Column (7)

Laatst aangepast (dinsdag 30 november 1999 01:00)

25-09-2007
Freedom Review

"Ik heb een boekje met verzamelde interviews uitgegeven dat door George Simons van een review is voorzien. Ik sluit zijn notities bij."
Mijnd Huijser (lid Sietar NL)

En deze notities vonden wij interessant genoeg voor een column! (YL)

What is freedom?

In this minute anthology, a dozen cross-cultural management professionals, who had spend the better part of a week together exploring the theme of freedom [note by Mijnd Huijser: the theme is an offshoot of the 3 days certification program of the Model of Freedom Association], attempt to describe what it means to them. The intention was to look at "show the concept of a universal value, freedom, is perceived in different cultures, and how it relates to one's professional life."I was asked to do a pre-publication review and said, “Yes.” After all, what harm could forty-some pages do to my free weekend?

 

A publication of this sort cannot really be reviewed. Its value lies not just in the honest outpourings of the contributors' life-learnings of about what they define as freedom, but in even more in the reflection and reaction it stimulates in the reader. In doing this, Freedom does not depend on concatenating quotations that stun the reader (though there are some), but in the chance to connect with both the banal and the breakthroughs in the lives of our colleagues who are answering aloud questions similar to those we are quietly asking ourselves.
So, without apology, what follows are largely my own reflections on the theme, touching at points those of the book's contributors whom I thank for the chance to reflect that reading their words gave me.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose
First, the context, my context of course, but one that I suspect many will share and others will reject out of hand.
A frank confession--it's been a long time since I have been inspired by the word "freedom".Today these two syllables mostly disgust me because they are mouthed in public by preachers and politicians as a slogan and sound more threatening than encouraging. They are echoed by advertisers who are along for the ride. I now identify the word "freedom" with a pretension to own the moral high ground and belief in a God-given right to control everything on the ground and beneath it.
Sadly, when I hear "freedom"George and Condi press conferences flicker on my mind's CRT. "Freedom"feels hijacked, propaganda-parroted, full of not-so-hidden intention and devoid of any sense of inclusion. Another nuance to the title statement of this paragraph is that, "Freedom's just another word for nothing (politically) left to choose",or as one political pundit wryly put it, "Freedom's just another word for Republicans to abuse".And, not just Republicans Alexander Streit, in his interview cites Rosa Luxemburg's definition of freedom as "the freedom of those who think differently", something that can be attacked from either side of the political aisle. Let the evangelically bent remember, and let Iraqis and Iranians take heed that the man who proclaimed, "the truth will set you free", was executed by a cynical politician who sneered, "What is truth?" and acted out of his own sense of expediency.
So, what is free? "Free samples" are used to hook consumers "nothing new about that” from the neighborhood German butcher who offers a wee Wuerstchen to the toddler shopping with Mutti, to the global consumer goods concern that anchors a few grams of its new product to the supersized package of the old. Something for nothing may be harmless, but also may be the road to cozy, costly addiction, the got-to-have consumerism that makes the overheated environment sweat with terror. It is possible to hear freedom as a path to addiction "Nothing in life is free", we were told as children—advice to immunize us against Trojan horses as well as to remind us to work for what we want.
So, what does freedom cost? A paradoxical question? Not at all. According to the telecoms, "Freedom" costs just $49/€49 a month! "Free market" can be used to bully nations and their peoples into a kind of submission where one suspects that, as one writer put it, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to choose".
The freedom of the frontier is an abiding theme in my culture as it was for Barry Rogers who emphasizes "being able to explore new horizons". In its excess, frontier freedom allows one to appropriate as one's own what looks like it belongs to no one, to make one's own rules where there are none, and to "go West"when civilization starts catching up with one.
When some years ago a Eun Kim and I attempted to elaborate the core US cultural values, freedom was not one of them, which came then and comes now as a surprise to many readers. Rather we focused on individual initiative, the sense of control over the world and one's life, and the compelling allure of capitalism, and the ability to speak up, all of which add up to the liberty to be who you want to be and to have what you want. This is what many if not most US Americans would define as freedom. It is the sense that I inherited and now struggle with. Most of this is bound up with the religious flavor of the dominant US culture. Being born "Scot free", which one hears echoed in David Paterson's interview, with "the personal liberty to develop yourself",is no doubt a Scots Presbyterian value in the formation of US thinking as well as in his homeland.
As quite a few of the interviewees note, freedom for them is somewhere at the interface of the individual and the social, the person and his or her culture. Many of them struggled or still struggle with social constraints that come from their background. One describes himself as an "in-the-closet American" for his individualist desires in a Danish social system in which "you practically have to fight to be a social outcast". Quite a few insist on freedom with responsibility, i.e., self-limiting where the expression of individual freedom threatens harm to others. It is in fact mutual responsibility that creates the "comfort zone" that Mijnd Huijser uses as his definition of freedom.
Freedom may mean wearing the chador for some and not wearing it for others. Context harmony and culture free us to survive in our environment and at the same time bind us to it. In a world where we are often shifting from one environment to another, we need to grow beyond patronizing pity for those who see thing differently than ourselves and the consequent missionary need to make others copies of ourselves. In listening to one of the Asian interviewees, one is invited to see cultural constraints quite differently, when he describes the joy of “doing the right things in the right way.”
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".
When Kris Kristofferson and Janis Joplin sang "Bobby McGee" the "freedomâ" they felt resulted from losing an object of attachment. This can be heard as, "Nothin" don't mean anythin'anymore", or, become an emptiness that provides space for much, much more. Not surprisingly a number of the world's religious disciplines stress that detachment is the root of personal and spiritual freedom. I grew up on St. Anthony (of the desert) and was protected by the raven of Saint Benedict. Only later did I meet the Buddha on the road, and though I failed to kill him, I stumble over him every day.
Awareness and Aikido taught me that when we no longer fear or resist them, we can see the energies in play about us, and in sidestepping their dangers, befriend the stranger and the alien who may come at us like an enemy, and bring an end to conflict. Absence of fixation, openness to the breadth of experience available to us opens the door, provides freedom of perception and appreciation, and this is one of the very important lessons that several of the interculturalists, speaking in Freedom is¦, identify as a result of their many border crossings.
After reading this short book, it was evident that it is trite but true to say that "freedom means many things to many people", and is in fact indefinable. It is the basket, not the loaves. The many meanings of freedom may be closely identified, quite different, or even blatantly contradictory, as the responses of the interviewees clearly show. What is certain is that freedom is a word for lots to think about and lots to talk about a way to know each other, and "free up" possibilities for each other.

George Simons

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