Tuesday, October 20, 2009

On freedom - 1

Note: Rather than talk about freedom, I prefer exploring the concept of autonomy, which for reasons that I will expose in the next political post, is more pertinent and productive. However, this post, and others to follow, will focus on freedom because of the overwhelming aura it has in the organization of our collective values and norms and because of its omnipresence in political debate.

Repeat something enough times and it becomes true...It appears as though it is our mere ability to declare ourselves free that makes us free. However, regardless of what the clergy of representative democracy preaches and the sooth sayers of capitalism prophesize, freedom, today, in our society, has lost its meaning.
Political freedom implies constitution of choices (constitutive freedom), not merely the selection from prefabricated choices (relegated or permitted freedom). Creating our own choices is not enough though. We must then have the means to  transform theory into action. It is transformative action that creates empowered and responsible citizens. In a time when the only political act we, as citizens, make is to vote, then our transformative power is merely residual. We are convinced that by voting we guarantee our freedom, however, this emblematic act is only a punctual delegation of power in which we abandon defining elements of our sovereignty. Representative democracy has confused power and sovereignty to the detriment of citizen freedom. We believe that all we are doing is delegating the exercise of power to lawmakers and governements and that we are still the sovereign arbiters of that power, when in truth we are simply choosing  the devolution of power, but not longer question its legitimacy, nature or meaning.
I do not claim that political freedom is an absolute to which we must aspire, it is neither possible, desirable or coherent, and I maintain that the debate on the limits of freedom is vital. What I cannot tolerate however, is a debate and fervor about an ideal that has no meaning, that has become utterly vacuous...the political slogans that remind us daily of our 'freedom' are prime examples of how party-based politics distort semantic substance. Whenever an ideal is used and  abused to justify any given ideology one word comes to mind : propaganda or as 'democratic' institutions would call it : public relations. A concept or ideal can be a means to achieve ends that are contrary to those of the very same concept/ideal. This is what has happed to the word freedom... A tool and an instrument that has built the invisible walls around our political audacity and a battlecry that rings hollow in the abandoned hallways of citizen activism.

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