Liberty,

 

Generally speaking, liberty is the freedom to do as one pleases or the quality of being free. Supposedly, everywhere around the world, people want to live within a society, without oppressive restrictions, imposed by authority on one’s individual way of life, behavior or political views. However, this is not the reality in which we live. Liberty is often associated with the notion of free will, which is described, as the ability to choose between possible courses of action unimpeded. This is the story, we are telling ourselves with our Disembodied Language (DL): the less interference in the decision-making process, the freer we are. However, when we have Embodied Language (EL), we stop telling ourselves stories, as we have stopped DL and experience our Language Enlightenment (LE). According to me, Maximus Peperkamp – you may quote me on that – the real meaning of liberty is: being in charge of our own language, by engaging in EL and expressing our LE.

 

Freedom and liberty are often used interchangeably, but I would consider the latter, as having more of a political slant and the former, as having more of a personal ring to it. Nevertheless, freedom is usually understood as, the ability to do what one wants or has the power to do, whereas liberty deals with the absence of restraints, which refers to our so-called rights. Of course, our liberty is limited by the rights of others, as it entails a responsible use of freedom under the rule of law, without depriving anyone else of their freedom. I would say, freedom is acting on one’s own impulses, having the unrestrained ability to fulfill one’s desires. In that sense, someone is free to murder, but one doesn’t have the liberty to do so. When you murder someone, you deprive them of their right, not to be harmed and your liberty can be taken away, as a punishment for your crime.  

 

The compare and contrast of freedom and liberty illustrates, why people have fought for the liberty of their country, to protect their individual freedoms. Sadly, the freedom-child was continuously thrown out with the liberty-bathwater and our common, unconscious use of language is to culprit. DL, makes us assume, the written word has more value than the spoken word. This is why courts, judges, laws and lawyers are considered to be more important than our individual ability to engage in peaceful, truthful EL and acquire the self-control, responsibility and accountability, to live in freedom.  Surely, with DL, we justify our unrestrained, reactive behavior with our powerful positions in our society’s hierarchy.

 

People like to believe the Constitution protects their liberty, but it is only apparent to someone like me, who knows about the great difference between DL and EL, only EL can protect our liberty. What people have fought and died for, has again and again been squandered in the name of DL, our mechanical way of dealing with language. Civilizations have come and gone, knowledge was acquired and lost again, but history can be made, at this very moment, if we begin to recognize, DL has never been addressed.

 

When we say, that it is necessary to protect life, liberty and property, we obviously speak from the assumption of a possible threat. This is what we do, when we engage in DL, in which everything is based on fear. We haven’t stopped DL, because we have yet to acknowledge, that DL-liberty-fear-mongering  has to be stopped, in order to have EL. Moreover, no one can stop someone else’s DL, as each of us must stop our own and that is our individual freedom. In DL, we are not free. Our liberty is a pipe-dream, as we are imprisoned by our own conditioning history.

 

Everywhere around the world, politicians, religious leaders and other powerful individuals, endlessly dangle the carrot of maximizing individual liberty and self-determination, by carefully crafting their narrative, to dominate and exploit the masses, but none of them really understands, DL has continued unabated. Oppressors and oppressed have kept DL going, ever since man has acquired language, back in the stone-age, when they created on the walls in the caves, the first pictures of their hunting scenes. Most likely, their sounds, which referred to these heroic acts, were sounds of pride and survival and so our language began to evolve. Although we have, of course, survived due to our DL, in which only the strongest pass on their genes, it is indisputable that our DL has reached its limit. To continue DL, in the name liberty is absurd, as it needs our EL and LE.