This "Freedom" Ain't Free, That's For Sure

You saw me there

you didn't care

that I was poisoning your tea;

it was the glare,

maybe my hair

that convinced you you are free.

Despite what the State Department tells me, it occurs to me that freedom is intrinsically free. It just depends on what you call freedom and who's responsible for making sure you've got it. McDonald's, iPhones, nose hair trimmers, Pepsi, chicken wings, NFL, Grand Theft Auto--is this freedom? That's what my culture tells me it is. We should be proud and lucky to have these things. We're privileged to have heart disease, cancer, eczema, suicide, child molesters, and no less than four school shootings a year. If this is freedom, then yes, that comes with a hefty price tag, one that we must pay for with all our military might and constantly defend. But is it all worth it? It seems to me that it's just good ol' ignorance that calls for an unending series of costs: a billion dollars here, a child's life there, another billion, a kidney, a heart, a soul.

Have you ever seen a commercial for lentils? Bear hugs? Meditation or yoga? Okay, maybe you've seen some yoga ads on your Facebook side bar, but the wisdom that underlies all of these things is already free and available to anyone who chooses to tap into them. They don't need a $3 million Superbowl ad to try to convince you to participate. But Wonderbread, sirloin steaks, the US Army, eyeglasses, vodka and Symbicort--these are things on which this culture is willing to spend trillions of dollars every year for the express purpose of making you needlessly dependent. Are these so-called trophies of freedom really setting you free?

A system that conditions us to believe that we must kill others, strip them of their resources, culture, and connection to the Divine just so it can turn around and sell us the idea that we are living freely is not a free system at all. We are compliant slaves in it, because the cost of our "freedom" is the blood of others. Did we not all learn the Golden Rule as kids? "Treat others as you want to be treated," "Putting others down to make yourself feel better is wrong!" While this society teaches kids nice concepts like that between the hours of 8am-3pm, it simultaneously sends the military and corporate bulldozers into every country on earth to simply take whatever it wants. I'd say cutting down the Amazonian rainforest--the lifeline to millions of tribespeople--so we can have Garfield notebooks is considerably worse than kids calling each other "doo-doo heads" on the playground.

"But they're savages, godless heathens that hate us and would kill us if we didn't stop them first!" is the theme I derive from this whole "Freedom ain't free" shit. All Arabs are religious zealots who want to see Christian America burn in the name of Allah. Tribal folk in Papua New Guinea don't want iPods, so they are of no use to us. They're simple, stupid, and ignorantly missing the train speeding through the 21st century, so fuck 'em. These are myths that have been planted in our collective psyche, myths that attempt to justify the system's flagrant use of cruelty and violence to get what it wants. Well--newsflash--Arabs don't hate freedom. Does it look like Egyptian Arabs are fundamentally opposed to human rights? Maybe they just hate western leaders coming into a culture that it frankly does not at all understand and paying off their own leaders in order to perpetuate the cycle of corruption and repression. It's quite simple: if the United States didn't directly FUND oppressive dictatorships, the oppressed people wouldn't hold contempt for the United States. Maybe they wouldn't be oppressed at all, and we could all act like humans again.

I want to be free. Oh yes, I love freedom. It's sweet. But I know true freedom doesn't come by paying allegiance and taxes to the very system that takes it from the rest of the world, processes it into a toxic pile of bullshit, and spoon-feeds it to me for a "very reasonable price." The freedom to buy cheap crap at Walmart, to drink Coca-Cola all day, to lose my teeth, my mind, my patriotic high school classmate, my compassion, my soul--that kind of freedom comes at a very steep price. And we are all paying it, all the time. But just as interest accumulates on a bank loan, we can't really pay it off until the bank simply crashes. We are automatically indebted, not just financially, but karmically, to all those whose blood has been shed for our fast food, morning coffee, iPhones, Toyotas, Crest toothpaste, and T-bone steaks.

You may be thinking, "but what about your freedom to be an obnoxious little bitch and speak your annoying radical mind? What about your right to come and go as you please, wear slutsuits and get an education? What about that??" And to that I say, you're right! I do have very important freedoms where many people, particularly women, in some parts of the world do not. But I also think that the only threat that faces me of losing these freedoms comes from this government itself. Does it get any worse than running into jungles rich in resources and killing all the indigenous peoples? Can it get worse than dropping bombs on Iraqi schools? In this country, gay people cannot exercise their human right to love and honor each other through marriage in more than 5 of the 51 states (if we're including Puerto Rico). Maybe it will one day tell me I can't gather in a group of five people or more. For my "safety," of course. I know what America is capable of; why should I believe it would never tell me I can't leave my house after 6pm?

Now, on the other hand, I love my morning coffee. I love my iPhone and computer from China. I (kind of) love my Ford Focus, and I love that I went to college for two years before realizing I was a debt slave and subsequently running away from it. But freedoms? I don't know. I think sometimes enslavement feels reeeeaallllyyy good, but we have to be aware that it is enslavement nonetheless. Because I have felt free. I am learning what that means and trying to recognize it more and more, but I know it doesn't feel anything like owing $30,000 to Citibank, getting cancer from a lifetime of processed food, or reading about Chinese sweatshop workers committing suicide in droves. The kind of freedom I am trying to cultivate...well, it's blood-free. It's fat-free. It's just plain free.