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 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/05 at 09:29 AM

  1. I do not disagree. The paragraph you quote from my post, however, is but a removed observation iterated for rhetorical effect. I think you know that, but the paragraph without the concluding thoughts comes across as something other than my complete conclusion.

    I do not hold that men can be free without the holy light of Truth and all that such a quest entails. The minute we stop looking for real Truth is the moment we start down the path to slavery.

    Self-rule for a country without self-restraint for an individual is a recipe for, well, what we are now seeing.

    Good thoughts and thinking all the way through this post, and I thank you for them!

    Posted by Joan of Argghh!  on  07/05  at  01:43 PM

  2. I do not hold that men can be free without the holy light of Truth and all that such a quest entails.

    Joan,

    If, as I think, when you state in your comment “the holy light of Truth,” with a capital “T,” you believe that men cannot be free without acknowledging The Creator, or having a personal, individual, religious faith, or a quest for it, I would address your belief with this story.

    When I was eleven or tweleve years old, I spent a day driving with my father as he called on various customers in Wisconsin.

    We conversed on many subjects that day, and as my father was a man of deep faith, naturally our conversations touched on the subject many times, but one particular portion of our conversations has stayed with me to this day.

    My Dad’s boss, who was also his close friend, was not a believer, and was hospitalized after suffering a serious heart attack.  Things did not look good for him.

    My father was very concerned about his boss/friend, not only due to his deteriorating physical condition, but because he knew that his boss/friend was not a man of faith, a believer, and my Dad offered earnest prayers for the man.

    As my Dad and I drove down the road, he articulated his personal struggle between what he had been taught within the church, dogmas, and what his personal, individual faith and mind informed him of, in regards to his boss/friend’s current flirting with eternity.

    As my Dad spoke to me about this, he enumerated his boss/friend’s qualities to me, and stated that often he (my Dad) considered his boss/friend a more powerful example of Christian ideals than himself, and because of this my father stated that there was no possible way he could state that his boss/friend would, if he died, spend eternity rueing his lack of a personal, individual faith.

    I agree with my Dad on this, and this story, I think, illustrates why I do not agree with your statement as quoted in this comment.

    You are correct in stating that “self-rule for a country without self-restraint for an individual is a recipe for, well, what we are now seeing,” but self-rule and self-restraint are not doled out from the domain of the “holy light of Truth” exclusively to individuals professing faith.

    Posted by John Venlet  on  07/06  at  07:52 AM

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