The Great Teenage Philosopher
Entry posted by Emanick
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This is going to be a short entry, because I'm tired and I need to sleep. I have my Photography "exam" in the morning, which will hopefully be a joke, and then the first part of my AP Gov and Politics test on the presidency and the bureaucracy. Fun stuff. The last two days have been snow days here, so I've been getting up at noon... it's going to be difficult getting used to a reasonable sleep cycle again.
Anyway, what's new? My Dartmouth interview has finally been scheduled. It'll be with a local lawyer on January 25, my oldest friend's 18th birthday, which is sort of fitting. I also got notified from Messiah College that due to my class rank, #22, I won't be considered for the honors program despite the fact that my SATs are "off the charts" (the guy telling me's choice of words, not my own). I guarantee that no more than 10 people applying there have higher than a 2380, yet they won't put me into a program with nearly 300 people in it already. Oh well, I didn't really want to go there anyway. Gordon has exactly the same policy for honors program admission, and they let me into their program without skipping a pulse.
Also, this.
Snowbama. Quite clever, isn't it? I wish I could take credit for this. As it is, I just put it on Facebook and tagged Obama fans as the people in it. About ten people "Like" it so far. Smart chaps and chapettes.
In regards to the title - Gaia used to call me "The Great Teenage Philosopher." (Okay, so she called me that once, but with the capital letters and without sarcasm. She isn't a big fan of sarcasm, at least not with me.) I'm starting to think that that epithet was scarily accurate. I stay up late at night and write journals for AP Literature that are pure philosophy. I don't need to do this, and I don't always want to, but I do it anyway. I think too deeply, and possibly too narrowly as well. This worries me. I suppose being up at half past three doesn't help matters.
Anyway, here's something I just wrote. I think it's pretty good, but definitely drier than the stuff I usually write. (By the way, the title looks incredibly cool when the font actually works properly.)
________
√(Freedom)
The utopias and the dystopias both have it right. Even the perfect societies dreamed of by intellectuals are not places of ultimate freedom, but places in which control begins where wisdom ends (or perhaps the other way around). Yet there must be wisdom to begin with, or the dystopias will displace their counterparts. A thousand would-be saviors have valued control over wisdom, power over respect, pity and love, and so destroyed their people. Yet the evil lies not in the control itself, but in the end result of destruction. Freedom is nothing but the absence of obligation. At its root, it is but a hole in other possibilities, a tunnel through which one may crawl to access different layers of reality. It is an elevator, perhaps — but elevators can descend as well as elevate. No, there is nothing really pure in freedom itself, and if it is foolish to remove it altogether, it is equally reckless to crawl through it blindly, exploring its winding tunnels on careless whims.
This brings us to another burning question: Is freedom an absolute condition? Can it be an absolute condition? Practically, this seems impossible. Every human being has the obligation to eat and sleep if he or she wishes to survive, and even if he or she does not, his or her own mind may impose obligations until the burning needs of the body are met. Society places additional obligations on all of us, unless we literally live with our heads under a rock 24/7. Literal absolute freedom, the absence of any obligation whatsoever, seems impossible in this life. “Essential” absolute freedom, however, the freedom to do whatever one may reasonably expect to be able to do, seems somewhat more feasible. None of us will ever have the opportunity to skip from galaxy to galaxy on a wormhole-riding “solar surfer,” and the nature of things means that equal freedom to become the elected leader of a nation cannot reasonably be extended to every citizen. Yet the freedom to worship Whomever or whatever one wishes, the freedom to attain whatever level of education one wishes, or to say whatever one likes are more feasible, and important, measures of freedom. Absolute freedom may be very nearly achievable. Yet it is not, for the very same reasons that make it not a virtue in and of itself.
By its very nature, freedom to do as one wishes precludes the necessity of taking the
needs or desires of others into consideration. Where personal freedom exists, and where it is exercised, self-interest takes root, and the more freedom develops, the more self-interest tends to flourish. Freedom does not mandate self-interest; it merely encourages it more than a regime of tyranny ever will. It does not remove the opportunity for genuine virtue, but such virtue must be a conscious rejection of self-interest, or there is no truth in it. The more one remains effectively free from any influence, the more self-interest has the power to enhance one’s comfort in the status quo, making it harder to break free into genuinely noble, charitable acts. Furthermore, the self-interest encouraged by freedom does not encourage maintaining the freedom of others, which must take place if a state of complete freedom is to be maintained, as long as humans have contact with one another. Paradoxically, absolute freedom inherently jeopardizes effective freedom through its encouragement of self-serving behavior.
What then shall we strive towards, if freedom leads to the destruction of any meaningful end goal and tyranny generally produces depravity? There is one solution that includes neither forcible, valueless suppression nor reckless self-interest — we may give up our freedom voluntarily. We may surrender our “rights” without surrendering our duties to ourselves, and devote our time to the welfare of others, to avoid burdening the world with another dream to fulfill. Capitulation is an act of surrender, and given our human familiarity with strife and war, we tend to view it as surrendering to the enemy. Yet capitulation can be an act of forgiveness as well, a unifying effort that mitigates strife rather than vindicating it. If we capitulate to peace, to love, to God, then we put our journey in better hands than our own fallible ones. Freedom has a cost to everyone, ourselves included.
To surrender freedom voluntarily, not to others but to a higher purpose or Being, is not an act that weakens us or makes us vulnerable to exploitation. Rather, it strengthens us, refining our self-interested impurities and cutting away the canker of our souls until the only parts that remain are those worthy of admiration. There is profound loss in such a capitulation, a loss which can ache and gall for as long as one still longs for an absolute freedom that asks for nothing and receives less. Yet as Gandalf reminds his friends as they say goodbye for eternity, not all tears are evil. The world asks for capitulation of some kind: to death, tyranny, or a high purpose or Person. Our surrender should be wise.
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