Men visiting at the Moment.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Liberty equals Autonomy: why people are afraid of being free.


by Monkey Brothers Playing on 11 Maart 2010 om 10:50 NM

“Only a few prefer liberty, the majority seek nothing more than fair masters"
Stephen and crew (back of photo)


By: Stephen Mallory


Many say that they want freedom, that they desire liberty, but few seem to realize what those words truly mean. Most people, when pressed for an answer, will most likely say that liberty is merely the absence of oppression. If you’re not in chains, you must be free, right? Monkey Brothers puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of autonomy, and I took a look into what this word means:


Autonomy comes from the greek roots auto, “self” and nomos, “law”. Autonomy means self-governed, which in turn mean you are governed by no one and no thing. So what is the biggest difference between liberty as most understand it and autonomy? The word liberty is the initial outcry of celebration; it says, “Woohoo, I was enslaved, but now I’m free!” Autonomy denotes some sort of responsibility; it implies that now that you have no rulership or provision over you, you are responsible for yourself. Before it was your king or your government that fought for your joy and sought after your needs, but you’ve left that all behind, and along with jubilation, there is now an understanding that it is now up to you to supply your needs.


This is a reason why the majority of men and humans in general, deep down, are afraid to be free. When it comes to dreaming of the future we could have and idealizing, everything is fine. Some might even join you for a time in trying to make these dreams a reality. The very second you begin to propose a cause of action in direct opposition to the evil empire, however, people begin to back away and say that you are too radical and that your ideas just aren't practical. Why? They are afraid. They've lived all thier lives being sustained by the Empire, and while they are victimized, emasculated, and abused by it, it also feeds and clothes them. They've only ever eaten food that comes from a supermarket, they've only ever been clothed by the Gap or Old Navy. If you were to truly pull out of the empire, they say, you would starve.


Now is time for a true gut-check: where do you stand here? Imagine that one day every single artiface and cement building and billboard and supermarket and liquor store suddenly dissappeared from the earth, and the natural terrain that our Creator intended was there in its place. Would you be jubilated, ecstatic, and eager to leap and play in the new world? Perhaps, but most of us (incuding, to a degree myself) would be afraid. Just how are you supposed to live? You've only ever known empire before. Sure, the dark system was rotten and twisted and evil and your heart and soul and body were enslaved to it all your life, but at least you didn't have to worry about how you were going to eat.


There is a very ecellent parallel here to the book of Exodus that i think explains my point. The people of Isreal were slaves of the Egyptians. They lived in a society that abused and dehumanized them, their people had recently been the victims of a mass genocide, and they were groaning for liberation. The story goes that God heard thier cries, and sent one of thier own who had been raised by the Egyptian elite, Moses, to liberate them. Moses, with God's help, freed the Isrealites from slavery, and they trekked joyfully into the desert. So what happens in the desert? the Isrealites start COMPLAINING! Sure, we were the Egyptians' slaves, but at least we had our fill of meat! At least we were clothed and fed!


This is the viewpoint of a slave. Again, you should be reading this with a bit of self-reflection. When we count the cost of true freedom, true autonomy, we start to get afraid. For a slave, this is a normal way to feel, it's a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. If we are to gain our freedom and become sovereign, autonomous human beings for the first time in our lives, we have to defeat our inner weakness, put our balls in our hands, and break out of the chains that entrap our hearts and minds. The catalyst is rightous anger, it's in screaming at this dark kingdom, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore! I'm leaving your cursed ways, and even if i starve to death, I'm never going to regret leaving you!" It starts with divorcing yourself from the empire and joining with your free brothers as one people and a new nation. Together, we will live a new way, which is really an old way, and we will be truly alive again.


This is why community is so important. It is more than that old adage, “many hands make light work”, it is also that every human being has a need to be accepted and loved. In the old system, you were accepted by how well you adhered to the arbitrary laws governing behavior: if you look, speak, act, and feel exactly as you’re supposed to, then you’re accepted. Imagine you are now on your own: how are these emotional needs supposed to be met? An autonomous COMMUNITY means that WE make the rules and can show each other UNCONDITIONAL love and acceptance, and WE choose how to express that love and acceptance.


In Christianity, it is well established that Satan is the current ruler of this world; it is why everything is so screwed up. Somewhere along the line, humanity gave up its rulership over the earth by giving up their innocence (via eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil). The gospel states that the Creator came to the earth in human form to take the consequences of our own self-betrayal in order to restore our innocence so that we could retake our place as rulers of the earth by the Creator’s side (as a partnership, not a relationship of subordination). By the way, I should take the time to point out that rulership does not imply ownership: humans are the caretakers of the earth and the land, not the owners.


This is why the bible speaks of people becoming like little children in order to inherit the Kingdom of God, as well as becoming dead to this world and brought back to life in Christ: it implies a total departure from the current system, and becoming dead to it to embrace new life. The first Christians also knew the importance of community in the absence of empire, and it wasn’t a hierarchy, but a community of equality and sharing:


“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need…they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.”


I write this with a tiny bit of hypocrisy: I have far from attained my autonomy from empire. As I write this, I've just finished eating a personal oven pizza I bought form Slave-Mart, er, Wal-Mart. I suppose what I'm trying to accomplish from writing this is just to get each of you to think about where you stand and just how free you are. You cannot fight for your autonomy until you recognize that you are a slave. I may be a slave in this empire, and I may be afraid for now, but I'm a slave who wants to be free, and who is willing to go all the way. We will not be truly free until we no longer need thier poisoned food, thier clothes stained with the tears of abused child workers, thier twisted ideas of image and acceptance, or their unfair and arbitrary laws. We will get there one day brothers, but for now, we must free ourselves from their restrictive laws of behavior. It's time we came together as one people, interact and weave and play however we like and say to the system, " we don't need your acceptance and we don't need your labels!"

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