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BONDED FREEDOM AND FREE SLAVES

Are we free?

“Man was born free but everywhere he is in chains” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his treatise on the ‘Social Contract’, and how right he was! Although slavery stands abolished in most of the modern world, unfortunately this abolition is limited to the slavery of one man to another. We still have masters, more than a few of them, and the slavery to these masters is worse than that practiced during the ancient or medieval times. This is for two reasons. First, these masters are not tangible or as easily perceivable than the human masters. And second, this slavery is not forced on us, at least not in the sense that the word is normally used, we choose it and accept it, we even believe that it is a necessary part of the existence of a modern man. Most of the time we don’t even notice that we are slaves.

A Normal Day

To fully comprehend this lack of freedom, all we need is a glance at the life of any random person or group of persons. For want of a better example, lets take a normal working day in the life of a normal modern middle class man. We’ll call him Mr. X.

Mr. X is jerked out of his sleep at seven o’clock in the morning by the blaring alarm of a clock by his bedside. He does not want to wake up but feels that he has to lest he is late and consequently left behind in the race that is our world. Frequently, he does not get out of bed instantly, he stays in it for as long as his nerves will allow him, constantly feeling the passage of time as if it were a physical phenomenon and finally has to get up against his body’s cries for a little more relaxation. Already getting late, he rushes through the rituals of a bath, a shave and other related activities essential for his hygienic upkeep, followed by a quickly gobbled breakfast, essential for his physical health. He immerses himself in the rush hour traffic and crossing the exact same route that he has been crossing for the past many years, gets to his office. Although he almost always gets to his office on time, he still spends his journey with a constantly nagging fear that he might be late. The thought never crosses his mind that if and when he does get late, the actual effect on the organization he works for, or the universe in general will be minimal to the extent of being trivial. He does not like this fear or the route or the rush hour traffic but feels that all these things are necessary evils. He spends his working day going through more or less the same routine as every other day, but this fact does not prevent him from giving an unsettling amount of importance to what he is doing. He does it because it is necessary for his survival in the job.

On his way back from office, he once again becomes a part of the evening rush. He hates the other traffic on the road just as much as they hate him but he can’t help it. It is, he knows, a necessary evil. Once back home, he has to fulfill his obligations to the family and the society. He has to attend dinners and weddings, make social calls or receive guests, take his family shopping or just spend quality time with them. He also must keep himself fit so he has to have an exercise routine. At the end of the day, if he has some time and energy left, since he must also keep himself abreast with current events as well as ensure that he gets some entertainment, a channel surfing session begins where he watches a little news, a little song and dance, maybe reads a little and then dozes off into an exhausted and mostly comfortless sleep, some time way after midnight. The clock keeps ticking and at exactly 7.00 a.m. the next morning the alarm blares again and the routine continues for an indefinite period.

Change a few facts here and there and this depiction fits almost any life. Notice the words in italics in the above account. ‘Necessary’, ‘essential’, ‘must’, ‘has to’, ‘obligations’, all betray an absence of free will. They depict acts done on the pretext that they just have to be done. Look at your own life, how much time do you spend doing things that you want to do? And that does not include the things that you have long accepted as necessary evils and then convinced yourself that you want them.

We spend our lives as slaves, with many masters. Social pressure, time, routine, law, family, peer pressure, traditions are just some of our masters. If any of the readers feels that he or she does not live this kind of life but is a free individual whose decisions are solely based on free will, I would suggest that he or she continue to read and we’ll see if this feeling was justified.

A Normal Life

Looking at the issue from a completely different perspective, it would become amply clear that even when we are absolutely certain that we are not slaves of any power, we are just ignoring certain facts about our existence.

Let’s take a look at our lives as a whole. We do not choose our parents, or our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and so on. In short we do not choose where we are born, just like we do not have any say in the time when we enter this world. If astrology is to be believed, our time of birth and the position of the zodiac have a tremendous influence on our future lives. Similarly, if genetics is to be believed, the genes we inherit from our parents are equally if not more, influential. The kind of person we are in the extremely early years of our lives are almost totally dependant on our genetic make up and the zodiac, neither of which did we choose with free will.

Next begins the period when we grow or are brought up. Besides the above-mentioned factors, certain others contribute in this phase. These include our family, especially parents, the environment, which includes the climate as well as the financial, social and mental status of the people around us, plus what we eat, what we hear, what we see etc. and obviously we do not have any control whatsoever on any of these. As we grow up we start making friends. Although this might seem like a free decision, it is actually dominated by the influences of all the above factors as well as the school, if any, that we are enrolled in. The choice of school is again not our own. What we learn in the school or from the street is again not our free choice. We perceive whatever is thrown at us without our permission, and learn from it based on our personality traits, none of which are of our own making. To cut a long story short, we get to the age of maturity with a personality that has been formed by factors that were beyond our control. Once mature, we start taking decisions that, apparently, are a manifestation of free will. But are they really free? Are they free from all the prejudices that have been produced in our minds by our earlier years when we did not have any freedom to choose what was happening with our lives? I am afraid not. What we perceive as free will is so greatly influenced by our genes, what we learnt in our earliest years, the education we got, our social circle, our experiences and our observations that in view of the fact that we do not get to choose any of the factors, it cannot be termed as free at all.

And we don’t stop being influenced by forces beyond our control. We start doing what is acceptable in the society and abstaining from what is not. We try to move on a path set by the people at large and make efforts to get ahead of everyone else on this path. It is paradoxical that such a huge number of people follow a certain way of life because the others are following it. If that is the reason why every single one of us follows it, would it not be relevant to ask who these ‘others’ are. Would it be necessary for all to change the path at once if it has to be changed at all?

One could go on giving more examples and explaining from new perspectives, but suffice to say that we do not see much free will around us or within us. All we see is slavery and no matter how intangible or implied or hard to perceive it is, or how much we try, and sometimes succeed in justifying to ourselves and the world that it does not exist, that is what it still remains, Slavery. And to put the obvious into words, slaves are not free. Does it Matter?

The next question that arises from all this is whether it is of any real significance if we are free or not? Does it matter? The simple answer is yes. As stated at the beginning, we are born free and when we cease to be free, we cease to be alive. If other forces govern all our acts, it does not make a lot of difference if it is you, I or anyone else who actually performs the acts. When we lose our freedom, we lose our individuality and our very identity. If you cannot think freely, you cannot think at all. An act without freedom is no act at all.

Is there a Way?

So, is there a way to change all this? If so many forces that are beyond our control always govern us, what is there for us to do about it? If such slavery is considered a problem, isn’t it a problem without a solution? And if it is, why even bother about such a problem?

There is a solution. There is a way to get back to the freedom we were born with. And it is not a difficult solution either, once we decide that we want to solve the problem.

Admission

The first step towards the solution of any problem is the admission that a problem exists. The above account is an attempt towards ensuring realization among the readers that, under the given environment in which we are spending our lives, we do not have the capacity to exercise free will.

Note the word ‘spending’ above. This is the way in which we normally refer to the passing of days from our arrival in this world to our departure for the next. We spend our lives, but do we live them? It is a matter of common knowledge, not requiring any level of study in finance or economics, that when you spend something, you must get something else in return, something better or at least as good as that spent. Another matter of common sense is that when you spend something, you part with it. It is gone from your possession. Whereas our spending of life fulfills the second criteria, i.e. we don’t possess the spent moments anymore, the first condition is hardly ever present. What makes the whole transaction even more serious is that the spent moments, unlike spent money, can never be recovered. When spent, they are gone forever. But what do we get in return. Do we get anything beyond life in return? We cant prolong our life, we can only improve its quality, and that too according to the definition of improvement that we have received from the world, a definition that has been infinitely influenced by our genes, our environment, our education, our society etc. all of which, as explained above, are not under our control. When your life does not give you anything beyond itself, you have spent it. When you gain things that are not within the domain of the life itself in return, you have lived. Thus, if it is accepted that the possibility of spending your life in return for gains that are not a part of this mundane and uncertain existence exists, and when it is also admitted that we are not making such gains to any mentionable degree, the logical conclusion is that there is something wrong.

We have the gift of free will but we have not achieved the freedom required to exercise it. Therein lies the problem and in the realization of this lies the first step towards the solution, the first step towards becoming human.

Identification

Once we agree on the basic point that the exercise of free will is a problem, the second step must be to identify the reasons for this state of affairs. Again referring to the earlier account, we can judge the various things that control our day-to-day actions as well as our long-term decisions.

Here, it must be realized that we are probably one of the few (if not the only) creatures with ego. There is this unfathomable desire in all humans to justify whatever they think, say or do. Where we should be analyzing the causes of our thoughts and actions and then beginning our efforts to liberate these from influences which are regressive, we waste our time in convincing ourselves and all around us that we already are free and that we are not controlled by these influences against our will. We want to believe that we have chosen to be controlled by them. The simple reason for such an attitude is that any other explanation casts doubts in our own minds about the veracity of our status as God’s great (if not greatest) creation and deals a tremendous blow to our self-esteem, both individually and as a race. Hence, you see all around you people explaining that they are not free and the reasoning is that they have to follow whatever customs, traditions, laws and rules that they are following. Paradoxically, we justify that we are not free because we have freely chosen not to be free. I wonder if anything could sound more absurd. Unfortunately though, since almost the whole race believes in this absurdity, it does not seem that odd to the untrained eye.

Setting our egos aside for a moment, we would instantly become much better equipped to understand our position vis-à-vis all the internal and external forces that are controlling our lives and because of which we are spending our lives and not living them. Though these forces and their relative influence may vary from person to person, for the sake of clarity, some of the more common ones are listed below.

(i) Our physical and physiological requirements that account for the desire for food, clothing, sex and dwelling;

(ii) Our emotional make up generates the desire to love and be loved in return;

(iii) Religion, or more importantly, what we have been taught or have learnt in the name of religion continuously pricks our conscience in the name of good and bad, right and wrong;

(iv) Society with its own peculiar sets of customs and traditions, dos and don’ts is a constant irritant as we perform a large number of acts against our wish, and sometimes, against our better sense, only to gain social approval and sometimes refrain from great deeds only to avoid social isolation;

(v) Law of the land we live in forces us to abide by it, not for any particular gain, but more so to avoid punishment, and more often than not, social degradation as a consequence;

(vi) Peer pressure exerts a greater influence than the society as a whole and exploits our inherent desire to stay a part of the group. Interestingly, this group is also mostly not of our own choice but imposed upon us by circumstances;

(i) Family is the most powerful part of the society, especially in the eastern culture. We feel obliged to continue the sort of life our families approve of, without giving much thought to whether it makes much sense;

The list could go on and on but the above examples give a fair idea of the point. It must be remembered here that these factors are not evil in themselves. Not only are they necessary for our survival individually as well as collectively, they are also great fillips to our struggle for a quality existence. Hence, they do not constitute a problem in themselves. Like all other entities that humans interact with the problem does not lie in them but in the way we deal with them. These factors are necessary and useful but only as long as we are ones using them. The moment we start becoming used by tem, we falter, since none of these forces have the capability of free will. Only someone or something that has this capacity has the ability to use others, we however, have surrendered our wills to these factors without as much as a complaining whimper. So rather than controlling all these influences with our intellect, we have chosen to let our intellects be controlled by them. We are convinced that these factors are in fact the indisputable truth in this world and have thus created our very own golems1.

It is essential that we take some time out for introspection and analyze which of these factors are controlling our decisions and acts, and to what extent. There must be a fairly accurate assessment of these issues and the only way to do that is simply, to want to do that. Egos must be left behind; we cannot fully be free unless we believe two things; one, that we are not great and two, that we can achieve greatness.

Solution

Again, every individual can have his or her own exact solution to the problem. This is just an attempt to discuss some of the ways in which this issue can be resolved.

Faith

In order to take back control of our lives we have to let go of the impression that the above factors have anything at all to do with the absolute truth. We have to delete the E from the golem’s forehead. But most of all we have to realize that it is possible. In the path to the solution of any problem, the first step, as stated above is to admit that there is a problem. Equally important is the realization that there is a solution. Simply believing that the problem exists without similar faith in the existence of a solution has the potential of exacerbating the issue rather than simplifying it. And this is where we are again susceptible to the pitfalls of the same forces that control us in the first place. Once, any of us has made the effort of realizing the problem, the same environment, education, society and the like contribute in convincing him that the problem is an inevitable part of life and there is very little, if anything, that can be done about it. This has to be guarded against if any further step has to be taken.

1An animated being which, according to Jewish folklore, was created to help men and had the Hebrew word Emet (Truth) inscribed on its forehead to bring it to life. The creature gradually started interfering in and then took control of their lives. Eventually it had to be killed. This was done by deleting the E from Emet, thus leaving the word Met (Death).

Time

The biggest hurdle in such an effort is the belief that we don’t have time. In fact, a number of readers might even not read this to the end for the reason that they don’t have time. Whereas anyone not reading something or any other act of commission or omission for the reason that he or she does not want to is an exercise of free will, reasons such as that there is no time, or this is not normally acceptable, or it would make the person look like a fool etc., though could be genuine reasons resulting from free choice, must be analyzed to ensure that they are what they are being perceived to be and not merely a manifestation of the ideas forced upon us.

Our biggest problem of our world is time. We keep hearing things like time is short, time is money, we must not waste time, always be on time, there is a time for everything, the time is not right, and so on throughout our lives. As we move on in years, we hear ourselves uttering tragic remarks like, time went by too quickly, I didn’t notice how swiftly time passed, I have wasted too much time and the like. This, for all practical purposes, is an illusion.

To understand the illusory nature of this belief of not having enough time, we have to see how we measure time. The passing of day and night, coming and going of seasons, the physical and other changes brought upon us and those around us show us that time is passing. Even more so, with the invention of the clock in the Middle Ages and then its spread to all corners of the globe to the extent that life without it is inconceivable in the modern world, has divided time into even smaller portions. Where time was normally divided into dawn, noon, evening, sunset and night, i.e. five parts, we now are capable of dividing it into seconds, which means one day has 86,400 parts. Hence, even if nothing much changes, we still feel the passage of time and consequently also believe that we are wasting it.

To find a way to get out of this dilemma we have to stop concentrating on the temporary aspects of life and the universe. Our predominant concentration on the years, days, hours and minutes traps us in a circle where everything keeps changing so speedily that we sometimes fall under the extreme illusion that the speed of time is actually increasing. Here, religious and spiritual people can be of much help. Take a look at the lives of priests, yogis, Sufis and the like. You will never see them in a hurry, or gloomy for the reason that time is flying by and being wasted. The reason is that these people are predominantly concerned with things which are not bound by time, or in other words, are eternal. They concentrate on the existence and characteristics of God, the creation, cause and end of the world, the moral and ethical principles which define right and wrong on the criteria of absolute truth, on the messengers of God and their message, on the heavens and so on. All these things are either eternal or relate to such huge expanses of time compared to our own mundane existence that they seem eternal. They don’t change with time. An eye on these eternal realities from time to time takes the mind off all the speedily changing stuff and we realize that though time does pass, it does so only for a very limited, to the extent of being infinitesimal, proportion of things. Most realities do not change with time as much. And if the truly important things don’t change, time does not seem to go by that quickly at all.

Meditation and prayer routines are a great help in this realization. Even taking a little time out of the daily routine to concentrate on eternity completely changes the perspective with which we look at life. Just closing your mind to the daily businesses and sitting calmly does the trick. I can almost hear some readers thinking that they don’t have time to indulge in such activities. This response is another absurdity since all it means is that ‘we do not have the time to realize that we actually do have time’. Amusing if you just read it but tragic if you actually believe it.

Unlearning

The next step is unlearning. The ability to learn is one of the greatest assets we have. But the apparent inability to unlearn, or more appropriately the unwillingness to unlearn whatever we have learnt by whatever means is one of our biggest weaknesses.

Starting from our early childhood when we are always trying to satisfy our curiosity by learning from our environment, our family and our teachers, we become the target of an unconscious campaign by these very people to kill the said curiosity. A lot of the questions remain unanswered and we acquire the habit of ignoring these questions that our minds generate so frequently during our early years. As soon as our egos become large enough to play their part, we start getting convinced that any question that is still unanswered does not matter, that it is unimportant. These unanswered questions further put a stop to the birth of other questions in our minds and gradually, we only ask trivial questions, the answers to which do not affect anything which has any real significance in the time-space curves of the universe. We are only interested in learning things that affect our immediate surroundings in time and space. We are not bothered about the actual questions of time and space. We have to re-awaken the curiosity. We have to accept the fact that nobody knows everything and that there may be hundreds of truths that nobody knows at all. And somebody will be the first to uncover them and that that somebody could be us.

In this age of technological revolution, information is more accessible than it ever was before. Thus, satisfaction of most kinds of intellectual curiosities is just a click away. What stops us from pursuing this path then? More than anything else, it is our belief that it is a useless exercise. Amusingly, by believing that learning varied things is a waste of time, we do not actually stop learning. We continue the process and learn new things everyday from people, from our experiences, from books, from the media. The only difference such an attitude makes that we learn whatever is thrown at us, whether we want to know it or not. In other words, our learning process escapes the boundaries of our free will. And when even our intellectual growth is in the hands of forces beyond our control, what else can we expect to hold on to?

The first thing we have to unlearn is this attitude. We must know the truth and if it is not readily available, we must find it. We must discover the truth about what we are doing at any given time and then decide whether it is worth doing or not. There should be only two reasons for doing anything. One that you want to do it and two that you have to do it. If nothing else we should at least be interested in learning and ensure that what we are doing is either what we actually want or it is something that we definitely have to do. We must unlearn to ignore unanswered questions. We must learn to ask and then to seek.

Even more harmful than the unanswered questions are the unquestioned answers; things that we learn starting from our childhood to the end of our lives; things that we learn not to question. We believe a lot of things merely because we hear them from someone, and are more prone to believe them without question if we read them in print or hear them from someone on media. Such unquestioned answers play a huge role in turning us away from the truth and making us believe a lot of falsehoods as if they were the absolute truths. Unfortunately we start living our lives on the basis of these facts and gradually the chances of our stumbling on the truth diminish. Then a time comes when even if we do stumble upon it, we try to ignore it since it does not fit in with our life and concepts, mostly based on false notions. When falsehood is believed to be the truth, the actual truth becomes a lie.

All progress in humanity occurred when a few people, scattered throughout history, questioned the hitherto unquestioned answers. Almost every time, they found them to be wrong and went on to ask, to seek and to learn, and a number of them ended up changing the world forever. We must unlearn the things we have been taught against our desires. It is not necessary that all of them would turn out to be wrong, but even if most of them were true, this questioning, learning and unlearning would give us an infinitely stronger basis to believe in them. Such a line of thought would omit the fiction from our belief and would strengthen the facts that already exist along with starting us off on the path to learning the truth that we do not know as yet.

Once we have uncovered the truth of all the forces that control us, we will realize that the strength of these powers is merely in our minds, a mere illusion. Only when we realize that can we be free of the powers these factors exercise on us. And only then would we be able to breathe the fresh air of freedom and take our own decisions based on our own choice. Freedom is something that just cannot be appreciated unless it is experienced.

Where to start?

A pertinent question that might arise in the mind of someone who not agrees with the above is ‘what to do now?’ If the basic principles elaborated above are true, it might still pose the problem of where to start.

The answer to this is probably the simplest. Start here, start now. Do something, however trivial it may be, for the sole reason that you want to do it. It need not be an act that is a blatant rebellion against any of the forces that influence our will. It should simply be something that we are not required to do. If possible take a decision to do one such act everyday or every week or at least every month. Once we feel the freedom inside us, it leads us on itself. And once we are free of the untruth, we automatically march towards the truth. Even our religion starts with La Ilah (there is no God) before continuing on to IllAllah (except Allah). Freedom from false gods comes first. Submission to God comes second. That is the true path, the only path. And if we avoid the free path only because we are too busy walking on the path of slavery and are engulfed in chains that exist only because we think they exist, the fault is just our own.

Afterword

Just a little advice for the existing and prospective rebels around us. Sometimes too much desire for freedom becomes a chain in itself that stops us from reaching the truth. If we have the desire for freedom, we must also stay free from desire and freedom.

Zain/May 19, 2008/rto_mag