DO YOU WANT FREEDOM?

“[…] if freedom is doing what I want, well that means I gotta know what is, not just what it isn’t.” – Pat the Bunny (2014)

How much time have you spent thinking about freedom? I have spent the most of my adult life thinking and trying to pursue what I have identified as freedom and like the retired punk musician Pat, I too find it difficult to know what that is. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary being free is not being coerced or constrained in choice or action (2021). I believe that most individuals would like to not be blatantly coerced in their choices and actions and yet most individuals are coerced into working for money in order not to be evicted from their homes. If someone were exercise their individual freedom to not participate in this system of coercion the consequences could be disastrous, but maybe that is what freedom is?

“Freedom is beautiful and terrible, it’s nothing soft and sweet” – Pat the Bunny (2014)

What if freedom is beautiful and terrible at the same time? If that is the case then maybe individuals are content with having choices instead of freedom? Some of the street kids in Cape Verde (Bordonaro, 2012) and the street punks in Indonesia (Martin-Iverson, 2021; Moog, 2020) exemplify the autonomy of individuals who live in ways that they have chosen and consider beautiful, but this way of life might be considered terrible form an outside perspective. They tap into a type of autonomy that is not accepted by the normative society. According to a VICE news report some of the individuals within the street punk scene were orphans prior to joining the community, but many had freely chosen to live on the streets (Larsson, 2016). A life that could be considered both terrible and beautiful at the same time.

In Does Choice Mean Freedom and Well-Being? the authors at one point refer to how F.D. Roosevelt saw four freedoms: “freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of worship, and freedom to express oneself” (Markus, Schwartz, & Deighton, 2010, s. 345). These freedoms (or liberties) are a mix of both negative and positive freedoms, where freedom from fear and want are negative while freedom of worship and expressions are positive. A negative freedom is in other words a freedom from manmade obstacles or constraints in your way to fulfill your desires, and a positive freedom is having the ability to live life according to one’s own values (Svendsen, 2014). These concepts of freedom and liberty could be shaped to “work” within a state system but could you as an individual be considered free if you still are constrained by the laws and norms espoused by the state or (mass)society? If you made an honest and free choice to be a part of a state system to limit your previous freedom in exchange for some of its services, it could be argued that you maintained your freedom up until that point, and that you are now negotiating what constraints you are willing to accept. However, most often individuals are not asked for consent before they are integrated into a state system.

If we consider the anarchists, the “true” advocates of unbridled freedom, we might get different answers. In the short essay, Freedom (Libertad) by French anarchist Albert Libertad who published the infamous anarchist journal L’Anarchie in the early 1900’s, a forceful version of freedom is described:

“Freedom is a force that one must know how to develop within the individual; no one can grant it.” – Albert Libertad (2016)

Libertad, the name that Joseph Albert took for himself, did not see how any government or similar institutions could give the individual any freedom; freedom was something you had to take or do yourself. Much like the street punks in Indonesia with their DIY-ethic, an ethic that is a core principle among many punks and anarchists. There are different implementations of this ethic. In some cases, DIY is a hobby. In other cases, it is more like a necessity. In Under the Radar, Steve Moog tells us about how the popular anarcho-punk band Marjinal from Jakarta that taught homeless street kids how to play instruments which would make it possible for the kids to provide for themselves through busking on the streets (Moog, 2020, s. 18).

“It’s you not me or your parents. Just you, just you, just you, fuck you!

Your innervoice. And your life in the world Do it yourself against capitalism culture!!” – Marjinal (2005)

Illustrasjon: Elise Johansen

The late David Graeber wrote about the method of direct action, a method where the individual acts unmediated. Graeber conducted fieldwork among activist-oriented groups (2009) but a direct action could be interpreted as an action you make without any sort of mediation, and not necessarily activistic. One could argue that these individuals that are practicing direct action as a method, take back their agency and their freedom in a similar way that that Libertad suggested. What happens if you follow this logic further? Does it mean that freedom, and let us say, democracy is incompatible?

If democracy is a system in which we vote for representatives to represent our interests, one could argue that we are free to vote for the person or party that align well with your own interests. As you cast your vote you could be considered to be free, but if your side loses the election, you and the minority that you are now a part of, becomes politically powerless (Thoreau, 2020, s. 311; 317).

To become politically powerless in a democracy is to lose part of one’s agency; the illusion of becoming powerless makes us believe in the power of a phantasm rather than our own inherent power. A phantasm is a transcendental idea that dominate one’s thoughts and guides one’s actions through norms if it is not in service of self-interest. Democracy (or other forms of governing) could be seen as a phantasm, and only has the power that we as individuals decide (or are fooled) to give it. The term phantasm (or spook as in the original edition) was popularized by the German philosopher Max Stirner in his anti-authoritarian magnus opus, Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (Stirner & Landstreicher, 2017).

In The Art of Not Being Governed, Scott conducted fieldwork in Southeast Asia among people who had resisted being incorporated into a larger society, and as this incorporation happened Scott observed how their autonomy and freedom diminished (2009, s. 188). He connects certain food production (and/ or gathering) techniques to attain freedom from the state structures (2009, s. 191); these people did not give up their own power and therefore refused the state phantasm the power it needs to gain more power.

Even if life in the hills was tougher, it allowed the ones who chose to flee there a more autonomous life free from state constraints like taxes and forced conscriptions. Scott connected the autonomy in the hills in Zomia to what was embodied in the Great Dismal swamp in North America. In the Great Dismal swamp draft dodgers, deserters, runaway slaves, and outlaws sought freedom from state for a multiplicity of reasons, and in the swamp, they found it. The swamp, like the hills, proved too difficult for the state to control, and in the eyes of the state it allowed “the ‘lowest sort’ of people to find freedom and independence” (2009, s. 171). The state apparatus in North America expressed a desire to drain the Great Dismal swamp to prevent free and independent individuals (ibid.), and in contemporary times individuals like Trump popularized that saying to discredit people who did not believe the state narrative (Business Insider, 2016).

With this in mind, let us return to the question, is democracy (or any other form of governing) and freedom incompatible? Yes and no.

No, they are not incompatible. If an individual, free of coercion, makes a choice to join a democratic and accept some constraints to their freedoms, I would argue that the individual is still free if they can leave society at their own will.

Yes, they are incompatible. If an individual is forced into to the same democratic society without their consent and an inability to voluntary disassociate with that said society, one could therefore argue that democracy and freedom are incompatible.

This leads us back to the main question of this essay; do you want freedom? I will try to answer this way in the only way I can, with the help of autoethnography. My own desire for unbridled freedom burns with a mellow flame nowadays which means that I am willing to make compromises to be able to make a life for myself within the imagined society, even though I still dream about the terrible and beautiful idea of freedom. I can only answer for myself, but what about you? Do you want freedom?