“Freedom: A Pronoun Adjustment”
Waking Point
by Helen Noakes
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
—by Soren Kierkegaard
SAN FRANCISCO, CA—(Weekly Hubris)—3/29/10—For quite some time, I avoided listening to or watching newscasts. Something inside me decided on this news detox regimen because I’d come to the conclusion that the news isn’t new anymore, and whether I listen to it now or two months from now, the basic issues will remain the same.
I was absolutely right.
Yes, a health care initiative passed. That’s news. And, while it isn’t perfect —what is? —it’s something that will be of help to people who need it. That’s news, too, since the only people who have received any assistance in the last decade or so are people who really don’t need it.
What’s old, however, is the attitude of people who somehow feel they’ve lost. Grassroots is the name that some politicos and newscasters have given these individuals. Not on your life! Grassroots folks are people like you and me who struggle to make a living every day and make a conscious effort to lend a helping hand whenever possible. These noisy people aren’t “Grassroots” in any way. They are people who love to hate, and while I’m deeply saddened by their behavior, I’m not surprised.
I’m not going to engage in a diatribe about the need to contain virulent, violent groups. Others already have, and quite eloquently. What I’d like to address is the one salient “motivator” that seems to rule these individuals, and that is their default of self-entitlement, without regard to the harm it does to others.
It’s a pathology bred and fostered not only by hate groups and the individuals and corporations that encourage and fuel them, but by our culture in general. And, while one may argue that this attitude is not strictly an “American” problem, I must point out that it is currently a very dangerous element of the so-called popular culture of these United States.
The pathology may be distilled into one, two-letter word: ME.
We have metamorphosed into a culture dedicated to the one great god of ME. We have taken to misinterpreting the Constitution to mean that ME can carry arms, kill people who disagree with ME’s point of view, and fall back on ME’s right to do so.
ME can impose his or her will on the majority through slander, malicious gossip, lies, blatant acts of underhanded manipulation, attacks on people ME considers inferior, deliberate obstruction of laws and services to aid people who are perceived as not ME . . . just because these laws and services do not serve ME in any way.
I believe that our current economic mess is a direct result of this attitude. The ME’s who caused it are still sitting pretty, but oh how they howl when told to share their toys, their benefits, their bounty.
The prevalent mood in our country is one of anxiety. And every time I feel myself being infected by that contagion, I remember Kierkegaard’s quote.
Freedom is a heady brew, but it carries with it an imperative to behave responsibly . . . or it will be lost.
The ME Attitude fails to take a very important fact into consideration. Taking away another’s freedoms, will eventually rob ME of his/hers.
Article 1 of The United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
There’s a reason this statement is Article 1. It’s an incisive declaration of the obvious—or what should be obvious. It does not demand anything that should not be second nature to every reasonable human being’s personal code of morality.
But, sadly, some of us have misplaced our moral compass. How can the rest of us help them relocate it?
Perhaps we need to communicate with the lost, The Great Tribe of Me, and suggest that the first step in finding our way to real freedom lies in an education which shows us that ME lives in a world of other ME’s, each with a shared need to live a life of dignity, of prosperity, and of rudimentary comforts.
This can only happen if we are taught to think less in terms of ME, and more in terms of US. In the end, it’s as simple and as complicated as that.
Helen Noakes
Helen Noakes is a playwright, novelist, writer, art historian, linguist, and Traditional Reiki Master, who was brought up in and derives richness from several of the world’s great traditions and philosophies. She believes that writing should engage and entertain, but also inform and inspire. She also believes that because the human race expresses itself in words, it is words, in the end, that will show us how very similar we are and how foolish it is to think otherwise. (Author Head Shot Augment: René Laanen.)
5 Comments
abe miller
I always find asymmetrical outrage about noisy groups to be a function of whose ox is gored. Funny, how I seem to have missed all the outrage when the thugs from the SEIU were beating up people who opposed health care. And then I seem to have missed the outrage when Chris Mathews said he had a fantasy about Rush Limbaugh’s head exploding. But the real outrage I missed was when Eric Holder, our attorney general, decided to have the court vacate the convictions of the Black Panthers in Philadelphia who were stationed at polling places with clubs and were appropriately looking at jail time, until our attorney general decided, well, they were only helping people vote for Obama. And then there is the now shown to be false claim by the Black Caucus that they were set upon with racial slurs as they marched up the House steps to vote. Do these buffoons not realize that every person is carrying a video cam on her cell phone? But what really offends me is that in a demonstration of thousands, the whole enterprise can be condemned by the action of the fringe. I attended the Tea Party demonstration outside Princess Pelosi’s office, five hundred of us, abidding by police direction, not burning garbage cans or stopping traffic, orderly respectful using our First Amendment Rights. The Princess regrettably was elsewhere, perhaps, trying to set aside some more Bay side land to preserve a mouse or rat and inadvertently increase the value of her husband’s neighboring holdings. Strange how that happened. But anyhow, yes, there were some fringe elements that I would have liked to kick in the teeth. It’s the public square and you can’t keep people out of the public square even if it is you holding the permit for the demonstration. That’s what is known as the Bill of Rights. They have the right to be there. So, when the media gets vexed over the fringe at a demonstration, makes false accusations about racism, and tells us that a trillion dollar health care bill is good for us, even if it contains 2560 pages of legislation that even the Princess herself acknowledges she hasn’t read, I think as a citizen, I have the right to be in the public square and say otherwise. Yes, people need health care. Do they need 150,000 new members of a federal bureaucracy to run it? And if this imperfect legislation is so wonderful why did the very staff member, every single one of them, that wrote the legislation exempt themselves, all the members of Congress and the President and the Vice President? When President Obama says every family in America will be affected by this legislation, he is lying. His family was exempted. So was “f…..’ big deal, Joe Biden’s family.” When the members of Congress can no longer exempt themselves from their own handiwork, this will be a meaningful democracy. In the meantime, I think you have style, Helen, but on substance, we part company.
eboleman-herring
Umm. Abe, it’s getting one’s facts straight these days that’s our Number One priority. Getting one’s facts straight, and then, Number Two, engaging in civil discourse. We’ve had quite enough literal and figurative “kicking in of the teeth” for my tastes. I’ve had it with kicking teeth–especially since I have no dental insurance (I, along with millions and millions of other Americans). But, as far as I’ve been able to tell, Lo these past 25 years of knowing her, Helen’s substance is as sound as her style. You, I’d need to look in the teeth quite a bit longer: I don’t think you’re a gift horse. Too much anger.
All best,
Elizabeth
Abe Miller
Well, ebhadmin, are you for real? Get your facts straight.! Now that is about as vacuous and meaningless a comment as you can make. Just what facts are you talking about? You forgot to mention any. And, I don’t apologize for having thought about kicking in the teeth of some of the LaRouchees who showed up at the demonstration outside the Princess Pelosi’s office. Thinking about an uncivil act is different than performing one, especially against people whose purpose is to destroy the Republic. Sorry but the realm of civil discourse does not apply to Stalinist wannabees, racists, homophobes and neo-Nazis. Did you miss that it was a “though ” ? Last time I looked thoughts were inviolable. As for dental insurance, you’re still not covered. One trillion dollars and 2650 pages later, not counting the new amendments, there is nothing in the health care legislation about your teeth. Sorry, it just isn’t there.
I routinely find that when people can’t engage in substance they characterize emotion. “You’re too cynical. You’re too angry.” Hmmm relative to what?
Helen is a remarkable person and she does have literary style, but sorry, the substance in this piece–in my opinion–doesn’t cut it. Yes, the normative structure of democracy requires civility and that is equally true of both sides of the political divide, albeit I am willing to make exceptions. Strange how Chris Mathews and his ilk sort of missed that.
I’d like to see Hannity, Limbaugh, Mathews and Maddow all wisked off the air into oblivion. A pox on all of them. They advance their bank accounts but not our democracy and their respective accusations of the other lacking civility should be met with :Talk show host, first cure thyself.
You take care and keep your sense of humor. Oh yes, take good care of those teeth. You might have have to grab some La Rouchee by the jugular with them. If you stand next to one and listen to his crap, I guarantee the urge will require the exercise of all of your civility to be restrained.
hnoakes
Abe, my friend, I’ve never heard you so upset! But this is good. It speaks to the power of the written word. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if our battles were fought on the page, on the computer screen, and even in screaming matches – as long as no one gets maimed, killed, or bankrupted, I’m all for a good verbal scrap. Hey, my ancestors made a science of it.
Shall we all agree to disagree, but let’s also listen and try to see some truths in the opposition’s point of view. I agree with one thing – we’re all screwed and it’s not much fun.
eboleman-herring
I think your words characterize you quite adequately, Abe: you need no responses or reactions from me. Let me just step out of your way so I escape the energy you emit. . .
All the best on your chosen, indelible path,
Elizabeth