Monday, July 05, 2010

Ascend to Individual Freedom

Last night, I read a post by Joan of Argghh! at Primordial Slack titled From Freedom’s Holy Light to Free Stuff!  Within that essay, which was originally posted January 8, 2009, Joan states the following.

Is freedom a holy illumination, available only to those who have sought divine guidance? How quaint! How precious. As though a rational people couldn’t rule their lives and fortunes without the silly and repressive fairy tales?

Though Joan is correct in noting that freedom is not available only to those who have sought divine guidance, we would be remiss in denying the positive influence Christianity; perjoratives aside; has had on individuals ascending to the idea of individual freedom, as Malone Vandam noted in a June 4 post titled The Toynbee scale.

In either case, we face a series of crises, all of them essentially metaphysical crises, including the decline of our great religion, Christianity, whence we draw our highest transcendent universal values.

It’s pretty clear to me that America without its Scriptural underpinnings as the absolute referent for its values and mode of being looks increasingly like a postmodern Carthage, an atavistic society of degeneration that embraces a culture of death. The West and America have always seen degenerate behaviors but always had recourse to a transcendent vision that rejected them. Now we’re moving into what appears to be a phase of puritanical relativism, where degenerate behavior is normalized and the transcendent vision is rejected.

What I find to be the most challenging impediment to the idea of individual freedom is the group, or herd mentality, and said so here, in 2003.

Why is there such a confounded need to label yourself or align yourself within a group? Can we not just be men with like minded ideas of liberty and sovereign individuality? Even if some of your political ideologies differ in regards to the size of government, as compared to other labeled individuals, does the group label offer you any kind of safety, or is it just a need to belong that is being fulfilled by the label? The group mentality, in most instances, only provides a bludgeon to use against other groups.

As I further considered Joan’s and Vandam’s posts this morning, while installing a couple of window air conditioners, I recalled a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti’s talk when he dissolved the Order of the Star of the East in 1929, which also bears on the idea of ascending to individual freedom.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb towards the Truth, it cannot be “stepped down” or organized for you. Interest in ideas is mainly sustained by organizations, but organizations only awaken interest from without. Interest, which is not born out of love of Truth for its own sake, but aroused by an organization, is of no value. The organization becomes a framework into which its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the mountain-top, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.”

Though there are indeed touchstones each individual must needs grasp to ascend to individual freedom, in order for the idea of individual freedom to bloom within all individuals, it must be pried from the hands of any organization claiming a monopoly on its possible ascension.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/05 at 09:29 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages