Essential Reads: How to find freedom in an unfree world

A scary question; do we have the courage to be free? To defend it for ourselves? To act on our own freedom? Or do we just prefer to sit in our prison and complain about things conveniently remote?

One of Harry Brown's not-so-known books has the title "How I found freedom in an unfree world". The book is almost 50 years old now.

It might feel outdated in today's world, or, so we thought. Still, we got hold of it as an e-book and put it into our favorite speech-engine and listened to it as an audiobook, with the fire cracking in the fireplace and seeing spring slowly arrive at these northern latitudes outside the windows. 

The book is not quite as outdated as one might think. There's a very vibrant core idea in Mr Brown's thinking.

Pericles, Athens 429 BC, defender of freedom in the larger sense of the word. 

To build freedom for ourselves, the idea is to focus on what we actually can act on, and have the courage to do something if needed, or let it go otherwise.

So: let's not talk about the grass on the other lawn. Let's not get hung-up about who is the president of the US, what's happening in China, or if our local parliament is passing a law that we hate. Nothing if that is of much importance, unless we can truly do something real about it.

Life is and will always be a battleground. Let's not sit and be upset about that.

Let's focus on ourselves instead. Is any of that upsetting for us, in our immediate surrounding and interactions? And even if it is, how big is the impact? Or do we feel insulted, rather than our freedoms being really decreased?

Let's act on our immediate surroundings and how that creates freedom for ourselves instead. Those decisions are tougher but far more impactful than complaining about far-away, theoretical assaults on some kind of idealized freedom. Provoking thought? Perhaps, but then tell impact might happen on a small scale.

Stuck in a marriage, or don't like the laws around marriage? Divorce. Don't like the taxes? Find a way to optimize them. There's much that can be done. Or just earn more money. Don't like to be employed? Start one's own company. Don't like the school-system? Find alternatives.

Is this a lack of civil courage? Yes and no. I would say that it takes courage to grasp our personal freedom and realize that much more than one thinks is under our control. And if we want to fight in the public arena for real, we should do as Pericles and actually fight, and not merely complain.

Do or do not: there are no complaints.

Let's not complain about being unfree, or what is outside our control, so we loose sight of what can be done with our actual freedoms here and now. 

The conclusion would be: being unfree is usually much more in our heads than in our reality.