My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me. Jane Austen
When I discover who I am, I’ll be free. Ralph Ellison
Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Bertrand Russell
The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. Joseph Heller
When we stop doing things for ourselves and expect others to dance around us, we are not achieving greatness. We have made ourselves weak. Pandora Poikilos
There are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness. Megan Turner
It’s good to have a healthy fear of horror. Anne Quirk
As most of you know, yesterday was Independence Day in the US, a day ostensibly for us to count our many blessings and remember those in our past who, despite their often considerable personal flaws, helped make at least some of those blessings possible.
At a moment defined by deep social division, grave economic uncertainty and a stealth virus, I’m not sure how many blessings were counted yesterday. And yet, in my neighborhood, our verdant parks were filled with what seemed to be happy family gatherings, some in groups as large as 50, albeit with no masks to be seen or distances kept. The otherwise majestic Hudson River at the West Harlem Pier attracted its own crowd of families, even as the waters were mysteriously punctuated with the smell of dead fish while military aircraft roared overhead, a precursor to the endless booms from fireworks, legal and otherwise, that dominated the city skies until well past midnight.
The media conferred its own messaging for the day obsessing, as it so often does, on the ways and means of the US president and his enablers, specifically their apparent willingness to fashion a re-election campaign based on some alleged “white grievance” that they feel can be successfully exploited for political purposes.
There was so much of this “Independence Day” I simply could not relate to, though not necessarily to my credit. I felt dismayed by the unwillingness of so many people to protect themselves from a virus which has given every indication of its ability to double back on victims and mutate to further complicate treatment options. I felt dismayed that as our national debt balloons to unmanageable levels and people cling to what little remains of their economic viability that we somehow still think that military fly-overs and taxpayer-funded political rallies (and golfing outings) are more important than clean rivers and health care access. I felt dismayed that it is still possible for political candidates to run for office in this world based on the idea that “white people” represent some generic category of humans who have somehow or other been screwed over in the global commons, that “we” are endlessly entitled to more than our share and that it is appropriate that others “dance around us” while we delude ourselves about the sanctity and reliability of our commitment to all that is good and right in the world.
And I felt especially dismayed that notions of freedom and independence are exploited so shamelessly by those who often haven’t given a second thought to what that means or, more pointedly, what that requires of us in return. Thus many are left to believe that we are “free” merely when we get to do what we want; and this at a time when the well-worn truism that “freedom is for persons with incomes” has perhaps never been more relevant in our recent history. While too-many of us grind our teeth and take offense at the thought of wearing a mask or keeping physical distance, more and more face economic hardship and difficult choices between home care for children and showing up at low-wage jobs that barely meet the caring threshold. At the same time, more and more of us are having our consumer and political preferences manipulated and massaged in ways we refuse to acknowledge or, at times, even gleefully accept. More and more of us have misplaced useful distinctions between the aesthetic and the ethical, presuming that “what we like” is what is good for us and others, that our “tastes” in things remain our “guidestar” regarding how we behave and what behavior we are willing to tolerate in the rest of the human race.
Ironically, COVID-19 has exposed fashions and fault-lines in my country (and beyond) that have actually been trending for some time. We cultivated wariness and suspicion towards each other long before the virus compelled most of us to “keep our distance.” Millions of people were living on the economic edge long before COVID forced (and will continue to force) a shut-down of so many local businesses and economies. Inequalities in the political and economic realms have long been grotesque and have only increased under our current viral cloud. We have long struggled to minimize the scapegoating that has accompanied our dubious claims of “exceptionalism” long before so many of our current “leaders” turned responsibility-dodging into an art form. Many have suffered from sometimes debilitating levels of loneliness and social isolation that have only been made more acute through a series of lockdowns and quarantines that, in the short-term at least, promise only episodic periods of relief.
On top of this, our almost generic lack of thoughtfulness about the urgent needs of our planet and our responsibilities towards generations to come is perhaps the most tragic of this moment’s incarnations. On the whole, where the future of our planet is concerned, we are still taking away far too much and giving too little of ourselves in return.
In this difficult present, it is apparently fine for health care workers to risk their lives to save those reckless persons for whom mask wearing has become some sort of political litmus test. It is apparently fine for some people to attribute evil intent to others who want their country to honor promises to equal opportunity and social justice. It is also apparently OK for some people of elite up-bringing and education to denigrate and exploit the alleged “unwashed masses” whose purchases line their pockets and to whose aspirations for life they couldn’t possibly give a second thought.
I’m not sure where the “freedom” is in all of this, aside from the freedom to be mean. The current moment speaks more loudly of our emotional fragility and cultural isolation, our manifest unwillingness to escape the ideas and expectations of our tribes, our inability to see beyond our personal grievances – legitimate and not — to a broader grievance to which we have contributed in our own way and which blithely places millions of God’s children on the precipice of ruin and despair each and every day.
On this US Independence Day weekend, I’ve gone back to review a few of the many seminal thinkers and writers who would never endorse my feeble attempts at policy and cultural analysis but who have influenced me nonetheless. And one of their most important influences is the fierceness with which they set out to examine and overcome the impediments to genuine freedom which we routinely place in our own way. I so admire their fortitude to gaze upon a “pit of hell” largely of our own creation; their courage to face-down attempts to intimidate and silence; their wisdom to understand the relationship between freedom and self-discovery, its healthy and the unhealthy aspects, our hidden-truths and self-deceptions; the horror in the world for which they were able to cultivate both a “healthy fear” and a determination to make the world much less horrible –much less frightening — especially for those many vulnerable persons worldwide who know deprivation more intimately than they might ever know freedom.
There are certainly levels of loneliness and isolation that can accompany such an examination, even one that is liberally coated in kindness, empathy or appreciation. We live in an age which seems to have largely solved the territorial dynamics of self-governance but not the dynamics germane to governance of the self. Ours is a time when the “freedom” to believe what you will has little reference either to evidence or to social consequences beyond our own circles; when the numerous errors and even cowardice associated with national and global policy are mostly banal but at times rather vicious; when so many people are content to celebrate platitudes of freedom and independence, but recoil from any independent assessment of social and economic trends that they dare not exercise themselves and that they certainly do not recommend for others.
Thus there is the need, perhaps more acute than has been the case for some time, for independent minds that can challenge both social order and personal hypocrisy, that can expose the dark spaces that we seem intent on proliferating but also highlight the people and settings which are, even now, paving the way for greater freedom and justice, minds reminding us of a more connected calling and helping us sift through the debris which still impedes our progress towards a world we can all be proud to celebrate.
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