Yesterday a friend posted the word “freedom” along with a dictionary definition or two, and several paragraphs of personal commentary.  The challenge to the reader was to help with a definition of freedom, something that is useful as a guide for behavior.  Clearly freedom is something that all of us value, and it would be useful to know the parameters of the term and it’s place among other concepts.  Where does freedom belong?  How is it nurtured, protected in action?  What does it protect?

The outcome of the discussion among contributors seemed unsatisfying to me.  As if the edge of a knife was no less dull, the sharpening effort notwithstanding.  My instinct tells me that the term freedom means different things according to the passage of time, the change of context.  Fixing a universal definition may not be possible.  If you are starving, anything at all to eat is freedom.  If you are diabetic, the ability to monitor one’s diet and properly administer insulin, is freedom.

Considering these examples and others that were offered by contributors, I think that freedom is a form of homeostasis, a balance of conditions that permits life to continue, and ideally to thrive.  Far from an abstraction, freedom is a set of concrete relationships, a proportioned give and take of resources, energy exchanges, that promote the well-being of everything within the boundaries of the interchange.  Yes, that is a painfully abstract description of a concrete reality.

The sticking point I think, is the insecurity that all of us humans are infected with.  We are aware selves, aware of our mortality.  We imagine that if we just had more, more of everything that we’d be less mortal.  Yet, nothing is so certain as our own death.  The illusion of immortality is what skews our sense of proportion, the notion of fair share, the idea of a just exchange.  More is better, –never mind who pays.  Our need for a well organized society according to rational laws is defeated by a gnawing desire to live forever, a desire that can only me pursued at the expense of other humans, and of Nature herself.

It seems to me that this fragile will to live with our mortality, and our failure to do so, explains many things.  We have elected a erratic, imperious individual to the Presidency.  We are too weak to interpret the second amendment to place any limits on the quantity of guns in our society.  We fantasize that we will be better off by allowing corporations to maximize profit above everything else.  We “double down” on the very conditions that destabilize, diminish our society as a whole.  And there is climate change, the most contentious of all issues.  We no longer remember what we all learned in high school chemistry class.  Heat, speeds up, drives, makes more violent, intensifies all chemical reactions.  All change, weather included is a chemical reaction.

You would be disappointed if I did not conclude with a piece of music. I’ve been preachy in this rumination on freedom as a concrete complex of relationships.  Janice Joplin says it better in Me and Bobby McGee written by Fred L. Foster and Kris Kristofferson.  I wish that Janice could have stayed around longer.

But, I’d trade all of my tomorrows, for a single yesterday
To be holdin’ Bobby’s body next to mine

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, that’s all that Bobby left me, yeah
But, feelin’ good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues
Hey, feelin’ good was good enough for me, mm-hmm
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee