The Socrates Café discussion of this past evening was stimulating, open-ended, a probing exploration for a definition of freedom.  Our quest to find or to fashion a definition of freedom came from a quotation from a book, “To Fight Against This Age” by Rob Rieman:

“He who remains a slave to his desires, emotions, impulses, fears, and prejudices and does not know how to use his intellect cannot be free.”

The suggestion within the quotation is that the utilization of reason offers release from the “monkey mind” of servitude to the emotional weather that often rages with us.  Plato and Socrates thought that reason was a lifeline, and Socrates persuasively argues that with reason one can build a harbor from the storms of prejudice, from the anxiety that rises from unexamined, unquestioned suppositions.  The entire Enlightenment culture of Europe and the Americas has been built upon the proposition that reason is a suitable foundation for a just and humane society.

Is reason enough?  What is reasonable in a given set of circumstances?  As the question takes form on the screen, somehow I play the role of a lawyer, seeking the answer(s) that reason can give within the bounds of agreed upon rules for argumentation.  There comes a strange feeling that I am playing the part in an environment of contrived decorum– that when the three piece suit, the prestige of a law degree is stripped away…reason will not be enough.  Life-on-the-street is messy and reason seldom prevails.  A majority of us have lived many years with mind-forged manacles of prejudice.  Even with the benefit of insight sometimes years of work are necessary to somewhat disentangle racial and gender bias.

Is this not born out in the halls of Congress in Washington day to day? There has not been, and I do not expect there will  be any agreement about what constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  Though the interlocutors are all Americans, the life-world of Republican and Democrat members of congress is so divergent, no agreement will be forthcoming.  Reason fails before our eyes.  Our elected representatives are mirror images of us; unprotected and exposed to the poorly disguised rage of antipathy rising like magma from the American soul.

At Barnes & Noble, seated around a circle of cafe tables pulled together we did the work which the question demanded.  We shared our explorations, our tentative lessons culled over years of effort to achieve the mountain peak, the vista of freedom for the one life that each of us has to live.

So where to from here?  How do we find our way in a very dark wood?

I’ll leave you with a few lyric lines from the rock tune Desperado by The Eagles.

And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine
It’s hard to tell the night time from the day
You’re losin’ all your highs and lows
Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?

These lines are the form of a frank confession.  The human experience is by definition always precarious, a matter of living with risk, living with vulnerability.  There are many grey days when there is neither the quiet sense of fulfillment, of winter’s plentitude that the child gets when viewing gently falling flakes, painting the brown earth and the stark bare trees with pure white.  And what about the days with a lowering, dark overcast sky when the sun does not shine and time seems to stand still….

Could it be that “freedom” arises when we frankly disclose our human vulnerability to another who is different, but vulnerable in their own way?  Is this approach the vector for release?