Who's in Charge of Your Freedom?
The Freedom Forum

What is Freedom? Few agree (check the link to The Freedom Forum). Most people don't care, or don't dare care.  They think they'll recognize it when they see it. Their failure is to see only whatever directly affects them and does not conflict with their inherited, imprinted memes. They will not recognize how their little 'sin' fits into the whole.  Those who do care define it in various ways, as freedom of, freedom from, freedom to . . . Divide and Conquer principles work in behalf of those who oppose secular freedoms, especially the hedonic principles upon which the USA was founded. Those quickly take advantage of our high level of apathy to cast suspicions and doubt among the various interests we pursue, to turn us against everybody's freedoms but our particular ones.

 Freedom to and freedom of are positive freedoms because they allow you to initiate actions. Freedom from denotes negative freedoms, that allow you to avoid actions initiated by others, such as zealots who cannot refrain from telling you all about their war experiences, why you should join their religion, or why our government sucks—or who wants to make you a target in their latest campaign for terrorism.

We should define freedoms, in general, as unrestricted interactions and activities that are not normally considered freedoms until someone attempts to impose controls on them, or until they infringe on freedoms desired by others who issue repercussions. The freedom to eat or sleep, for example, can be controlled or limited by regulations. In which pocket you prefer to carry your keys and change, in a different vein, is something taken for granted until it is somehow restricted.

All kinds of circumstances serve to limit freedoms. Clothing design, to continue that example, may eliminate your favorite pocket. That happened to me. I hate it. I would go naked to protest, but that freedom, too, is gone.

 Will you be made uncomfortable by the necessity of having to change your routines? Eating and sleeping are limited by schedules imposed by the nature of jobs, the births of children, or the demands of marriage. Where you will eat or sleep may be determined by the design of your dwelling, or the fact of having guests stay over, or the will of your spouse. Why and what you eat or sleep may be affected by your health, exercises and diets imposed by doctors, or the sanitation limitations of a portion of your daily environment. The freedom to build a road directly connecting your house to the highway may be limited by a neighbor who wishes for you to NOT make a path across her garden. She will issue repercussions.

Those things seem obvious. What usually concerns this kind of discussion is limitations imposed by other unknown people, most often as represented by governmental practices and edicts, as exercises of political and other philosophies. I still maintain that, in a democratic society, it is wrong to blame the government for being anything more than the messenger and applicator of those philosophies and practices, in response to pressure from various groups to serve their vested interests. Your apathy well serves those interests. Government also serves to protect individuals from impositions those kinds of groups would like to make against your freedoms. Government could best accomplish that task if something other than parasitic memes could set guideposts, something demonstrable and verifiable with constructive goals set for society as a whole to result from enhanced individual achievements.

All kinds of people serve to limit freedoms. Some of them seem legitimate: The FBI (United States) and various other police agencies definitely serve to limit freedoms of those who choose to violate a nation's laws. Less obvious without some thought, is that many of those who violate laws diminish or remove freedoms their victims may have otherwise enjoyed. Less obvious still is the way a lot of our laws have come into being as a result of pandering to those who wish to impose their will onto others at the expense of others, for their own profit or to serve causes generated by their parasitic memes. In the United States, most such laws exist as grandfather laws, inherited from other countries and societies which existed in other places at other times, which are now applied in circumstances which may no longer be right, and will be, then, causing more harm than good. Such harm, being not immediately obvious, is easily disavowed. Beware of your own real reasons if you disagree.

Any certain simple restriction may seem innocuous and not worth the bother to consider it. Add up thousands of such puny matters and you have a country whose claim to be the pillar of freedom appears to be a lie. I have recently had occasion to observe how important freedom becomes to people after long lives spent disavowing relevant issues, but who have now become elderly and weak. While it may seem important to others that they 'be cared for', they too obviously cringe at loss of their home and mobility, and look upon those others as shysters out to do them in and take their stuff and, most importantly, their freedom.

What innocuous sin would you practice if only you could? What places would you frequent, if they could exist and you could go there with no one thinking ill of you? What grand vision might you have, of something you could create if others were allowed to enjoy it? What 'evil' thoughts cannot be shed from your mind, that may have no meaning—or may be freely practiced without obvious detriment—in another type of social environment? What accomplishments do the conditions of your existence—mental and physical—prevent you from achieving?

Laws created and devised to enable us to safely and constructively interact with each other have their esteemed place in any society. Laws created only to serve vested interests by restricting all kinds of freedoms have no legitimate place in our lives. Restricted innocuous freedoms serve to cushion the effects of grander issues by making them less visible, the way a forest of saplings serves to hide their parent trees. 

The Complete Universe of Memes (and its companion Reality 101) presents a brand new way to look at humanity's seemingly conflicting needs for freedom and companionship (as within a social setting). Scientific achievements during the past century have opened up new avenues of thought wherein the 'conflicts' of the past can be resolved. What these books make clear is how the major proportion of those conflicts resulted from artificial constraints based on doctrines that have been entirely synthetic. Why should something synthetic keep you from enjoying something real? Why allow those who represent it to have that kind of power? If there exists no other reason than that for impositions against your freedom, laws supporting those impositions ought to be banished from existence. They are illegitimate and illicit, whatever their granted legal status.

The Complete Universe of Memes had already been banished from half.com, and I imagined Reality 101 would soon follow suit, but felt pleasantly surprised to see its presence restored. To apprise yourself of this controversial information, I advise you to get your copies of both books while still available from amazon.com and other book sources, or from the publisher iuniverse.com. Your purchase of these books may help stave off future acts of infringement against your liberty to access all available information, especially that which may not serve the vested interests' designs upon your way of life.

What actions can you take against this form of censorship? You can, of course, support the writers of such books as those which aim to enhance your understanding about how things work, especially those working to lend intellectual support to secular and progressive causes. You cannot justify complaining about how things are without supporting those who want to spread knowledge of which you approve, even as the so-called "ignorant" (but apparently well-read) members of the religio-political right.

Reality 101 takes a unique approach to understanding existence in such a way as to derive values from a more scientific (rather than religious) view. We are all aware that most of the life-forms we recognize as such—perhaps all of them—are carbon-based. Much conjecture has been published there may be life-forms, as yet undiscovered or unrecognized, based in other elements. We all know now about time as a component of continua. Has anybody presented a cogent idea about life-forms with time as a component? This book will take you by the hand and show you how the layers of existence—presented according to our commonplace understanding of them—make such life-forms possible. It, and The Complete Universe of Memes, work together to show you how this is not only likely, but also how to recognize them by their deeds. Don't ever argue religion again, until after you've read both of these books!

The Complete Universe of Memes ISBN 0-595-24429-7

Reality 101 ISBN 0-595-21834-2                                

PRESS RELEASE LINK

[Memes and Freedom]  [Memes chapter] [Meme Quotes] [Meme Evolution]

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Reality 101 by Lloyd H. Whitling (paperback - September 2002)

"We believe Reality 101 is one of the best independently published books on the market." Rec'd 3/4/06 in a letter from Airleaf Publishing and Bookselling. Read it and see for yourself.