Waking Times
“Something has ended. Everyone can feel it. It is a sort of interregnum. A miserable lull, backlit everywhere by the sense of declension and fires flaring across the planetary terrain of struggle.” ~ Joshua Clover
During this time of troubled transition, we need those with unprecedented ambition and creative resolve to step up to the plate of a new way of being human in the world. We need those with the ability, and the audacity, to recondition the conditioned helplessness that was drilled into them by state indoctrination to stand up and teach us how to do the same. We need them to blaze up like beacons of hope for the hopeless majority, to reveal how their creative fire cannot be dulled by the cold, steel hand of the state.
Tyranny has been dying a slow death for thousands of years now. Still, many of us are left scratching our heads in absolute befuddlement that such concepts as “Queens” and “Kings” and “Emperors” are still a thing. How can this be? After all we’ve accomplished as a species, after all our hard-earned progressive evolution, how are we still naïve and ignorant enough to kowtow to the illusion of authority? Especially to an authority that’s wearing the deceptive mask of freedom while hiding its own tyranny. What is this, the Twilight Zone?
As it stands, “freedom” has become nothing more than a cliché concept tossed around in a box of democratized tyranny. We try to convince each other that we’re all free, while conveniently ignoring the fact that freedom is hard work. Freedom is a constant battle against entrenched abstraction. It’s a constant fight against outdated laws and parochial values. Freedom is a constant overcoming. It is not a clearly defined state, for clearly defined states tend to become ambiguously corrupt states with the passage of time. So, intrinsically, freedom must be in constant motion, consistently overcoming itself, lest it become overrun by the forces of tyranny.
As such, here are five ways to leverage freedom despite tyranny during this time of political, psychosocial, and existential interregnum.
1.) Dare to Liberate
“If I want the slave to become conscious of his servitude, it is both in order not to be a tyrant myself and in order that new possibilities might be opened to the liberated slave and through him to all men. To want existence, to want to disclose the world, and to want men to be free are one and the same will.” ~ Simone De Beauvoir
Liberating yourself indirectly liberates others while causing all the statist-junkies and sheered sheep to wobble weak-kneed in their “certainty” about the way things “should be.” Self-liberation is a black flag in a sea of conformist white, an insouciant jutting over the status quo morass that agitates the complacent and ignites the restless. Becoming free, individually, sets the stage for freedom, interdependently. For in the world of human affairs, freedom begets freedom. This is because we are social creatures. We need each other. And in order to be truly free, we need others to be free as well. Even if that means slapping them with the truth when all they want is to be kissed with lies.
Daring to liberate yourself is a disclosure of courage that encloses fear and transforms it into fuel for the fire to come. And the fire is coming. The fuses have already been lit. The old ways of doing things will slowly burn down, despite ignorance and vain conservatism. Self-liberation helps us see through the smoke so that we may learn how to dance in the ashes of the aftermath, and maybe even transform those ashes into something truly healthy and sustainable between Mother Nature and human nature.
2.) Dare to Imagine
“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.” ~ Marcel Proust
Speaking of something truly healthy and sustainable, nothing is healthier than freedom. It’s the foundation of health. It’s the bedrock of liberty, the cornerstone of creative thought. Without freedom, we are without –full stop. With freedom, we come alive. Our imaginations light up. Our creativity engages. Our hands gain leverage. Our hearts bulge, full-frontal, in our chest. Our feet begin to dance. Our minds begin to deconstruct indoctrination, recondition preconditions, and un-wash the brainwash. Where before we were mere puppets to an unhealthy, unsustainable, corrupt and tyrannical state, now we are free autonomous agents who dare to cut those codependent strings and rise up into independence so that interdependence can be fully actualized as self-as-world and world-as-self.
Our destination becomes a here-and-now self-overcoming, a self-actualized awakening of our intuition and imagination that relights burnt-out beacons. We’re free to imagine a new way of being human in the world, a new way of living and loving in accordance with interconnected health. We’re able to connect the dots, realizing that their perceived disconnection was only ever an illusion. And as we let go of dead patterns, we permit ourselves to create new, living patterns, despite those who still ignorantly cling to entropy (statists) out of the seeming need for comfort and security. Through such updated patterns emerges a healthy construct upon which we’re able to set the stage to act in accordance with cosmic forces.
3.) Dare to Act
“You’ve got to stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
Don’t allow your life to become a bureaucracy. Don’t allow the consumerist society to turn your life into a commodity. Don’t allow your conditioned conquer-control-consume-repeat knee-jerk reaction to culture destroy the world. You have a choice. You can act, despite comfort, rather than remain inert, out of fear of discomfort. Mere knowledge of tyranny is not enough; it should be followed by appropriate action that leverages freedom. Whether that means creating something new that replaces the outdated and unhealthy way of doing things, or planting seeds in the corrupt machinery of tyranny, so that they may grow and eventually dismantle all the cogs in the clockwork of the man-machine, appropriate action is embracing courage so as to leverage empathy against apathy.
Acting as an agent of freedom is becoming a healthy force of Nature that plows straight through all the unhealthy forces that are against Nature. It’s becoming a healthy storm despite the unhealthy calm. It’s a whispering into the ear of Death and Entropy: “I am Life! Fuck off!” It goes beyond self-liberation and into self-insurgence, launching independence as a spearhead of a greater interdependence that pierces through all darkness, all demons, and all preconceived egos hung-up on the illusion of authority.
If as Kierkegaard warned, “A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is an age of advertisement and publicity. The age of the great and good actions is past. The present age is the age of expectation,” then continuing to live under the boot of authority is allowing death and entropy to win. Continuing to live a fear-based lifestyle that kowtows to the state, is allowing the age of expectation, advertisement and publicity to win. Fuck that! Act! Rise up! Become a force of freedom. For the force behind freedom is Love.
4.) Dare to Love
“Love is the answer to the problem of human existence, but it doesn’t solve the problem of human existence.” ~ Jason Silva
Nothing will ever “solve” the problem of human existence. So be it. As Rudolf Rocker wrote, “I’m an anarchist not because I think anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal.” Considering this unreachable final goal, love is the light that guides us on the precarious path toward uncertainty. And Love’s political equivalent is anarchy. For it is only through anarchy (without rulers or masters) that we are even free to love in the first place. Indeed. It is because I love that I wish you to be free. And I wish you to be free so that you can love.
Daring to love is daring to let others love. This can only be fully actualized under the banner of freedom (anarchy). While under the banner of freedom –which shreds all banners, all symbols, all ideologies, all rules, and all laws save one: cosmic law (healthy against unhealthy; life against entropy)– a human being is able to be humane. A human being is able to be an interconnected force of nature despite the forces against nature. A human being is able breathe; to imagine a new way of being human, to act upon updated blueprints despite outdated patterns. In short: a human being is allowed to love.
Pain should not be avoided at the expense of love. Love should be embraced at the risk of pain.
And the interregnum will be painful. It’s going to hurt like hell (but pain can be transformed into wisdom). Prepare to be uncomfortable (growth requires the stretching of comfort zones). Prepare to be scared (just transform fear into fuel). Prepare to embrace your own insecurities, because all that “security” the state has been shoving down your throat your entire life, was only ever an illusion. Prepare to be unprepared. Because that’s life. There is no certainty. There is no “solving the problem of human existence.” There is no “answer.” There is no “final goal.” There is only freedom and love, and the courage to manifest both despite the forces of death and entropy.
About the Author
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide awake view of the modern world.
This article (4 Ways to Defy the Forces of Tyranny and Affirm the Forces of Freedom) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary ‘Z’ McGee and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.
