9/2009 How shall we define freedom?

If we consider freedom to be authentic self-directed interaction with the world around us there would appear to be two types of constraints. There are natural, external constraints which are dictated by our physical needs and competition for the resources available to meet those needs. There are natural laws, such as gravity, which prevent us from achieving all of our flights of fantasy and impose limits on what it is to be human though these limits are often the greatest inspirations for human endeavor to attempt to defy. There are also artificially constructed societal constraints on our freedom, and these may be seen to have both external and internal effects. Work, duty, responsibility, social acceptance, family, and religious and moral mandates are all factors in determining our interactions with external society and our internal sense of the degrees of freedom we feel to be available to us to act within the world. These constraints can be considered either obstacles or vehicles of creativity. However one defines freedom seems to be based on what one is struggling to be free from. Most of the authors we have so far considered in class have sought freedom from what could be considered societal constraints. Mencken aims his freedom away from platitudinous prosperous tyrants which turn into militaristic mobs led by limiting legislature. Weber uses analysis to show the trappings of how a conditioned Protestant work ethic is unnatural and makes men cogs in a machine with no actual return on investment. Niebuhr wants us to seek freedom from self-delusion about our own inherent sinfulness. Emerson attacks the chains of dogmatic routine drudgery. Only Edwards and Holmes seem to point to freedom being directed from God or from involuntary forces of nature which shape and determine our individual lives collectively. Seeking freedom is generally directed toward the social constraints presented in our direct environments. Our current concept of work seems to be a fairly recent human development. Previous types of society (such as hunter/gathers or agrarian) did not have a clear distinction between life and work. Life itself was totally determined and classified by what type of work one performed, or had others to perform for one. Our current ideas about work seem to have come with the split between ones daily activities of living and what one must do to maintain those activities. Employment is a contract which designates an employee, where the employee is so defined: "A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed." Black's Law Dictionary page 471 (5th ed. 1979). With this type of definition, we get the sense that the employee, or the worker, is essentially agreeing to trade freedom of self-direction for specific periods of time in order to receive compensation for doing a job. Time, and our orientation to it, seems to be the key factor of what makes employment work, and whether one can be simultaneously free and yet also completely committed to ones work. Weber draws distinction between pre-Capitalistic/naturalistic laborers and Capitalistic workers displaying what he calls the Protestant work ethic. Each type displays a different type of orientation to

time. The naturalistic laborer tends to value the present and freedom to this person literally means having free time to be engaged in whatever it is the person enjoys doing. If this persons employment consists of doing what it is that is most enjoyable to the person, with reasonable constraints in the material details of the job, then there will be little conflict between freedom and work and enjoyable commitment. However, if this person is instead employed in a trade which does not match his/her sense of impassioned enjoyable interest, the gulf between freedom and work will be vast, and work will be conceived of as a necessary evil. The worker with a Protestant work ethic, however, may be unconsciously future-directed. Freedom to this person will have more to do with financial security and the accumulation of status symbols. The Protestant ethic worker will often see employment as a vehicle for gaining social acceptance and approval. Even if the occupation does not match the persons true calling, the contract of employment is an important factor in the persons social internal/external realities and will often be regarded as a vehicle for gaining freedom rather than being oppositional to it. In this way, with the intense entanglement of internal and societal judgments of self-worth being centered in ones employment, many workers find themselves wholeheartedly committed to their work which they perceive will lead them closer to their ideas of freedom, even if the work itself is unpleasant. Whether one is directed towards the present or the future, or some combination thereof, the external work produced relates to these internal and external complexes of self-worth by which character can be constructed. External character is measured publicly through ones speech, actions and general public behavior and from produced work. The internal sense of self-worth can be directed towards building public character and reputation, allowing for dedication to work which is not in and of itself personally motivating but is judged to be a means to an end. This internal sense of self worth can also be directed towards a very personal sense of internal character one not witnessed publicly except by the works produced through its inspiration. The difference will primarily appear as an attitude toward the intended goal of the external produced work and whether the approval of others is the primary aim. One can direct oneself to the process of painting a fence in perfect meditative bliss with the intended aim being the internal gratification and experience. Or one could paint the same fence with the intention to please Mrs. Johnson so she will recommend your handiwork services to all of her neighbors. If the meditatively painted fence does not please Mrs. Johnson, it will likely change the painters relationship to Mrs. Johnson, not ones evaluation of ones work/ability/self-worth. But if ones aimed to please painted fence fails to bring the proper praise, then one questions ones work product more than the social critique. The first response to public disapproval then, showing the origin of intent, is something like either what can I do differently to please her? or is she the right audience to appreciate the work? The ideas of both internal and external character seem to involve a valuation, whether in moral or utilitarian terms, of the traits we exhibit to ourselves and to others. Character is not necessarily these traits themselves, but a cognitive evaluation of the usefulness of those traits within a system of values. Ones personality will determine ones orientation to time, interests, self-expressiveness, and the type of systems of valuation which one intentionally engages with. Artistic and intellectual endeavors, seeking to find meaningful patterns in the world around them, may produce works which are not always met with public approval. Both artists and scholars

report back to society a commentary, a critique, an analysis and synthesis of what they perceive from an over-arching or unique perspective. In many ways, these endeavors can be perceived as counterproductive to the ideals of progress and offend the sensibilities of publicly accepted character valuations. Artists and intellectuals may feel genuine conflict between the desire for the authentic selfexpression to which they are wholeheartedly motivated and the need to maintain a certain type of public character and a paycheck. Part of this conflict is due to the more widespread self-worth evaluation and external recognition complex entanglements. But another aspect which is perhaps even more heightened in examples of artists or intellectuals interacting within a Protestant work ethic production environment is a natural difference in relation to time between the routine work and creative output. One may be able to finish a great painting in the time it takes to build a car. But generally, most artists cannot maintain the same type of integrity in their work on a consistent and routine basis, while an auto worker may consistently produce the same level of work every day for forty years. Creative process generally is described to involve a variety of phases, (some of which may seem very unproductive to even the artist himself), prior to a conclusive and fresh synthesis which can be put into an external work. Ironically, it is often the tension of deadline which helps the creative process along, but inspiration cannot always be forced especially in fields of scientific discovery or new technological breakthroughs. But when ones value is measured by the ability to regularly produce external works in artistic and intellectual fields when inspirations and deadlines dont line up what is produced instead may be perceived as work which is cut off from a sense of integrity to ones original wholehearted commitments in the field of interest. This can lead to an internal sense of constraint of freedom, despair, and cynicism which may then be outwardly directed to the public sphere. To what degree are we responsible for aligning our external public works to our internal integrity of self-expression? This may depend on the time and place we find ourselves inhabiting including our own self-development, self-sufficiency and the external societal environment. There may be times to produce bland and uninspired work to provide one the opportunity for private creative endeavors. There may be times when one must reject the constraints of others to seek authentic selfexpression. There may be times when that authentic self-expression is in vogue and celebrated by others. What we fear, and to what degree, seems to be the deciding factor in what gets expressed and what is repressed at any given time. What we fear and why we fear it changes due to social climates and changes through experience and different self-understandings. Public valuations of courage and integrity involve the timing of self-expression in speech or action. Few would judge the man on the corner warning sinners of the coming apocalypse to be courageous though obviously his integrity compels him to speak out about that which he fears out of a sense of responsibility to society. Does our responsibility towards self-expression have to do with integrity of our internal character? Or is it based on a concept of expectations of our external character? How one answers this at any given time will guide behavior. As an example of creative application to the balancing act of these principles, we can look to Emerson. Here was a man with a strong personality wholeheartedly committed to his creative endeavors, with a forceful and eccentric public character but directed passionately by an internal character which was often contradictory in self-expression. Emerson was not afraid of public

disapproval and found it his civic duty to express his views rejecting what he considered dogmatic and wrong-thinking beliefs regarding Biblical miracles in the Unitarian Church, of which he was a minister. He did not fear losing his place in the ministry and spoke freely. He did not fear upsetting academic administrators at Harvard with his elaborate intimations of pantheistic bliss while replacing everyday miracles of Nature for the supernatural Biblical authoritative monopoly on the miraculous. Emerson deemed that society was ready for those challenges to its structure and aimed his works accordingly. But as free as Emerson may have felt about those self-expressions, he also used a form of symbolic coded language to explain his more private internal philosophy. Judging the social climate correctly, and carrying on a long tradition of symbolic reference to occult and alchemical principles and processes, Emerson struck an often beautiful balance with his own sense of freedom to authentic self-directed interaction and public expression. His external public character may be valued less by philosophers wanting clear reasoning and surely many thought he was a bit crazy, but at the same time he maintained a freedom of position of influence in many spheres through careful construction of communication to a variety of audiences.