Freedom is a Fetish

Freedom is like incest porn: whether they’re really siblings fucking eachother is irrelevant, what’s matters is that it appears real to the viewer. Well, hopefully it’s that the viewer has genuine disgust towards the fake incest so doesn’t watch the video - but the metaphor is escaping from itself. Nobody can experience freedom: freedom is not something physical in the real world, freedom isn’t an emotion you can feel, freedom isn’t something you notice. What we obsess over is merely the idea that we are free, we will fight to the death to believe that we are free. And yet we will never know what it is to be free, for freedom is placed outside of human experience.

That isn’t to say real liberation hasn’t occurred: the emancipation proclamation of 1863 was a real act of anti-oppression. Of course one should account  for the subsequent economic enslavement of sharecropping, the failure of the Reconstruction project, and a variety of other nuances - but it’s clear African Americans have been significantly liberated from where they were pre-1863, this isn’t progression isn’t an illusion. But we need to somewhat destabilise the dichotomy of ‘oppression’ and ‘freedom’ as opposites. Just because someone is trapped under a limited and degrading set of circumstances, doesn’t mean they’re no longer trapped if they have a boundless and affirming set of circumstances - is freedom to be reduced to having a series of options? If so then to act in the world is to kill freedom, for to choose one option is to exclude the infinity of possible alternative options. Slavery emancipation must be viewed primarily as emancipation from the grave injustices of violent treatment, and the degradation of being owned by another man - not abstract concepts of ‘being free’, but the real-world benefits and emotions we think of when we praise ‘freedom’.

Epictetus, the stoic slave, was vehement in emphasising how most people are enslaved to their passions; in typical early-philosophical exaggeration, actually proposing this as analogous to formal slavery. Epictetus made the profound observation that people will sell their free will for a very low price. They will be shaken about and impacted by every event, will allow others to anger them, and allow fear to intimidate them. And that in truth we don’t actually place much value on our freedom; even at a basic level, people will pretend to be friendly with people they don’t respect - freedom is worth less than mild confrontation. Epictetus reverses our modern ideas that freedom is merely doing what we want, in acting freely on our desires, that this itself is a form of prison. That our impulses are not necessarily what we want, in fact our desires almost seem out to trick our judgement. An alcoholic isn’t embracing freedom by fulfilling his desire for alcohol, his desire for alcohol is what governs and rules his life. No depiction of this is more beautiful than the Quran describing how Iblis will tempt people with desire, and then leave them to burn in hell for their choice to have faith in him.

The black man in America became as unfree as the white man; and thank God that they have been freed from the most substantial parts of their persecution. But freedom from visible physical oppression doesn’t mean you’re free. If free will is false, and all actions are determined (which an inability to verify always renders such a possibility); would we claim that there was no significance to emancipation? Would we say the difference between being a slave and being a freeman is illusionary, because free will doesn’t exist? Of course we wouldn’t, what ridiculous nonsense that would be! And yet even with the spectre that we could all be enslaved to predetermination haunting over us, the debate of free will against determinism is irrelevant to our experience of life. The glorious emancipation of African Americans wouldn’t be revised upon the discovery that theoretically free will doesn’t exist; a glorious triumph over evil and justice it was, and a glorious triumph it will remain.

Thank God that we do not have to suffer the burdens of genuine freedom! Many (typically leftist-progressive) are intoxicated by the wine of Foucault, and see great evil in all institutions and knowledge sources. Intrusive in forming how we identify and the scopes of what we are capable of believing - such belief drips with anxiety of the secretive control of institutions over individuals. I don’t want to diminish the importance of these insights, but it is an incomplete picture. Societal control is what establishes concrete paths for one to follow, that permits some level of guidance to a fulfilling life. And establishes a baseline set of principles and customs which help people live together in a society, sociality being necessary for any worthwhile personal satisfaction: both in that we need friendly relationships, and any meaningful career or aspirations involves creating value for other people. It is the gift of tradition which allows us to make use of our autonomy in meaningful ways, rather than being confronted with the chaos of infinite possibility without any map. Thank God we are made willing to conform to society: it would be awfully lonely if we isolated ourselves in our desire to manifest absolutely our ‘true self’, and it would be painful if we felt compelled to suppress ourselves to meaningfully connect with others.

I’m not claiming that autonomy isn’t important, nor that free will doesn’t exist. But that autonomy isn’t important for the sake of being free, considering what we believe to be our personal ‘free will’ tends to be ideas imposed on us externally. It is genuinely important politically for one to have a great deal of autonomy, because the ideal path one should take is deeply personalised. Not only is a dictator not omniscient enough to be able to dictate to you personally (in all probability) a better life than you can imagine for yourself, especially since the capacity to imagine who you could be is essential in figuring out what it actually is which would satisfy you. But that dynamics of control are inevitably going to lead to either exploitation or ideology guiding a dictator's control over people.

But this is a human limitation, not an inherent virtue of freedom. If you had the choice to let God control your every action so as to have the best possible life that was hypothetically possible, under the blessing that you would have no awareness whatsoever that you were being controlled, only an idiot would reject this gift so as to be ‘actually free’. Ironically the only people who could reject such an offer are those who are indoctrinated by this fetishisation of freedom; prioritising an abstract concept over what kind of life they’d actually deeply prefer living. At least it's understandable why Epictetus’ slaves would be fooled by their desires, but to throw away your best life over something you are incapable of being aware of? Ironically the only people who reject a glorious life controlled by God, are those who believe they are free despite opposing what they’d actually want if it wasn’t for the false beliefs they’ve been tricked into accepting as theirs.

This is not merely an arbitrary theoretical distinction: a large part of our political discourse revolves around the fetishisation of freedom, and this comes at the cost of people's wellbeing. It’s not saving a suicidal depressive because you wish to ‘respect their freedom’, it’s allowing casinos to decimate families with gambling addiction because ‘it’s their choice’, it’s washing our hands of the blood of responsibility we have for eachother and masking it as a ‘virtue’. Do you want to know the greatest trick of capitalism? To justify economic inequality as a moral force, because it’s the choices of the poor which left them hungry. The political freedom which Brexit promised was incentivised through exacerbating xenophobic fears. Freedom is the justification to oppose programs which help drug addicts and other self-inflicted conditions. Why should I have to bear the cost when it’s the consequences of their own reckless actions? Freedom is the excuse of choice to legitimise the undermining and disregard of other people's wellbeing, and it’s a discourse we’re made to believe we’re doing good by affirming. The only worthy measurement of what’s good and moral that we possess is that of people's happiness: autonomy is a part of that wellbeing, but it is sacrilegious to oppose someone’s wellbeing in the name of ‘freedom’. Freedom has become an idol, and it’s time that we revert our attention back to the true God.