Reflections on the Meaning of "Freedom"

What is this thing called ”freedom?”

Here in this community we seem to frequently talk about it, but the more I look at it the more it seems like we all have our own definitions of what freedom really means.

Freedom to what? Or is it freedom from what?

Earlier today, I was watching a YouTube documentary about the hundreds of thousands of people who park their vans and tents and RV's around tens of thousands of acres of BLM land — basically scrub desert — outside the city of Phoenix.

Some are there year round, some of there just for a few weeks or months. There is no structured campground there, no permanent services or anything like that. They just set up camp out in the middle of nowhere.

Some are in broken down vans on their last legs; some are in $500,000 Class A heavy motorhomes. Some live on handouts and a few hundred dollars a month; others are massively wealthy.

In the course of watching the documentary the common thread of why they would choose to do this was — in a word — ”freedom.” The desire to have a lifestyle where maybe they are just off-grid, where they can get up whenever they want to and go to bed whenever they want to, or maybe they just want to be alone, or maybe they just wanna be in a camp with other people who feel the same as they do, or maybe they just don’t want to pay rent or fork over the other fees for a consumer society’s ”niceties.”

But once again, what is this thing called ”freedom?”

At various points in my life I have spent a few years being — as it were — unencumbered and unattached. In retrospect, there was definitely a sort of freedom involved in that, although to a lesser degree.

I gave up a mortgage payment, property taxes and home maintenance in favor of one simple rent payment and the ”freedom” to call the landlord for a fix when something — like the air conditioner — stopped working.

I suppose you could call that a sort of freedom from responsibility.

During those same years, I also changed from working for a high tech company as a technical and documentation writer and struck out on my own as a freelancer and contract worker.

I suppose you could call that freedom from obligation.

I never went entirely off-grid although I did at one point entertain the idea of buying a small van, tearing the back seats out and laying a mattress and basic conveniences in there (I had already converted someone’s school bus to a luxury motorhome, so I knew what I was doing) and slowly driving around the United States, partly just to see the country, and partly to visit the myriad people I had had gotten to know through various online message forums I was active on, at the time.

Of course nothing ever came of it, but it still seemed like a very appealing idea.

This also all took place shortly after I had separated from — and eventually divorced — the first Mrs. Denmarkguy.

I suppose you could call that a sort of freedom from attachments.

But are we any closer to describing what ”freedom” really is?

I look at what I have written, and what seems conspicuously absent from the picture are things like guns, government and taxes… which would probably be very high on most people’s lists of ”freedoms” they value.

I see that as neither right, nor wrong, nor anything else, but more as an object illustration of the extent to which freedom is a super individual thing. It also changes, depending on culture and geography.

I am a Danish national who has lived in the USA for over 30 years… and because I go back and forth, and have family and friends on both side of the Atlantic, I can really appreciate that distinction.

Sometimes, the distinction is remarkable, in interesting and unusual ways. Take something like ”the right to roam” which is a common freedom in Denmark and Scandinavia… which basically means you are free to traverse open land, regardless of whether it is private or public, as long as you don’t disturb nature or interfere with the land’s use (farming), or go through actual gardens and back yards, disturbing people in the process.

In the US, you’re mostly met with ”no trespassing” signs and sometimes angry landowners with with dogs and guns, telling you it is "their right" to shoot you. Around where we live, there are tens of thousands of acres of forest land that belong to timber companies… but people are (mostly) not allowed to set foot in those forests… unless they are designated State or National Forests.

But this is not intended as a political post, or a critique of different approaches… but as an invitation to explore what freedom actually means.

We often discover that our own interpretations diverge considerably from the ”officially prescribed” — and sometimes even legislated — version.

So I’ll leave with this final thought to consider how often we point at other cultures and declare that they ”don’t have freedom,” typically oblivious to the fact that they might be looking back at us, with the exact same idea in mind because we have different interpretations for what freedom really is.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great Sunday!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2024-08-25 15:53 PDT
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