What Freedom is For
Personalize It
Q: When do you feel the most free?
Q: Where could you use some more freedom in your life?
Q: Where do you think people are seeking freedom today?
Definition
Intro: Our culture is in a conflict over freedom. Both sides are focused on using the powers of media, education, business, and government to define what freedoms should or should not be available. What they are not doing is having a conversation about what freedom means and what it is for.
This is universal in human conflict. We spend huge energy fighting each other about what a thing defines without defining the thing together in the first place. If we bothered to define the thing at the most fundamental level, we usually discover some common ground to work from to arrive at some kind of practical synthesis.
Q: Define Freedom.
One common definition: “Being able to do whatever you want.”
Judges 17:6, 21:25: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.”
What is the limitation on freedom defined only as absolute personal agency?
Purposed definition: power, and space to use it.
This definition is helpful when considering our current political divisions: Basically each of the two main sides is only focused on one part of the definition. On the side of “economic liberalism” — what is sometimes called “Classical Liberalism” held by the right leaning side with emphasis on the free market and limited regulation — the focus is on space. On the other side of “social liberalism” with its subset of “cultural liberalism — held by the left or progressive movement — you get a focus on power. But in reality you need both.
[Give examples.]
This is very much expressed in the worldviews underlying the current political divisions in the country. One the one hand, you have what I call the Achiever worldview with a system based on rule by Meritocracy and driven by the Consumer economy. Fighting against them is what I call the Village worldview that rules by professional Quorums and creates the Self-Actualization economy based on equity-networks. The Achievers are focused on creating freedom by opening up “space” for people’s assumed power (which they call opportunity) by de-regulation and low taxation. The Village is trying to create freedom by empowering people socially and environmentally through regulation, services built on the welfare state, and removal of “cultural stigmas”
Achiever
Advancement in a World of Bureaucracy
Specialization
Exit: Counter-Cultural Revolution
Village
Equity in a World of Injustice
Equity Networks
Exit: Information Revolution
Part of the political crisis of our generation who uses the Systems worldview the most is that we tend to agree with the idea of personal power or agency held by the Village Democrats and Progressives, but we find that our key issue is finding space to exercise our power like the Achiever Republicans and Free Market Conservatives promise. We’re more individualistic than is compatible with the Quorum of Village — we call this “The Nanny State” and we’re Hackers in terms of our self-understanding. But we don’t like how Achiever ignores the issues of empowerment when they talk about the supposed Meritocracy — as if everyone has the same power and starts at the race at the same line. We’re also very uncomfortable with their over simplicity — there is less political, economic, and ecological space in the world from when consumerism first took off, and we see great complexity in how to manage that in a sustainable way which sometimes aligns us more with Village thinking.
The generations behind us, which live in more of the Universe worldview, tend to align closer to the politics of focusing on personal power with the Village worldview. The polls seem to definitely indicate that. But I think we’ll see a reckoning in the coming decade as they seek to build a world of their own and discover that space to exercise their power is currently extremely limited.
Purpose
Q: What is freedom for?
As important as the definition of a thing is its purpose — its usefulness. But this is often hard to grasp with something as big and sometimes abstract as freedom. Using the [3] David’s Bow version of [3] The Trinity can help:
Davids Bow is a way of saying that purpose can be revealed from the synthesis of creative tension. In other words when two things seemingly opposed to each other are held in tension, this can ultimately lead to a synthesis that leads to a discovery of purpose and direction.
So there’s a creative tension surrounding freedom:
Gen 2:16-17 NIV: And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
The alpha — or the push which first emerges — is “I want to do what I want”. But immediately there’s a pull that counters is — the beta — of “there will be consequences”.
Especially in the following two interpretations:
Personal: Creative Tension of Individual Freedom with Law/Restraint for public good
Communal: Creative Tension of Strategy with Culture
Synthesis
Freedom and Law
John 8:34-38 [Slave to sin. If the Son sets you free…]
Romans 8:1-9 [law of the Spirit sets us free from the law of sin and death]
Gal 5:1-13 [Freedom freedom from flesh for service (Mission)]
Application
Q: What should someone do to find more personal freedom?
Q: What projects are you working on related to freedom? (External)
Q: How does freedom work as a principle in the project? (Internal)
Freedom and division
Freedom and unity
Responses