At this time of rapidly rising authoritarianism and environmental destruction many people wonder what they can do and if the action they take has meaningful impact. In the past, resistance has succeeded when very large numbers of people join it, so while we know what has to be done we struggle with how to make it happen. People imagine that Americans are free, but in fact, to borrow Rousseau’s words, they are everywhere in chains that are mostly self-imposed. For they accept the classical liberal definition of freedom which is the right to do what one wants so long as it doesn’t infringe on the same right of others. While the classical political theory has government protecting the general good, that part was abolished by neoliberalism, and now we’re back to every man for himself, the war of all against all and might is right. Rousseau was correct: we are born free, but we need to understand what it means to live free.
First, what does it mean to live? We are not biological atoms but individual organisms that form parts of countless intersecting and nested organic wholes that by nature include communities, ecosystems, the biosphere and ultimately the universe. Our lives are in fact continuous with the rest of the world, and this is demonstrated by our perception being composed of images existing approximately in the places of their objects outside the image of our bodies. This is a self-evident fact of experience at the bottom of our immediate consciousness of unity with our environment.
That the body is in experience rather than experience being in the body is central to the philosophy of Henry Bergson which has inspired my new world view. His thinking also provides crucial insight into the nature of our freedom that can move us forward today. The image of the object I see in front of me is indeed “out there” approximately in the place of the object, and further, it reflects the potential action of my body determined by my present intention. This is another self-evident fact of experience: not only does the image indicate where I can touch the object, how far I must move my body to come into contact with it, but also how it may fulfill my intention. Thus I can look at a rock and see it as something to leave alone or to pick up and use as a hammer or a missile.
My body is surrounded by images, all reflecting potential action and therefore choices for me to freely make. It is a center of action in a continuous spatially extended universe, existing in the present moment that is but which is forever passing away into the past which is not. The world is a Becoming, continuously created at every moment of time with absolutely new content being integrated into the recreated immediate past. This is another self-evident fact of experience: every experience in our lives accumulates in our bodies, as likewise natural history and human history accumulate in the world. William Faulker put it succinctly: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.”
Our present experience consists of past actions virtually projected onto present objects in our environment, indicating how we may apply those actions to them to fulfill our present intention. Intentions therefore are crucial: do we want to perpetuate the status quo or do we want change? Moreover, what is the nature of the change we want, and how do we proceed to bring it about? Our prospects are drawn from our accumulated experience that includes individual past actions, things and events we have witnessed plus knowledge we have directly received from others and indirectly from books, print and electronic media. While our intention determines which past actions we might possibly reproduce in the present situation, we freely choose the particular one that we actually carry out.
Our freedom is therefore the ability to choose between multiple courses of action indicated by the images we perceive that represent objects around our bodies. Broader and greater experience and knowledge increase our freedom, and so does the scope of our intention. As we are individual human beings and parts of so many intersecting and nested organic wholes, living fully means acting with the intention of serving our own lives and those of these many other wholes that include families and communities. Fully living free means applying ample resources to choosing actions that serve the total purpose.
We act in the present moment, applying our past experience to ever-new conditions – continuously. As each moment passes away into the past experiences accumulate in the body, adding to the stock we can apply in the future, and this is compounded with persistent purposeful action. Meanwhile the impact of our action accumulates in the world and likewise compounds as we persevere and does not just ripple away into space or past time. As we act we literally contribute to the continual creation of the world not only for the present but also for the future wherein the past and the present will be forever preserved.
As for compound impact, it is orders of magnitude greater when large numbers of people act persistently with a shared purpose. Relentless effort alone however doesn’t achieve the desired objective. Options for action must continually be assessed to determine if they are or are not working, which is to say that we must continually exercise our freedom to most fully live free.
For the person who asks, “How do I begin?” the answer is just do something and let your action snowball. Aristotle said that one becomes virtuous by practicing virtue. Although nature has been severely degraded, it’s not dead yet, and, as living beings, we by nature serve the world as I have described. Indeed, this is our natural desire. Therefore as we act, not only does our capacity for acting grow, but so does our intention, that is, our desire to achieve our objective which is ultimately the ecological civilization. Nature is not indifferent to us, for by nature all things strive to serve themselves and each other, so as we act universally we leverage natural forces.
Focusing on life and nature, we are tempted to exclude the political order, but I maintain with Aristotle that man is by nature a political animal. Laws are essential parts of our lives as political animals that can aid us in living fully or seriously restrict us. At this time we urgently need to preserve our fundamental freedoms that are being rapidly eroded, but we must also recognize the ways in which government has created and sustains our life-denying political economy. For the most part people have no choice but to work in enterprises that are destructive to the environment, exploit and harm people. Fully living by serving ourselves and all the organic wholes of which we are parts and making the maximum use of our freedom to do this requires a political order that supports it. Pursuing the ideal in the political arena creates the very conditions that make its realization possible.
So the immediate need is for people to come together as citizens to defeat authoritarianism and secure protection for people and the planet while laying the foundation for the ecological civilization. Acting with a shared purpose people remain individuals who must employ their intelligence and abilities, most simply by regarding other people as fellow-citizens, talking to and engaging them in the movement.
Our lives are multi-dimensional, and insofar as we act in some of our natures but not all or as members of identity groups opposed to the natural order we are unfree. Also acting in ignorance or irrationally is unfreedom. Supreme unfreedom is not functioning as individual rational agents at all, as Zygmunt Bauman said, not like swimmers but rather plankton.
Today’s crisis is total, threatening us on all fronts – our individual well-being, our democracy and every aspect of the environment. It is the continuation and extreme expansion of the challenge of the civil rights movement about which John Lewis said, “Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part. And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world.” As full-spectrum resistance engages all of our natures and faculties it is a world-historical opportunity to live free.
This article is a digest of my Live Free (Long Version)
Teaser image credit: Steve Emmons, USFWS https://pixnio.com/fauna-animals/birds/goose-pictures/snow-geese-pictures/snow-geese-and-ross-geese-in-flight