According to Wikipedia, “Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one’s purposes.” 

From this definition, we see that freedom has three important elements:

• ability to act or change
• no constraints
• power and resources

Most of us have a very limited understanding of freedom.  We consider ourselves free if we can move around with a relative amount of ease, earn a decent living, interact with friends and family and take part in the electoral process in our countries.  We look at people in autocratic countries and pity them because according to us, they are not free.  We on the other hand hold elections every four or five years and therefore this means we live in a “free and democratic society”. 

Are we free?

Given the above definition of freedom, are we right in considering ourselves free?  If you live in a democratic country and generally consider yourself free, does this idea still hold once you consider the above three elements that are necessary for one to be free?  I put it to you that most of us on this planet are not free by any stretch of the imagination.  It is just that our definition of freedom has been carefully crafted to give us the illusion of freedom.  Once we look at our lives closely, the idea that we are free completely falls flat.  What we have instead is an illusion of freedom – a freedom that is in reality non-freedom.  Freedom has been redefined to mean that you do what you are supposed to do.  You are supposed to live your life a certain way from the day you are born to the day you die and as long as you keep within those boundaries, all is well.  The prison walls are disguised as beautiful paintings or murals that we gaze at without really seeing what is behind them. 

I put it to you that most of us on this planet are not free by any stretch of the imagination.  It is just that our definition of freedom has been carefully crafted to give us the illusion of freedom.  Once we look at our lives closely, the idea that we are free completely falls flat. 

According to the script we are given at birth, life is supposed to look a certain way.  You are supposed to be born, go to school to prepare yourself to be a good worker, leave school and join the workforce, get married, have children, raise the children, retire, then enjoy a few years before death finally takes you.  According to the narrative, this is what freedom looks like.  You stay within the confines of this prison and experience life within these boundaries and you will never get to see the prison walls.  The problem comes in when you try to venture outside the script.  Suddenly, you will be faced with all sorts of pressures to return to the script, to give up your futile attempt to climb over the walls.  It doesn’t take much really to get you back into the safety of the prison.  You will realize very quickly that the system is designed in such a way that you cannot even survive physically if you attempt to scale the walls.  It’s a tight system.  Let’s say you want to change an aspect of the script that you don’t like.  For example, you want to spend your life travelling and painting or taking photographs instead of working in an office.  What you quickly realize is that without resources, there is no freedom.  You can’t afford to do whatever you want to do.  If we could, most of us would probably not be doing what we are doing today.  We are doing whatever we are doing to survive physically, to keep our bodies and our children’s bodies alive.  That is not freedom however much you may have grown up thinking you are free.  If you cannot do whatever you want because of some constraint, be it an authority that is keeping you from doing it or the lack of resources, you are not free.  Look at the definition of freedom and you will realize that most of the people on this planet are not free.  We live under the illusion of freedom. 

One alarming fact about life on this planet is that we seem to constantly be moving towards less and less freedom in every aspect of our lives.  It seems almost as if there is an unseen force that acts to herd us towards less and less freedom.  While most of us just want to live peaceful lives not bothering anyone or being bothered by anyone, it seems that we do not have the luxury to do this.  There is an ever-present force that seems intent on moving humanity towards less and less freedom and we constantly have to fight this force.  It is almost as if we are not allowed to just relax and enjoy life.  Many of us would willingly live under the illusion of freedom simply because we do not have the strength to keep fighting, but this force is not satisfied with our meekly agreeing to live lives of non-freedom.  It wants to take away every last freedom and leave us as slaves.  That is why people are always engaged in protests and demonstrations and pushing back against this relentless force.  It seems that if we relax even for a second, our meagre non-freedoms will all be taken away.  We have seen this with the Covid 19 pandemic.  While we are all busy trying to fight the pandemic for our collective survival, some see this as an opportunity that should not be wasted.  Governments in many parts of the world have postponed elections, imposed endless lockdowns and curfews, imposed vaccine passports and mandates, shut down borders, etc.  Now, we can look at these and say that they are all justified measures in fighting the pandemic, but the problem is that once these measures are put in place, we have to fight to have them lifted afterwards.  Two years since the pandemic started, governments are still determined to keep measures in place even when it doesn’t make sense to do so.  Measures that were supposed to last for two weeks are still in place even when all evidence suggests that the worst is over.  The force seems bent on keeping us down and we have the unfortunate task of fighting just to maintain this state of non-freedom that we live in.  We remain in a state in which we cannot even aspire to a state of true freedom.

Freedom has four levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual freedom.  It is important to understand freedom in its fullest sense if we are to become aware of how our freedoms are slowly eroded without our knowing it.  Being conscious is the first step towards protecting our freedom.  We will look at each of these levels below.

Physical freedom

Physical freedom means being able to do whatever you want whenever you want.  It means having the resources you need to do what you want.  Having said that, being free doesn’t mean acting irresponsibly.  It means acting without restricting other people’s freedom to exercise their freedom.  From this definition, it is clear that people on earth are not truly free to do what they want.  There are so many constraints to our freedom that we can hardly claim to be physically free.  For one thing, most of what we do day to day is geared towards physical survival.  We are still trying to meet the lowest level needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs i.e., food and security.  That can hardly be described as freedom.  How many people truly can do whatever they want or go wherever they want on this planet?  Not many.  For most of us, our waking hours are spent working to feed ourselves and our families.  We simply cannot leave the treadmill even if we wanted to.  When we reach the stage in our evolution in which we are not spending most of our time trying to survive physically, then we can start talking about humanity being free.

There are other ways our physical freedom is limited on this planet.  Although we are free to go wherever we want within our borders, we are not allowed to move freely outside our borders.  To be able to go to other countries, you need a passport and a visa.  Depending on which country you come from, it is either mildly annoying or completely impossible to get these papers.   This is a limitation to our physical freedom.  Many immoral ideas have found their way into the system, for example, the idea that people from certain parts of the world are unworthy to visit other parts of the world.  It has therefore become completely justified to make it as difficult as possible for these people to get the papers they need to travel.  The reasoning behind this is that those from poorer parts of the world will come flooding into the richer parts of the world, but the question is, why do we live in a world where some people wallow in poverty while others are rich?  If we can go to the bottom of this issue and correct the underlying problem, then we will not need to restrict anyone’s movement.  How did the poor countries get so poor in the first place anyway?  Wasn’t it because the rich countries plundered and looted these countries’ wealth and continue to do so today?  Instead of correcting this injustice, we have put in place strict restrictions that stop the poor from going to wealthy countries.

When we see many people in different parts of the world fighting against vaccine passports and mandates, it is because of this very tendency of authorities to take a legitimate system and turn it into something nefarious.  Who knows, maybe a hundred years from now after the pandemic is long gone, people will still be required to have vaccine passports to move around freely and no one will remember how the system started in the first place.  It will just be an accepted restriction of our movement and no one will question how the system started in the first place, just the same way we never question how we came to need passports and visas to visit other countries.  How did this system start in the first place?  Nobody knows, nobody cares, nobody questions it, all we know is that it is very hard to travel to other countries because of the visa system.  Once you understand how our freedoms are constantly eroded and taken away, you will understand why people are passionately fighting these mandates and passports.  If this was a world where no one was trying to take away our freedom, no one would even think of protesting against these requirements.  It would be obvious that once the need for restrictions is over, they would be done away with and normal life would resume.  But because we do not trust our governments to restore our freedoms once the danger is over, we are forced to go to the streets to fight against these restrictions.  Case in point, during the height of the terrorist attacks, it became a requirement in many parts of the world to have strict security checks before entering many places like malls, office buildings or airports.  Today, long after the terrorist threats ended, we are still being searched, watched through surveillance systems and taken through metal detectors.  There is no discussion about restoring our right to move freely without being subjected to invasive searches.  We have all submitted to the idea that everyone is a criminal unless proven otherwise.  Our children who were born after these restrictions were put in place have not known any other way of existing.  Will our children even think to question why the world is the way it is or will it take a few hundred years before people start wondering why they cannot go anywhere without being searched?  This is what happens when we willingly give up our freedoms, we never get them back. 

Today, long after the terrorist threats ended, we are still being searched, watched through surveillance systems and taken through metal detectors.  There is no discussion about restoring our right to move freely without being subjected to invasive searches.  We have all submitted to the idea that everyone is a criminal unless proven otherwise. 

Another effective method that is used to restrict our freedom is teaching us to fear each other.  In the past, people were kept from venturing too far from their homes through the belief that the earth was flat, meaning that someone could fall off the earth if they went too far.  Once we overcame this idea, we were taught instead to fear strangers, which discourages people from mingling freely with others in other parts of the world.  Instead of a natural curiosity about how other people live, we fear and demonize and try to destroy those who are different from us.  So, most of us live our entire lives within our borders and regard with suspicion people from other parts of the world. 

Mental Freedom

Mental freedom is the right to think whatever you want.  Unlike physical freedom, you cannot hurt others by what you think so ideally everyone should be free to think whatever they want without any restrictions.  Only when thoughts turn into actions is there any danger of hurting other people.  You would be surprised however to learn just how much effort goes into suppressing our freedom to think.  You may think that you have the freedom to think whatever you want until you start considering the many ways this freedom is curtailed.  Just as an example, consider the fact that there is a career known as “critic” whose sole role is to dissect someone’s creative work.  Creativity is an expression of what is going on inside someone’s mind and this is expressed through art, literature, music or fashion.  What is the role of the critic?  It is to limit the expression of creativity by deciding what is and isn’t an acceptable expression of one’s creativity.  Because of the influence of critics, people become afraid of expressing their thoughts and ideas freely and over time, we find that creativity is diminished.  This is a way of suppressing mental freedom and some people have made a career out of it.  Critics are not much different from trolls who wait for someone to write something on the internet then attack them with a vengeance.  The mentality is the same.  You are not allowed to say something they disagree with and if you do, they will viciously attack you and do everything they can to make sure you think twice before expressing any ideas they disagree with.      

Another way our mental freedom is suppressed is through digital censorship.  In the dark ages, mental freedom could be curtailed through the burning of books, which was meant to stop the spread of ideas.  When this was no longer acceptable, governments started banning books whenever something was said that they felt was a threat to their authority.  When the internet came along, knowledge and information became much more freely available and banning information could no longer work.  Today, a new way has been found to stop the spread of information i.e., digital censorship.  Under the guise of protecting us from misinformation, digital platforms are becoming increasingly authoritarian in what they allow.  In reality, this is the same instinct that led to the burning and banning of books and other material.  Authorities always get nervous when there is too much information circulating and they always try to find ways of stopping the free flow of information.  Behind this mindset is the patronizing idea that people cannot judge for themselves what is and isn’t good for them.  This is the role that Facebook and Twitter have taken upon themselves.  What gives them the right to determine what we can or can’t read simply because they look down on our ability to make the right decisions?  They see themselves as gods who decide what is and isn’t good for us.  Other digital platforms like Google and YouTube use powerful algorithms to determine what information we receive when we search for something.  On the surface of it, this sounds innocuous enough until we understand the power of these algorithms to determine what we read and watch.  For example, when you search for something on YouTube, you get hundreds of suggestions that are similar to what you searched for.  I’ve always found this tendency to give similar suggestions quite annoying.  For example, if I search for a certain kind of music, I get hundreds of suggestions for similar music.  But what if they instead suggested different kinds of music?  Then I would have the opportunity to discover something new instead of going deeper and deeper into a world where I only listen to one kind of music.  Instead of expanding your horizons, what they do is make your world smaller and smaller.  This tendency to herd people in certain directions is what causes people to become radicalized or end up with beliefs such as QAnon or Incel.  By the time you realize what is happening, you are so deep inside the rabbit hole you hardly know how to find your way out. The bigger picture is that humanity is becoming more and more close-minded and we are losing our ability to consider that a different way of looking at things could be equally valid.

The media is another powerful way in which our mental freedom is limited because the media tells us not only what is happening around us but how we should think about what is happening around us.  This power can be used to very devastating effect as was seen during the Nazi propaganda days.  All you have to do is repeat something often enough and it doesn’t matter how ridiculous it is, in the end, people start believing it.  We know that most of the mainstream media is owned by elites who have everything to benefit from maintaining the status quo.  They need the systems that made them elites in the first place to stay in place even though they do not work for the majority of people.  It doesn’t take a genius to see how the media can be used to shape our reality.  Closely related to this is the control of what we read.  In this age of Amazon, the rating system is used to subtly control what we read.  Books that receive the highest rating end up being read the most.  This sounds innocuous enough, but what is the end result?  The end result is that only popular ideas or authors receive the attention of readers while new or unpopular ideas get buried in the bowels of Amazon to rot and die quiet deaths.  How will we ever learn anything new if we only read what everyone else is reading?    At the end of the day, we are swimming in a small pond where there is no room for anything new. 

Emotional freedom

Emotional freedom is the right to feel whatever you want.  Unfortunately, from the time we are young we are taught that we are not free to feel or express emotions the way we want.  Depending on your gender, we are taught that there are emotions we can or can’t express.  Men are taught to be strong meaning they should not show fear, doubt, sorrow or any other such “feminine” emotions.  Women are taught to be soft meaning they are not allowed to express “manly” emotions such as anger.  Expressing the “wrong” emotion leads to rejection by society and this is how our emotional freedom is denied us.  The result of this very strong pressure is that people end up hiding their true selves and putting up a front that society deems acceptable.  Women learn to be soft-spoken, timid and unsure of themselves, which just feeds into the stereotype that women have nothing important to contribute.  Men on the other hand embody a very unbalanced form of masculinity which is aggressive, hard, unyielding and stubborn.  These qualities are celebrated in men, but the truth is that they represent an unbalanced masculinity or what is known as toxic masculinity.

Women historically suffered immensely under these very unbalanced ideas of how men and women are supposed to feel or express their emotions.  During the dark ages, women would be labelled as witches if they didn’t conform while in the recent past, women would be sent to mental institutions simply because they expressed unacceptable desires.  Today, other more subtle ways are used to control women.  Labelling women as depressed, crazy or hormonal when they choose to express emotions that make others uncomfortable is an effective means of controlling women.  The fact that women go through emotional ups and downs such as menstruation, pregnancy or menopause has been used to dismiss them as second-class humans who should not be listened to or taken seriously.  The fact that women express themselves differently from men is also used to take away from the fact that whatever they express is just as valid as men.  For example, men are taught to speak out boldly, cut in and share their opinions freely while women are taught to wait their turn and doubt that what they want to express is valid.  This is why the world is completely unbalanced towards men.  Women’s voices are not heard, so we end up with a very aggressive world in which we choose war instead of diplomacy, where politics is competitive and aggressive, and where business is concerned only with profits and not employees or the environment.  All these are the result of the suppression of women.

Another sphere in which our emotional freedom is curtailed is in the expression of love.  We are not allowed to love whoever we want.  Society gives us a very limited idea of what love looks like and then expects everyone to fall into these very confined ideas.  For example, we still live in a world where people from different races cannot freely express love for each other.  We live in a world where people who differ too much in age cannot express love for each other without judgement.  We live in a world where monogamy is the only acceptable form of union.  There are so many rules surrounding the expression of love that one cannot help but wonder where all these rules came from.  Why can’t people experience love in whatever form they want and make their own decisions about what is and isn’t right for them?  Why is it that the free expression of love is so threatening to society?

Spiritual freedom

Spiritual freedom is the right to believe what you want and as we know, this is one form of freedom that has been viciously curtailed and aggressively fought on this planet.  The idea that people can believe whatever they want seems to be very threatening to some people.  Historically, spiritual freedom was curtailed through the very violent attempt by the catholic church to control what people believed, to the extent of killing people whose beliefs were not in line with the teachings of the church.  This was what led to the very bloody inquisitions and crusades.  The idea that people should be forced to believe what certain people say is the only acceptable truth resulted in the abuse of human beings for centuries.  This same attempt to impose beliefs upon people was used during colonial times when colonialism went hand in hand with the Christianisation of populations.   The purpose was to get the people to willingly accept subjugation by giving them teachings that reinforced this such as being submissive, accepting authority that was supposedly imposed by God and accepting suffering with the idea that there was a better life waiting in heaven.  

Today, spiritual freedom is not curtailed quite so brutally but there are still hidden ways in which our spiritual freedom is suppressed.  A very effective way is through shaming or mocking someone for the beliefs they hold.  Many people today are reluctant to share their spiritual beliefs because if they do not conform to the mainstream, they become victims of mockery.  Another way this is done is through shunning someone who attempts to explore other beliefs that are outside what is considered the norm in the society in which they live.  Converting to a different religion is considered a betrayal which results in being made an outcast by family and friends.  We also have the idea that one should convert to a certain religion in order to marry someone from that religion.  This gives the impression that what you believe makes you different in some way, but the reality is that people are just people no matter what they believe.  At the end of the day, we all want the same things.  To live peaceful, happy and fulfilled lives.

Protecting your freedom

Because most people do not understand freedom in its truest sense, it becomes very easy for those who want to control us to redefine freedom and then get us to believe that we are free while in reality, we are not.  By defining freedom as the ability to do what you are supposed to do, people live entire lives without freedom while being under the illusion that they are free.  We assume that so long as we can go to work and earn a living and take care of ourselves and our families, we are free.  But we don’t understand that this life has been defined for us by someone else and we cannot easily go outside this very narrow definition of what life is supposed to be.  When we try to spread our wings and experience ourselves the way God intended us to experience ourselves, that’s when we discover that we are not free at all.  Once we understand the true definition of freedom, we can start looking at the world we live in and seeing all the expressions of non-freedom around us.  Then we can start speaking out about the many things that are happening around us that move the world towards less and less freedom. 

On a personal level, we need to take charge of our lives and reject all subtle forms of control.  We may not be immediately able to do away with all forms of control, but there are some small things that we allow to chip away at our freedom without being conscious of what is happening.  For example, we always complain about big tech taking away our freedom, but are they in any way forcing us to use their platforms?  No, we do this willingly and in the process, allow them to control us.  Why use google as a search engine for example when there are alternatives like DuckDuckGo that do not collect or store your data?  Why do you need to be on Facebook or Twitter when they disrespect their users so much that they feel they have a right to control what they can or can’t read? 

We also need to stand up for our right to be different from everyone else and to be our authentic selves.  Just because everyone is going in a certain direction doesn’t mean they are all right.  They could very well be all wrong.  So, we must reserve the right to do what feels right to us and ignore those who try to get us back into the herd.  We need to share our views, opinions and ideas freely through blogs, books or whatever other means we have at our disposal.  The interesting thing about this planet is that the lowest people, the ones with the worst ideas, the ones who pull everyone down are the ones who are the most aggressive in sharing their opinions with the entire world.  You find them everywhere claiming to be experts and sharing their opinions and negative ideas with everyone.  They have no problem spreading their negativity.  On the other hand, the most positive, enlightened people feel unworthy, they feel that their ideas are stupid, they feel that no one is interested in hearing from them and they keep their ideas to themselves.  This ensures that the planet is filled with negativity while the light stays hidden under the bed.