convinced of a particular set of beliefs.

Freedom means a willingness to engage in real free speech and to consider the ideas of others - the uncomfortable state of remaining open and unconvinced - a lifelong willingness to change and to learn

Instead we have a society where everyone is ossified into a belief system - which makes us the intellectual and evolutionary equivalence of dinosaurs - or maybe monkeys.

Here in the free speech Mecca of SubStack I have seen very little evidence of true free speech - but abundant evidence of different sides who remain comfortable in their positions.

This is the problem we must solve if we truly wish to achieve this elusive thing called freedom and equality and liberty.

Freedom does have a price - and that price is never to rest in some comfortable state of knowing absolutely we are right.

Freedom instead demands that we remain in a state of not knowing for certain - and being eager to question and learn - as long as we are alive.

It is the constant learning - the striving to understand - and the constant questioning we are eager to engage in - which allows for freedom.

NO TRUE BELIEVER IS EVER FREE

A society of true believers is more properly defined as a cult.

Th great news here is that we are eminently capable of changing ourselves - and the educational process - and though this - we can change the world.

If we hold fast to our beliefs - we kill freedom - before it can be even be conceived.

Freedom has the price of requiring a populace which remains steadfastly unconvinced about the righteousness of any preconceived sets of beliefs.

Freedom requires a restless - but creative participatory populace - one which is continually questioning and actively seeking in nature.

Tyranny - on the other hand - is robotic - tightly organized and opinionated.

Freedom is messier and resistant to the highly organized state of tyranny.

Freedom is not anarchy but is an engaged process of deliberate seeking and questioning.

Freedom remains an actively questioning and unsettled entity - an uncomfortable process.

Life and the universe are unpredictable and engaging with this successfully means being in a state of constant flexibility.

To be ossified into a state of inflexibility - always reaching for a state of control - of safety - of comfort - aborts any possibility of the nascent birth - or conception of - freedom.

Conclusions:

Obviously this subject is huge and this essay has only addressed the very basic aspects of the topic.

If we were to address the very nuts and bolts of this issue - and to discuss the many ways in which we have become ossified into the tyranny of comfortable belief systems - we would be engaged as such for a very long time.

We would be so engaged for our entire lifetimes - and that is the proverbial point.

Once any of us stops questioning - and becomes convinced of some ultimate truth - we have simply managed to prove that we are simply possessed of ignorance.

Intelligence lies not in some ultimate knowing - but lies in a state of continual questioning.

Freedom is a process - one we have barely begun - and one which carries a perpetual and life long price.

Freedom means we are dancers - creative, flexible, resilient and realistic - learning to build what works and what is truly healthy and life affirming for each sacred individual.

Created by that creator - of whom we can never truly know or understand - but being willing to see that what the creator has created is precisely what is sacred and is what is - realistically speaking - what we have to work with.

Unless the creator made a mistake - which we must assume is not the case - in which case - we are the best we’ve got.

Remaining uncomfortably unconvinced is the requirement for freedom.

Being comfortably convinced is the death of freedom .

This essay was inspired by a comment by

Stegiel

which fed into these ideas - which I was already shaping into an essay - but the following comment made it a stronger more concise statement.

SUCH IS THE CONTINUING POWER OF FREE SPEECH

FREEDOM IS NEVER - AND NEVER HAS BEEN - FREE

Freedom is a process - a perpetual and continuous dance - of give and take - of asking better questions and receiving better answers.

It will never be a one hundred percent safe and secure process - neither is this life we are given - but it is the sole path to the achieving of those sacred unalienable rights conferred by the creator.

Each sacred individual - created by the creator to possess these unalienable rights - those rights which no earthly entity has the power to grant or to take away.

Freedom means understanding we have everything left to lose by not having it.