Are We Truly Free?

Today I have been thinking deeply about the price of freedom.  The idea of freedom in general has been on my mind.  Because they would have you believe that we live in a free country, but it doesn’t feel free.  Everything has a price.  Are we truly free?

Each day I go to work, I see homeless people everywhere.  I noticed yesterday as I drove to work people sleeping on the sidewalk and others clearly going through the symptoms of withdrawal.  It breaks my heart to see them.  If only I could give this one a pillow and that one some hope.  But that would never be enough to save them from their suffering.

We are at one of those turning points in history. We have realized that life cannot continue this way, but no one believes that there is another way. We have been operating under a false rule for centuries: That nothing is free. Though forms of currency have been used for a millennia, there is one thing that has never been reconciled: There is never enough money to end suffering. Someone must always suffer so that someone else may thrive.

The very definition of success is to live lavishly as others do the work for you. To have enough so that money isn’t an object. But even when the world went bankrupt after the First World War and the gold was confiscated and the gold standard eliminated, and then when the silver was confiscated and the silver standard ended with Nixon, there was still not enough money. A standard was set and it has been devalued consistently ever since.  There isn’t enough money to pay off all the debt in the world.

But money has caused the degradation of humanity in many ways. It replaces family values. It replaces morals and honor. It replaces compassion. It causes suffering. It causes greed. It motivates murder. It corrupts the good and hardens the bad. It causes us to take without regard for the environment. It causes us to produce for the sake of producing. To consume for the sake of consuming. To pollute for the sake of making more, wasting more, throwing away more.

Here we are, in the face of inflation, struggling to make ends meet.  We go to our jobs and pray that the money we make will be enough.  And what are those jobs anyway? When you think about society and the jobs we do, can you not see the waste of life most of it is? To work for the sake of working?

Is it so you can buy things you don’t need? So you can separate and spread out and be independent? We are all connected. To separate in this way causes society to degrade. To take on the level of debt and responsibility we must take on to live a successful life is astounding. And what is it for? Why are we here?  Can it really be for this?

We are the creators of our own suffering. We choose to sell our souls for what we perceive as success. There can never be enough money. There can never be enough jobs to end suffering. We have the means to end hunger, end homelessness, and to take on a new way of life. We have the technology and knowledge to make this happen. We could be so much more. We could take on global issues easily.

But how do you get from here to there? We’ve been doing things this way for longer than we have record. How do you convince humanity to stop working, stop producing, and start enjoying life?

Why produce? Why waste? Why work our lives away?  Just because it has been done this way for so long, who says we have to keep doing it this way?  Who will be the first to step forward and give up being paid for their work?  It is a risk, to be sure.  To take that step, we must trust one another first.

But the homeless are everywhere, as a constant reminder of how society has failed these people.  Money has become so many people’s goal, we have shut many people out of housing themselves and their families.  Half of my money after taxes go to paying my expensive mortgage, yet I am one of the lucky ones,

It is difficult to understand how war keeps our country secure.  Is sending our young men and women away to war really the only way to keep this country safe?  Or are we trying to control the world?  Isn’t war an antiquated form of getting what you want anyway?  Why does our country spend billions on propping up this method of “keeping the people free?”

Is this truly a democracy?  Because nothing ever seems to change, no matter who you vote for.  The government is filled with very old, very rich, career politicians who take bribes for votes.  In the last year, the government has made it clear that it cares more for the profits of corporations than the wellbeing of its constituents.

Even if this isn’t what the founding fathers had in mind, why would we want to follow their wishes anyway?  They believed slavery was okay.  They believed women and people of color could never meet the measure of a man.  They slaughtered and cheated the indigenous peoples of this land.  When was this ever right or okay?

As society crumbles in the late stages of capitalism, shouldn’t we start to work on something else?  I know my job is meaningless.  I protect a hotel, an asset, for a group of owners.  I make sure the hotel is profitable.  But it does nothing for me.  My boss isn’t allowed to give me a promotion or a raise, but I am expected to go above and beyond my position and pay anyway.

I would rather work towards something else.  I would rather see communities repaired and the homeless sheltered.  I would rather children were fed and safe from abuse.  It’s all I can do to get to work without feeling guilty.  I have so much, I am so fortunate to have realized my goals.  How can I drive by these homeless people and not help?  How is it that I’m so broke and can’t afford to feed a single person beyond my family?  I wish I had more to give.

So I ask again, are we truly free?  Is living paycheck to paycheck freedom?  Is turning our backs on the homeless and abused freedom?  Is criminalizing the poor and destitute freedom?  Is destroying the infrastructure in other countries freedom?  Is being a slave to the currencies of the word freedom?  Are we not kept complacent with the belief that being paid for our work makes us free? Is that really freedom?

Are we truly free?