Freedom!

For many years I deliberately avoided active engagement with the daily news across pretty much all media sources; TV, radio, press, online. I considered, not without reason I still believe, the great majority of its offerings to be nothing more or less than glorified gossip; titbits of titillation to keep the masses suitably amused or outraged, principally for the true purpose of garnering advertising revenue and other profits for the owners and shareholders. My only concession was a daily free local newspaper that did indeed keep me abreast of issues of importance in my immediate community – plus served to wrap my minimal (non compostable or recyclable) household waste, start my winter fires, build my no-dig veggie gardens and provide some small entertainment with a daily crossword. But with the COVID pandemic and the loss of over 100 print newspapers in Australia, I relented and purchased a subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald. (Bizarrely, and greedily, my free daily local paper with all its stock, printing and distribution costs covered by advertising, is only available in its infinitely-cheaper-to-publish-online version though a paid subscription. Not bloody likely!) Despite its not insignificant cost, the printed edition SMH has obvious benefits: choosing which articles to engage with, advertisements are easy to bypass, the ability to suit my own schedule, etc. but, as Alain de Botton states in his book The News, ‘To consult the news is to raise a seashell to our ears and to be overpowered by the roar of humanity.’ Sometimes that roar lingers in my head and gives me no peace until such time as I give vent to my reactions by either ranting to poor, unsuspecting and undeserving family and friends, or sitting at the laptop to write responses such as the following. Please know that I do so principally to regain some personal mental and emotional calm. Still, I hope you might find perhaps a vestige of merit in this or other of my scribbles?

I grow so weary of the constant demands for individual rights and individual freedoms that daily grace our various media. Rights and freedoms do not exist in glorious isolation but are in fact privileges accorded to responsible contributors to a society. Such is even written into the perhaps lesser known Articles of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, whilst Article 1 states ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ which is loudly and arrogantly proclaimed from soapboxes across the world, it also states ‘They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ which often seems conveniently overlooked.

Perhaps more significantly, but equally frequently, disregarded is the context provided by such as Article 29 which states ‘1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.’ and ‘2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.’ So we must discard our immature notions of glorying in a hedonistic individualist fantasy and recognise that true personal freedoms and the granting of personal rights to certain behaviours or privileges can only exist within a responsible, mutually supportive, collectivist culture. We must give before we can expect to receive.

What we see occurring and condemn in China and Russia is really no different to what we also see in America and Britain, and what we are experiencing here in Australia. Putin and his ‘oligarch’ cronies are really little different to Australian political parties headed by a ‘boys club’ of well connected private school graduates funded by opaque donations from property developers and business tycoons keen to protect their personal interests, status and wealth. It is the natural consequence of any system wherein the laws are made by people who have gained power through wealth and privilege that they will inherently and principally make laws that protect their positions; it is a self perpetuating and indeed escalating system that only leads to ever greater division between the haves and have nots; the powerful and the powerless; those protected from the worst of COVID by their wealth and privilege and those at the mercy of job loss and poor governance, crying ‘Freedom!’

The promotion of a minority ‘elite’ and the concomitant persecution of the majority ‘oppressed’ can only ever lead to societal division and civil unrest. It is the principal recipe for social collapse and is sustainable only in circumstances of totalitarian control; exactly the situation we witness causing current global conflicts and precisely what was supposedly (or wishfully?) consigned to the dustbin of history by the decline of feudalism and subsequent rise of modern democracy, though it has reared its ugly head on numerous occasions since and seems ever possible, and likely, to do so again.

Seriously people! Put your adolescent acquisitive desires aside and recognise that we are all one – the totality of humanity, to again quote the UN Declaration ‘without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’ and to which I might add gender identity and sexuality plus no doubt other attributes I currently fail to identify. We each share 99.9% of our genetic make-up with all other modern humans. Even more importantly, our very survival upon this planet requires not only that we need to collectively and collaboratively work toward betterment for all human kind, but that we must do so in concert with the recognition that our survival is intrinsically dependent upon the parallel survival of every aspect and component of our planetary host – every living creature and plant, every natural environment and process, every complex system and cycle. Every single day we destroy more and more of everything that sustains our very existence as a species and every single day we continue to increasingly fragment the potential unity of human experience by vilifying and persecuting anyone who is not one of our 'tribe', whilst simultaneously, ignorantly and vaingloriously proclaiming ‘FREEDOM!’

For fuck’s sake, grow up.