Freedom is Alienation

I find myself looking at the absurd notions of freedom, and wondering where I fit in.
As my mind wanders across the vast possibilities, it becomes vividly clear its not my freedom
that matters.

It has nothing to do with a elusive concept of freedom at all; it is just a concept devoid of meaning.
What matters is relationships, and the way they constitute my life and everyone else's life.
We are not a sum of our parts, but more a sum of our relationships.

My relationships to others are what I identify with and use to know myself. Being a friend to many important people is the source of my identity. A brother and confident to others, a comrade to a select few not of my choosing.

Implicitly and explicitly a settler, a lover, a danger. Relationships that we have make the sense of a pure freedom impossible. The individualistic notion of freedom is a source of alienation, its impossible to be free from connections to others. All these connections breed responsibility, obligation and roles.

Its making these relationships democratic, non-oppressive and full of positive meaning that really counts. Without others, I am devoid of meaning; that means without responsibility and connection I am devoid of purpose, devoid of my self.

This means to me that freedom would actually be the negation of self, it is alienation, and the riping from the reality of life. Freedom should be the farthest thing from ind when thinking of social change.

People seek freedom in our culture, seek escape from their relations and obligations rather than getting to their roots and transforming them for the better. Selfishness and egotism is the feeling that this pursuit of freedom embodies.

When I think of anarchism, I no longer think of any association with freedom; I think of democracy, I think of anti-oppression and making relationships as meaningful and equally based as possible. i think of taking the proper responsibility for my connections. I think of how to change my connection to Indigenous people, to make our relations more fulfilling and not to perpetuate the annihilation of those who are different.

This idea of connection is the root of much spirituality; however, to me its a much more basic and organic idea and condition, its not something outer-worldly, its the constitution of the daily.
You don't need to be a new age self indulgent wannabe woo-woo to find and feel connection to those around you. You need to just be self-aware, and open to realizing your place in long chains of interdependent action.

This to me is why the Anishnabe greeting "to all my relations" strikes me as making so much sense. It properly places the individual in their context, and really speaks to the only thing we have to give us meaning, the only things in this world that give us life.

So here's waving goodbye to alienation, to freedom; and welcoming my revolutionary relations, and all the heavy-weighted responsibilities.

So many other cultural teachings would speak to you of this, taoism, postanarchism, post-structuralism, feminism, configurational/network sociology all teach me about my relations. At the end of the day I knew this way before I got to university, before I became caught up in the rationalist rat race, pursuits of metaphysical truth make no sense to me anymore....

This ties in with one of Leonard Peltier's prison writings:

Silence, they say is the voice of complicity,
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
Just as doing nothing is an act.

Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There's no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.

What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.

You are the message.

May the Great Spirit Make Sunrise in Your Heart...

Hoka Hey!