Please, let me apologize in advance for the long message that follows.
Tin foil hat much??
Well, not exactly that much of a
tinfoil hatted; just see the smilies at my comment!
Yet, I do not buy all that governmental terrorist thing propaganda. I can remember myself boarding on planes without even having to show my ID; but this used to be happening a looong time ago, before the so-called
'911 terrorist attacks' that gave birth to yet another set of uncalled wars* (while making a few very special individuals filthy rich) in expense on our freedom**.
-George
[ * ]
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2017, by the
Congressional Research Service itself...
[ ** ] This is going to be a brief philosophical dissection of the term 'freedom,' since is not so complicated as it seems to be.
Firstly, I have an appeal to those who will feel to be inclined to, not to try to give me any nonsense about any member(s) that became ‘political,’ so their thread(s) should be pre-emptively locked or deleted. That is because, even a baby's crying to the mother for more milk is a political expression! Should it be banned, too, and be left to die from malnutrition because it ‘became political’?
Please, do not confuse
Ideology with
Philosophy because the opposite of superstition and ideology (which by definition are both dogmatic) is philosophy. Now, what is philosophy, in plain terms? It is, among other things, a notion according to which, nothing (and no one) is above healthy and constructive criticism. It is about questioning everything and everyone (even the so-called ‘authorities’ on any subject matter) if we really want to get to the next level of comprehending our reality.
Well, freedom is not just a notion. Freedom is one of the most important parameters for the quality of the life someone has, because being free to choose and to act is a cardinal rule for any kind of intelligent life. Even dolphins are free to choose whether to take their next breath or not, if they feel they should not (another little known fact about dolphins is that they are the only mammals, besides humans, that continue to be playing games after their puberty and until the final days of their lives).
So, being 'free' is imperative for any intelligent human being; but, be free to do what, exactly? Unfortunately, the term "freedom" does not reveal anything about the notion(s) it represents because it is just a mere translation of the Hellenic term «?
??» (elephteria) for a language that was created not before the Common Era and whose first writings are dated even later in time.
Our forefather Aristotle used to say that the most enslaved persons are the ones who believe that they are free (but, factually, they are not). And that has been written two and a half millennia ago; it has been written one and a half millennium before the written manifestation of the term 'freedom.'
Having the privilege to be natively speaking the mother of all the Romance languages, especially under the light of the fact that the Romance languages are derived from the Classical Hellenic language to a greater or lesser extent (since the Latin alphabet, which is now being used by the 3/5 of the Earth's population, actually is the
Chalcidian alphabet, an
archaic Euboean alphabet that originated from the ancient city-state of Chalcis in Euboea right after the end of the Trojan War, which
has most probably taken place five thousand one hundred years ago, during 3087..3077 BCE), is very easy to explain what freedom really is because every term of the Hellenic language has a special meaning derived from its root-words, the terms it is consisted of.
According to etymology,
(eleftheria: freedom) is the natural-given right (and not a legislation-given one, as we are falsely being let to believe) of every human being to be
?? (elephthein: to be going, from
(elephtho: to go)
? (opou: wherever)
(tis: someone)
(erà: loves to, from
(ero): to love/desire). It is that simple! On the other hand, 'freedom' should never be confused with 'liberty' because the latter one is the limited freedom granted to someone (for example, to a prisoner or to a solder) who is NOT free to go wherever he pleases to.
Now, are we really free? Just ask yourselves what, for example, will be the cost of a spontaneous decision for someone to not go to work this morning (or, for the whole week or month) because they felt like it: Would they not ‘lose’ their so-called ‘possessions’ that were silently placed as a collateral in order for them to be extortable and, thus, controllable by the establishment?
By definition, someone who is free is fearless. This is why all the ancient Hellenic art depicted faces having a subtle smile: the smile of fearlessness, derived from their true freedom: the freedom their free-thinking granted them. Those people were the only ones in human history that used to speak to their gods standing tall and looking them straight in the eyes and, often, arguing with them if they felt that they were wronged by their gods! Of course, I feel I should mention the obvious lack of freedom for the members of any oppressed societies due to their being under dogmatic rule, like theocracies, politocracies, or any form of membership in dogmatic clubs ruled by ways of fear...
As I have written in my signature's thread, we are born free human beings but we let ourselves to be enslaved with or without our consent and, most of the times, without our knowledge of that fact due to our cultivated ignorance. That is because freedom (or subjection or anything else) is firstly being cultivated in our minds, just like everything is. These directives are cultivated and written deep in our minds during childhood (see the paedobaptism practices that have been imposed to everyone in our society since the sixth century CE in the Middle Ages Byzantine Empire by the
Codex Justinianus, which basically was a harmonization, if not a merge, of the state and the church institutions power; just see the way of creation of ruthless people or of submissive masses throughout history: Their common denominator is their deep indoctrination, which can only happen if their ‘conditioning’ begun since birth). Only after the successful completion of that procedure of cultivation of the freedom (of the subjection or of anything else), these cultivated qualities can manifest their selves in any other forms in that person’s life activity.
Do not forget that someone born in prison sees the prison bars as a decoration of the place and not as the unbendable steel restriction to their freedom, because they do not know what it is or what it feels like to be really free: they only know of what they have been told about what freedom is and feels like by their social counterparts who were also born in prison. This is also documented by Plato in his
'Allegory of the Cave' 2,400 years ago! So, what are the odds for those specific fellow men of ours to break really free from their own mental bondage, which was persistently and deeply instilled to them during upbringing? And if they managed to break free from their indoctrination, what would be the odds for them to survive in a society that has not?