In which I talk about "freedom"
So, I’ve been thinking about many things
quite a bit of what I’ve been thinking about is political
I should clarify because so many things, choices we make and so forth, are political.
What I mean is: I’ve been thinking about things which have to do with politicians and bills and laws and such. I wasn't sure if I should write about that stuff here. I was thinking I should compartmentalize and this would be my writing/art blog, but I believe that everything in our lives is connected. It certainly is in mine, and I believe in transparency and that words have power.
So here goes...
A friend had linked on Facebook to the blog of an art instructor at our undergraduate institution. Having been an art major for a time, I’d had this instructor. I should mention this undergrad uni is Southern Baptist affiliated with all the trappings: required chapels, single-gender dorms, and well, one day I’ll tell you the story about Biblical Studies Major performing an exorcism on me. It’s the funniest of my sad Christian college tales. Anyway, I looked at the linked-to post of this art teacher, and thinking he might actually write more about specific works of art or artists, clicked on a random blog title in the menu on the right hand of the page. This is the post in full.
“The new opiate of the people is not bread and wine nor opium wrapped propaganda, but cells phones, food stamps and unemployment pay. What ever the gift offered, whether by Rome, Japan or America, let us not deceive one another, it is a drug parading as a gift, a counterfeit, a fake that seeks to deceive. It is “the man's” final great grasp for power. Freedom is the greatest gift, but also the hardest to keep. Freedom means you are not only responsible for yourself, but also for anyone less fortunate than yourself. Governments will always have a tendency to try and limit the freedoms of the individual. It is the free individual's responsibility to resist the government’s tendency. The greatest way to resist is to care for your neighbor as you would care for yourself.”
Let me try to explain why this upset me. It will take a while. Better put a pot on.I’ll start with what I agree with and work from there. I do think we should all care for other people. But, I’m poor and I basically know a lot of poor people. We offer each other what we can, but we can’t make a few fishes and a couple loaves of bread feed a multitude. We just don’t have that power. Not every Good Samaritan has the money to pay the innkeeper. That’s why I have, over the years, leaned further and further left politically. Because only as a larger community, one with people who have food to spare as well as those who are in need, can we get bread into the mouths of those who really need it. I believe that a government should help the community fulfill this charge. Many of the laws and public policies of this country came about because we cannot trust that everyone would follow the Golden Rule. And, not everyone one with money is a Good Samaritan.
I could go with the easy historical target (slavery) to demonstrate my point, but last night I watched the PBS program American Experience. This time it was Triangle Fire. About 150 women, many young girls, died in a fire in their shirtwaist factory because of unsafe working conditions that were a result of their employers’ desire to maximize profit at all costs. The women had, a year prior to the fire, organized a strike along with other women at other factories across the city. Many of the other factories were able then to negotiate for a union, but the Triangle workers got shorter hours, higher pay without any means of improving the actual labor conditions. Many of these women died in the fire or by throwing themselves out of the window in a desperation because the owners of the business had locked one of the exits because they were afraid women might steal shirts, fabric, and notions from the factory. Was this action against a hypothetical situation worth the lives of those women and girls? NO. How free do you think they were?
This is why our country has so many labor laws (enhancing the freedom of workers by restraining the effects of the capitalist mindset). This is why unions, too, were once seen so favorably by the average worker (and still are by many).
Does our system have problems? Obviously, and I believe these stem from a culture in which excessive personal wealth is lauded. Even so, I don’t really see our federal government as trying to restrict personal freedom any more than individuals would try (and do try) to restrict other individuals’ personal freedom. What freedom does a starving child have? Should any child go hungry just because someone fears that the child’s parent is abusing food stamps and unemployment pay? NO. And, also it turns out that this food stamp fraud thing is a big myth, too. I once believed it, but then I looked into it with a true open mind, and maybe more importantly, a heart willing to believe the best about people.
If you think you can be "drugged" by unemployment pay, you've probably never really had to worry about money. When one is scraping by every week; when one wakes up in the night because of the knowledge that there will not be any food to feed one's child in the morning; when one has to boil water on the stove in the winter to give one's child a warm bath because an unscrupulous landlord took advantage of the lessee's ignorance about the pipes being made of the wrong, uninsulated material and said lessee does not have the economic power to fight or move; when one can't visit one's own family because there's no money for gas in the car and public transport is either too expensive or doesn't go that far, one is not drugged but might be wishing one was. No decision can be made spontaneously, and you can see that the individual's freedom and autonomy is seriously limited.
In another post, not my next, I'll continue on this vein and tell you all about the Put the People First coalition and the rally/lobbying at the state capitol. I'll also talk about living wage, adjuncts and the current state and future of education. I hope to also have a review of The Meritocracy Myth for you soon.
