if you think you’re free, then don’t read this…

You’re free to go.

Am l ?

And you ?
Are you free? – (Instinct, Movie)

if we equate freedom with choice, then we lose our ability to recognise that which actually enslaves us, and our choice-making both confirms and deepens our bondage, regardless of what we choose. – Baudrillard

we wake up. but why do we wake up? is it our alarm clock that upsets our dreams? or a loud noise? maybe a disruptive dream or thought pervades our psyche. all we know, is we wake up to something that beckons us. that calls us beyond our subconscious into consciousness itself. (don’t worry, that’s as heady as i am going to get!). the question this leads me to is: are we free?

i think to respond to that, we must ask another question, how postmodern of me right? but we must understand our terminology if we are to move forward here. so, what is freedom? i am not sure we can generalize about the nature of freedom, to do so would be violence again freedom. so, how about we start with the christian notion of freedom as borrowed from most conservative christian theology. which is simply to be free from sin or bondage to it. to be free then is to be fully emancipated from this visceral thing called sin.

a lot of orthodox christians perceive sin to be a cancer coursing through the veins of humanity. so then, if this is true, freedom can only be experience corporately not specifically or individually. hence, the need for jesus to die violently on a cross. but again, it leads back to the gnawing question: what are we free from? because if we constantly need to look/ask/beg for forgiveness then are we free ‘indeed’? rather than spend a whole article on orthodoxy, i will leave that up to other writers much smarter than i. for now, let’s focus on this curious thing called freedom.

what of the alarm clock? why do we need the alarm clock. some would need it to wake up for their job. in the simplest sense, then they are not free. they are committed/bound to something other than themselves – they are not emancipated. they are imprisoned by a need to serve a big other. we tend to understand freedom as something whereby we are not forced into a relationship to an object, idea or truth. but rather we understand freedom to be about the ability to make a choice free from coercion. but if freedom is based on choice, then we fail to recognize the irony in that each choice we make, disregarding the outcome still imprisons us to system of consumption.

in the movie Instinct with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr. there is a scene where Cuba is interviewing Hopkins character (in the movie, a man awaiting trial) and Hopkins character gets’ Cuba’s character in a head-lock and proceeds to ask him questions, one that sticks out is: what have i taken from you? – after a two tries of guessing that he had freedom (hopkins replies with that being an illusion) and the other response being ‘control’ (hopkins proceeds to give him examples, like the television remote control to prove that he is not in control), Cuba’s character guesses his last guess and writes the word: illusions. Which is the correct response.

the scene is a reminder that things like freedom and control are something we think we desire, but truly never obtain. no matter how theological/non-theological we explain this concept away. but let me flesh this out with you a bit more.

the german philosopher hegel has this principle (named for his work) called ‘the hegelian principle’. simply explained it is what most marketers do today. let’s take the example of the pseudo-medical industry which creates an issue: let’s say they claim all butter is bad for you. then they publicize it and create some sort of opposition to it and then they create a solution for it. this principle is at work in a huge majority of society. even in religion. even in christianity. isn’t that what most of the orthodox expression is based upon? this is not to attack orthodoxy but to employ them as an example of a bigger issue, the illusion of freedom. or the promise of the attainment of this said illusion.

interestingly enough though, it seems jesus assumes we are all aready free. that the there is a universal nature to freedom itself. that maybe we have somehow believed the lie we aren’t free. that we somehow need something other/outside of ourselves to proclaim our freedom. so maybe the real illusion is the acceptance that we are not free.

in the book of john, the author quotes jesus as claiming that the truth will set you free. which is the reality that our freedom or the lack there of is simulated or a lie. so the truth is to not believe that claim. to claim that we are already free. that freedom is not something we must work for because we already have it, we have had it. like some new age philosophers profess that the truth of the garden of eden narrative was that we forgot we were already connected to the divine. and that the Fall was more about forgetting that.

we will continually be haunted by the ghost of freedom until we realize and come to embrace that we already are/have been free since our first breath. the cross is the very reminder of that. it becomes a violent yet healing reminder that we must die to the illusions that we somehow have been caged…