Freedom? - What freedom?

As you all know, I am not political in any way ... but when I look at world news, I feel that the art of conversation is dead and that when people can’t be bent at will to a will, brute force is the means used to try and enforce and re-vindicate. Yet, is there revenge in causing martyrdoms and death? Can anyone enforce anything on anyone else? Do violent enforcers really think they can teach someone anything by way of beatings, imprisonment and death? Do they really think that they can threaten human beings by using others as examples of what will happen if there's no compliance?

Any government or oppressing body is stupid to think that, in this day and age of “relative” freedom of speech, the information super highway and better inter global communication than ever, people will just roll over and accept everything thrown at them. Martyrs serve to reinforce ideology and give courage to others. In some religions, life after death is more promising so there is no fear of death. In actual fact, on the contrary, it's welcomed.

People, just like you and I, all over the world - and I'm not talking about governments or religious institutions who would maintain the status quo - are constantly looking for philosophies and ideologies of freedom. I use the term "freedom" very loosely. Yet, no matter how flawed this freedom may be "in practice", it has always been something to aspire to. I’m not necessarily talking about all kinds of excesses that come with this “relative” freedom we have, but at least the freedom to travel from one country to another; the freedom to look for a job wherever we’d like to work, the freedom to pray in the house of a chosen Divinity, the freedom to live without fear.

Yet, in reality, there is no such thing as Democracy or real freedom anywhere in the world. We are all observed, controlled, monitored and manipulated by higher powers that be. Our movements are easily tracked. Our conversations can easily be tapped into, and with the Internet, our private data and habitual behavioural patterns are all recorded. From the moment we are born, we are all bagged, tagged, numbered and accounted for.

Maybe in the East, there are still people who manage to escape from the system; but as soon as they need something from the system, their fate is sealed. In Holland now, we even have human chipping; reducing us to nothing more than a local pet that once lost can be found by GPS.

In all countries, without exception, we can only speak out to a certain point before our jobs, homes, families and lives are put on the line. And, unfortunately, we all depend on a job to have a home, raise a family and live life in our modern world of commodities and materialism.

The only “relative” freedom we all have, as human beings, is our freedom of choice and our freedom of will. Yet, the older I get the more I realise that many of our “standard” choices are already being manipulated for us, and much of our free will is curbed at the onset for fear of the consequences.

Moreover I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that we’ve become (generally) such a lazy society, we just allow ourselves to be steered one way or the other by way of all the propaganda that’s in our face 24/7.

It would appear that over the decades, and maybe with the advent of television and radio, we’ve become so accustomed to being spoon fed what “we should or shouldn’t do, have or be” that now we just sit back and let it come at us; without even questioning why.

In 1989, we were all shocked by the horror of students being attacked and massacred in Tiananmen Square and yet, when students protested in London they too were attacked by the police. In Syria, Libya, the autonomous region of Tibet and many other countries, people are being massacred, as I write, for expressing their free will and exercising their right to have a free voice.

Why doesn’t the world find this so shocking? - Is it because we’ve become so complacent that if it doesn’t directly affect us, we don’t care! Is it because governments have managed to divide us (as one human nation) to the point of it always being “us and them.” Or, is it because, nowadays there is so much “crap” - (excuse my choice of word) going on in just about every country around the world, including maybe ours, we don’t know where to turn to. So, we don’t turn any which way. We just turn off completely and let them ( the governments) get on with it.

Of course, we’re not happy but we let others do the protesting. We don’t like our governments, but we let others go and vote. It’s always others. It’s because of this attitude of letting others sort things out that we (on a worldwide scale) are in this mess. We’ve become apathetic.

If it’s not our mother, brother, another family member or a high profile person that’s being brutally beaten, killed or imprisoned without just cause, we just don’t care. I have to question to what point, as human beings, are we prepared to let others get on with it; especially when the ripple effects will eventually affect us all.