Weekly article

I am Free

 

An economic crisis with grave uncertainty is right on our doorstep. According to recent data, some states, like California, have an average debt of 300,000 dollars per family. This explains our current urgent situation which is with its uncertain outcome.
The citizens of the U.S. have become accustomed to spending without having money. The is no doubt that a credit card can be dangerous in the hands of some without any experience in using it, or even worse someone without maturity and self-restraint.
The same is happening in other areas. Adolescents are wasting their lives on the computer and watching television and they are not investing in building lives of value. What’s worse is that the majority have no knowledge of what a life of values is and are not even interested in finding out. They are only interested in enjoying the present and their parents are quite willing facilitators.
The difference between wasting one’s money and wasting one’s life is of course of great consequence: one can get back money lost, but one can never get back the lost hours, days, months and years.
Ideological as well as economic freedom cannot offer to us a defined or valuable solution. These only offer a framework, which may be empty of content. This is the great fallacy of those who try to benefit from freedom of choice. This type of freedomcan be found at all sorts of different prices, a supply at the right price will find its appropriate demand. Freedom of choice comes in all levels of pricing. For example, a “piercing”, symbol of nonconformity with social norms, can find the right cost in a street market, as can a Bugatti, costing in excess of a million dollars.
Freedom isn’t a goal, merely a condition so that we can make decisions that lead to lives of value.
Freedom of choice by itself has no value : it is like money saved and put aside until it acquires value depending on what is purchased.
Freedom in the abstract, unable and fearful to commit to anything or anybody, is of no value, worthless, like a floodlight disconnected from its electrical current. Formless freedom is the uniform of the self-centered, who try to convince others that they are happy this way.
To be independent, unconnected, like a seagull, flying according to my whim, has its downside. I would have to eat raw fish everyday of my life and sleep in the nooks of rocks. Many other things of formless freedom would be unappealing. I would prefer to live as a man able to commit himself to a life, committed to a worthwhile cause governed by justice and love for others.
Each time I commit to something I use my freedom, and as a consequence I need to ponder the rights, obligations and responsibilities of my decisions.