Slavery or Freedom?
How do we understand the Purpose of our Existence?
"Liberty, by its very nature, undermines social equality, and equality suppresses liberty – for how else could it be attained?” Solzhenitsyn observed. Asked … whether it is true that free people could desire to be slaves, he replied, ‘Yes, today’s Western Europe is full of such people.’ Today’s America is similarly stocked.”
Slavery. It’s only been recently that I have considered the question of what qualifies as slavery in a positive light. My dad used to always share his depression era father’s epithet that “the day you pick up a lunchbox to go to work is the day you become a slave”. Always seemed extreme to me at the time, but as with all things that age well, it starts to make more sense as the years go by.
Then I picked up the 1960s best selling The Greatest Salesman in the World. It’s a thin volume, easy to read in an afternoon. “In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits… I will form good habits and become their slave.”
Olympic season is here. We watch the athlete’s bodies move with a strength and tenacity I have never myself experienced. Gods of Tennis plays on PBS. Stories of younger generations beating the previous star players as they add new habits to their training, with each generation redefining the game of tennis for everyone who comes after them.
The winners, despite all other factors, are always the ones who demonstrate best habit adoption and formation.
Atomic Habits is a current bestselling book about how to reshape your life by building good habits.
We are habitual creatures. Call it addiction, or obsessive-compulsive, stimulus conditioning.
Are we free in our choice of habits or enslaved to them? For good or bad? Where do we have choice?
If we choose good habits and set ourselves to forming them consciously, can we claim freedom?
If we stick to our current roster of not great habits, are we then a slave? A slave to whom or what?
Can we enslave ourselves to a set of principled habits, in order to free our limited mortal selves to reach the heights we, in our spiritual natures, quietly aspire to?
Do we want to live in a society of free people, or enslaved people?
Is ethical morality something that can be forced, or is it only possible by choosing according to what you personally value?
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn was held as a captive for 11 years in the Soviet Gulag and went on to write about his experience, in an effort to expose the reality of how a path to freedom can commonly be confused with “ideological lies, slavery, and violence”. He insisted that the goal of our existence is not happiness but spiritual growth. Bernard Levin interviewed him in 1983, and folks, it is SO GOOD.
When asked if “There are people who cannot bear freedom in themselves, and long to be slaves”?, he responded, “Lacking a consciousness of God, of the Divine, they lack an awareness of reality.” He went on to say, “We hear constantly rights, rights, it is always rights, but very little about responsibility.”
I have the right to indulge my laziness. I have the responsibility to overcome my own resistance.
I have the right to ignore my effects on anyone else. I have the responsibility to live in and learn from the effects of my choices.
“Those in whom the intellect has taken precedence over the spiritual, the heart, they are the ones who are gullible.”
“In our time, somebody who is very strict and limits himself can be surrounded by any form of material conflict or even luxury and yet remain totally indifferent to it because it is not the material which is the basis of our life. The horror is not that universal well being has led to moral decline. But the moral decline has led to the fact that we now indulge too much in material well-being.”
“The time has come to limit our demands, to learn about self-sacrifice, and to learn how to sacrifice oneself for the salvation of one’s country and for society.”
What are you willing to sacrifice today, enslave yourself to, in order to gain your personal freedom tomorrow? Does it have a different ring now?
“Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” -Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Great thoughts Megan! Choosing and forming a game plan consciously - with mindful purposeful intent is, (IMO), exercising free-will - especially when it means going toe-to-toe with our mindless knee-jerk impulsive reactions. Staying the course, (of those chosen habits), is the hard part. I struggle a bit with the term "slavery" in staying true to our chosen trajectory. The word (for me), denotes force, or control. If it's something we choose of free-will, then we're not necessarily forced to continue, but certainly do need a measure of discipline if we're to succeed.
In keeping with the essence of your message, I do see a strong need for stepping out of our comfort zones in preparing for tomorrow. And yes, the sacrifice may be uncomfortable for many of us.
This resonates so deeply with me. I believe the essence of true freedom lies in the awakening and dissolving of our subconscious programming that no longer serves us or our fellow humans. Some hards we choose and some we don't. But we are free to the degree that we live a high agency life built on core values, getting curious and questioning our emotional frameworks, triggers and inner turmoil. The book, "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself", by the neuroscientist Dr. Joe Dispenza, blew my mind open to what's truly possible when we seek to become aware. Great topic, Megan!