PERSONAL FREEDOM
Love…lies…democracy
you are my three quarters
and I am a part of the rest
but what is missing amongst the others is you
and you
and you
for the rest of the world is not complete
we who are sceptical of hope
are not the enemies of hope
nor promoters of hopelessness
We are the bearers of change,
the clarions of the call,
the critics of the monstrous barbarians,
we are those who point our fingers
while risking they’ll be cut off,
we are the thinkers and artists who shout repeatedly
‘wake up, stir your bones, get out and grasp a better fate’
knowing helping others is helping oneself.
There is a unique and beautiful bond between
wishing for and defending democracy
because it pumps the life giving blood of freedom
and it is we, around the earth, who want freedom to be,
to make and eat our cherry jam,
to love whom we will,
to say what we want without doing harm to our equals,
and to be embraced by freedom.
Our containment by their laws,
our oppression by their unstated but palpable attitudes,
the birth till death diminution of our souls,
are imprisonments equal to castle walls for our minds,
having been created by an ever crasser, vial, cowardly
barbarian ruling elite
whose singular God is called “Profit”.
And the neoliberals have come to recognise
that their cultural, psychological
and political atom-ization of our lives,
dividing us each from all others
via race, gender, nationality, religion
and political correctness
weakens our resolve to stick together,
to unionise, to help each other in common struggle,
and this has become the Covid of our souls.
We have learned to accept that our ‘self’
is supposedly more important than our social selves,
and that others are of lesser emotional, psychic value to us.
(….and I am a part of the rest
but what is missing is you…)
One is compelled by circumstances to ask ‘Why?’
Why is this so?
Why have the neoliberals found it necessary
to change our consciousness away from the ‘we’ to the ‘me’?
Why have the neoliberals replaced our understanding of our selves
away from history and towards personally immersive psychology?
Why have they recast our importance away from being producers
to becoming consumers?
When one is compelled by the ‘why’ to act for change
one has also engaged with the ‘what for*’,
thus cause and curiosity lead to change
or at least to new consequences,
but the neoliberals do not wish us to think critically,
to ask “why this and why that”
because questioning leads to demands for change.
That is why the news media is superficial,
concentrating on tittle-tattle;
that is why the politicians have little of substance to say to us.
Perhaps it is normal that we seek stability in the form of modest change.
Perhaps it is sensible that we search for that which is evolving,
offering itself while not rocking the boat,
suggesting centrist politics rather than revolution of violent change,
or perhaps it is sensible to recognise that at any moment in history
there will be other possibilities emerging.
To create real community development
we must first define for ourselves
and for each other
our values
and whether those values include the necessity to bond with others.
If we accept the neoliberal definitions,
categorizations of whom we are,
we lose our sense of belonging, of partnering,
of recognising how warming, how positive
joining with others is.
And it is natural.
For eons we have held each other’s hands
as we had come to understand
both physical and emotional wellbeing
are gained as communities evolve.
We need to carefully ask, “What is equilibrium?”
If it is finding a balance between conflicting ideas and social forces,
it is set upon an illusory journey.
This balance can only describe a utopian condition.
But a utopia cannot be frozen in its equilibrium
because it will always be under assault from new technologies,
from emerging generations evolving new needs and wants,
from the threats of jealous neighbouring barbarians,
or from enemies within (think Trump and Johnson).
Note:*Alan Ruche, a friend and a thinker,
and much admired and experienced ‘development expert’
working for the EU and at times, for private enterprise, wrote of this,
“Emergence is the product of a self-organized order
among increasing complexity.
Equilibrium was no longer an optimal endpoint”
Here is balm for your soul -
a few moments of Ricky Romain’s meditative sitar music
in one of my short film-poems: