People say they care about being free, that it is the foundation of what they believe in, yet they cannot agree on what the word means. Our society saturates us with images that portray it, and we all need to feel it, but as we have taken our first six steps into the 21st Century of the present Gregorian calendar, I find myself asking, do we truly possess it?
Is the two thirds of the worlds population living inside vicious cycles of poverty, war, sickness, and starvation, free? The only sane answer is no, which begs the question that if 'they' are demonstrably unfree, then are 'we', the richer third, living inside the bubble, protected by the glass ceiling of our technological and military superiority, really 'free' either?
We exist inside our compartmentalized pods, surrounded by bureaucracies of secrecy, mandated by executive privilege. We live in a society where trust in institutions, authorities, and ethics is being steadily undermined. We drag ourselves though the soma landscape of media illusions, saturating our conscience with informational sweeties and personalized parcels of news and entertainment, but does that make us free? I think the only sane answer is no.
Are we free from the vicious evils and criminal corruption's practiced in our name by governments and their puppet masters, because they conceal the truth of their actions from us inside a veil of secrecy? Even if we do accept the chains of ignorance, are the sacrificial victims of the manipulated war on terror free from its consequences? What about the future generations now growing up around us, will they thank us for allowing our leaders to mandate their liberties away, simply because we were to lazy, scared, or preoccupied, to care about our own?
