Hi Mof'ers,
I'm a new participant to this forum, delighted to have discovered you...
This month's topic of freedom happenes to be of particular relevance to me,
because of this month's Jewish celebration of Passover (The celebration of
liberty from the opression of Egypt).
All HIGHLIGHT's and [square brackets] are mine:
****
The discussion Diana began, relates to freedom on the social level. But what
about personal freedom? aren't we confusing freedom with liberty? Diana
points out in her second posting that freedom is not the opposite of order,
but rather the opposite of opression.
In an article called "A Slavery Called Freedom" Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz writes:
"Freedom is most often perceived as the absence of slavery [Opression] -
just as slavery can be defined as the absence of freedom. But in reality,
the absence of slavery does not in itself create a condition of freedom.
Slavery is a condition wherein one is forever forced to act according to the
will of another. Freedom is the ability of man to act and express selfhood."
Horse wrote:
>It takes great effort of WILL to adapt to new patterns when old
>patterns are deeply ingrained. Within Negative Freedom [liberty from
opression]
>there exists potential. Positive freedom [the ability to act and express
selfhood]
>is the ability to achieve that potential.
I think a discussion of freedom cannot be comprehensive without a discussion
of WILL. If freedom is the ability to express and act upon ones free will,
then will is the frontline DQ in action.
There are many instances where we seem to express will, but all we are doing
is a reaction to patters (Intelectual, social, biological) in action. These
reactions are mostly automatic, but every once in a while a weak link is
discovered wereupon DQ has an oppertunity to make a choice... that is the
point will comes into being, seemingly out of nothing.
Pirsig notes this as the driving mechanism behind all evolution (Corgi p175):
"Phaedrus thought this ambiguity of Carbon's bonding PREFERANCES was the
situation the weak Dynamic subatomic forces needed. Carbon bonding was a
balanced mechanism they could take over. It was a vehicle they could STEER
to all sorts of FREEDOM by SELECTing first one bonding preference and then
another in an almost unlimited variety of ways."
Notice, that Pirsig refers to the inorganic elements as having preferances,
steering and selecting. I think this is much more then a metaphore. He could
just as well have said the subatomic forces WANTED to bind in different
ways, and were SEEKING oppertunities to do so. This is will in it's
elementary form - in the inorganic level. The act of willing something takes
place on all levels, and is always related to a new gain of freedom. Dynamic
quality seeking new ways to overcome static limitations.
And finally, Will is the driving force of everything, at least thats what
the Idol seems to be talking about :
"...everybody gets what he WANTS: the voice said.
"Lila gets her precious Richard Rigel, Rigel gets his precious
self-righteousness, you get your precious Dynamic freedoms,
and I get to go swimming again." p 469
Miv
------- End of forwarded message -------
MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:21 BST