Free The Ones You Love

The only person you can control is yourself.  Personal liberty is a journey that people must not only discover for themselves, but must also guide themselves through.  One person may not take the same path as another because ultimately it’s about finding your own way, and finding your true individual self.  That isn’t to say you couldn’t be someone’s initial burst of truth, but seeking answers is up to each person on their own terms. 

Unfortunately there are minds that will always be trapped, whether it is in statism or other abusive systems, and you sometimes find that love is just letting go.

All people are free to take the chances that they think are best for them.  Anything you have to say in regard to that choice is just opinion.  Your two cents may be from experience, and you may think that mistakes are being made, but ultimately you have no say.  Not even in your child’s life, because the life of your child is not your own. 

The idea of love is to let people be free enough to choose their own life.  Freedom is the chance to fail.  Failure is the chance to grow.  Growing is the chance to understand the next logical step to better decisions. 

But saying all that doesn’t mean there aren’t times to step in.  Love is also volunteering your help, time, value, and sometimes a part of your own life to others.  The risk you take in helping somebody is your own.  Being selfless can result in gratitude, it can result in respect, and it can result nothing.  The help you give is about the decision you made without any coercion or force.  The results are never perfect, but loving those closest in your life is never easy.  Loving others means taking on burdens, whether it is the time you say “no”, or the time you say “yes.”

There is great responsibility in your own actions, especially those that affect others.  The most useful step towards greater freedom in your own life and in the life of others is through an understanding of the non-aggression principle.  If you expect to be treated peacefully, you should take the same action with respect to those you love.  If you are attacked, defense should be held in just as high of standards, but the ethics of freedom is letting go of ever being the attacker.  Liberty by example may be the strongest attribute in freeing the ones you love.  The strongest aspect of personal liberty is being able to share it and spread it without having to force it beyond your own life. 

The love of freedom is the freedom to love, and the more free you are, the further that love can spread.  

The Ultimate Irony?

Two weeks ago I went to the Reno Hot Air Balloon Races and something that I saw has been on my mind ever since.  As usual they send one balloon up with the American flag hanging from it as somebody sings the National Anthem.  Before they did this they let us know that the flag being used had just returned from the Middle East where it flew over Afghanistan in a Predator drone (which they called aircraft to hide what it was).

I thought it to be pretty ironic that a flag once considered the symbol of justice and liberty was inside of a Predator drone, a symbol of the loss of privacy and property as it helps occupy a sovereign land.  At least they didn't put it inside of a Reaper drone, the one that kills and brings terror to places the US isn't even at war with.

Most people were clapping and cheering when they heard this.  I just wanted to look the other way.

Free Yourself

         Freedom must always start with one’s self.  Within your mind there exist barriers set up by your life’s education that keep you from understanding what it is to be free.  Freedom itself should only be understood by the means of natural rights, the rights and liberty you are born with, but in the world we live in, this description is simply not feasible.  We have to look at freedom as something to be obtained, and the only definition that now works for freedom is to no longer be confined or imprisoned.  We must break those barriers that exist in our mind.  To do this, we must first learn to love ourselves. 

            Love your life.  Love your worth.  Love your ability.  Once you start to learn to respect yourself, you may also feel a little helpless.  Part of the reason is that fallacies will be everywhere.  The most powerful fallacy being the one thing that has been schooled into you since birth: that there is a greater authority over your life than yourself.  This of course is a completely unnatural thought that has been pushed into your mind and will probably be one of the hardest things to unlearn.  And unlearning is the key to freedom, a struggle you will most likely go through for a lifetime because the greatest traps have been set in your own mind.  The strongest opposition may be your belief system, which is in fact not always your own. 

This is where an ultimate respect for your own body and mind becomes so important, and for the most basic of reasons, you are the sole owner of both.  Being that you are the proprietor of your life, you must accept that ultimate responsibility lies in your own hands.  To all others, responsibility for your life is a voluntary option.  Another person may help you and take care of you, or they may not.  In the case of others, this same option belongs to you as well.  When you give a dollar to a man you do not know, or even a pint of blood, there is a social contract there, but one in which you wrote and signed yourself.  There were no other hands involved.  There was no force.  The decision to give came from your own volition.

            Personal liberty is not only loving and respecting yourself, but it extends to that which you have built and sustained from the work of your hands and mind.  It is also knowing yourself.  If you think you can better the world by being productive, then you must take that path.  If you think that you can better the world by being charitable, then you must do so.  It doesn’t matter because when you take ownership over the means by which they come to fruition, they are one and the same.  But you cannot think that you can better the world by taking away another’s liberty, for if someone were to take yours, then you can only be hurt.  A part of your life, your worth, and your ability is stolen away, and most unfortunately a part of your mind is caged without escape because it becomes “just the way things are.” 

Taking possession of the property of others through coercion is wrong.  Liberty is not created for you by anything written on paper or because a collective of people allow it to you, it is with you at birth, and once you understand how authoritarian force hurts you, you can start to understand how it hurts the world.  Once this personal liberty is an active component of your own life, the love of freedom and the freedom to love will start moving to all aspects of the world around you, because while changing the world may not be an option, changing the world around you is.  Without coercion, without aggression, without force, your most viable tools become reason and respect, and of course a little love never hurts either.

Let's Try this again.

I can't believe it has been a year since I tried to start this thing.  A year since I tried to start and a year since I've posted anything.  The main problem has been that I'm writing three different comics and building a website for them, so there really hasn't been much time for me to write short stories.  None at all.

I'm going to make an attempt to revamp the website though.  Now it will be all about very short stories like I do yearly for the local 95-word story contest.  I like the format and it forces you to say what you have to and paint a picture in very little space.  I'm also going to be writing short essays that are based on my fumbling with a new philosophy.  An exploration into peace, non-aggression, and liberty.  Expect that within the very short stories as well.

I guess this wasn't so much written for people to read, but it's my mission statement that I'm going to try damn hard to stick to.

- John