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Well.\u00a0 It seems the world is once again learning the true nature of Capitalism: it’s boom and bust, over and over.\u00a0 The good thing about it is that we live under a generally comfortable but totally misunderstood version of freedom.\u00a0 The bad thing is that when the economy busts, we gain a clearer conception of this sort of freedom, and it is as startling as if we were just waking from a vivid nightmare.<\/p>\n
We all want to live in a world where we can live better year after year.\u00a0 A new washing machine, a better refrigerator, a flat screen LCD television, and we’re all set for Nirvana — not now, but later.\u00a0 It’s always later.\u00a0 We chase a vision as if it were an image captured in a disappearing dream, and just when we think we have it, it slips away, taking with it our fanciful delight at the new, turning it into the mundane.\u00a0 This is overcome by new desires, new purchases: which in turn slip away from fancy.\u00a0 Then the world comes crashing down, a neighbor loses her job and might lose her house, we can’t get financing for a new car, and it suddenly dawns on us that we really must do something about our credit card debt.<\/p>\n
Problem is, we never have quite enough to get the things we want that will sustain this version of personal freedom.\u00a0 During distressing times such as these, this is a starker reality for those who have been directly affected, yet it should be plain to anyone: this is, we uncomfortably admit, not freedom.\u00a0 Were we free, we would have unfettered access to credit; we would see prices continuing to drop on things we want to buy to make our lives more interesting; we would not have this nagging impulse to consume.<\/p>\n
Isn’t it odd that we always equate freedom with bourgeois society?\u00a0 Freedom to us is the freedom to open a business, essentially.\u00a0 Freedom to make money.\u00a0 Funny how we’ve never been taught to look at tribal societies as free.\u00a0 We’ve never thought of the Yanomani as free.\u00a0 Are the Bedouin free?\u00a0 They needn’t go to school; they needn’t have televisions; they have no bank accounts, no credit cards.\u00a0 They also have no health care, no retirement plans (oops, maybe that’s not such a bad thing, given how many 401k’s have imploded recently.)\u00a0 But I’d wager that a nomad would make a convincing argument that he (or she) is more free than a family tied to a school schedule; more free than a couple opening a restaurant.\u00a0 But not many of us would shed the lives we lead to take on the new skin of the Yanomani.\u00a0 It’s just not our version of freedom.\u00a0 Our version of freedom is replete with manufactured possessions.\u00a0 We measure our wealth by the number of artificial things we own.\u00a0 Freedom, measured by this, is far greater for us than it is for anyone living in the absence of an industrial society, because the Earth provides far fewer things than we can manufacture, unless, of course, one thinks of rocks.\u00a0 No two rocks are exactly alike, but who wants to fill a house with different rocks?\u00a0 They don’t do anything!\u00a0 Of course, neither do paintings, 99% of books, clothes, and so on.\u00a0 But — these are the very things that make us free.\u00a0 Rocks would not make us free.\u00a0 See?<\/p>\n
I sure don’t have any answers.\u00a0 I’m just as deluded as anyone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6sK3t-v","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serendipitousplanet.net\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}