practicing freedom

We should care that as the public sphere becomes increasingly chaotic and threatening, what we think of as freedom consists of insularity and retreat.  Marketers welcome this development, but a consumerist mentality allows us to turn spiritual practices, which traditionally have been aimed at making us more responsive to the legitimate needs of the world, into self-indulgence. 

Kathleen Norris

Poet and essayist Kathleen Norris raises the startling possibility that 21st century Americans are less attentive to the "legitimate needs of the world" then were the desert hermits of 4th century Egypt.  Most often our immediate response to those ancient men and women is to disdain their withdrawal from the real world and to dismiss their spirituality as selfish.  Norris, who has dwelt with them, has a different response, a more admiring one that allows her to learn from their sayings and their example of wrestling with demons and their desire to see the world honestly.

But, that is a longer and subtle discussion.  In these two sentences Norris turns her attention to her own world and ours.  She notices that self-help is more likely to promise fulfilling "what I want" than to counsel self-examination.  There are exceptions, there are always exceptions.  If her critique is extreme, it is still true.  Freedom can, often does, devolve into self-indulgence marked by insistence upon being given many options and uninhibited power to chose between them.

The easiest example are consumer decisions.  Many, many types of phones and several service providers to decide among, but no option to not have a phone, to be fully engaged with the person in the room with me rather than always eager for the next distraction.  This example is not simple.   To regard the ubiquity of cell phones as self-indulgent and isolating requires some thought beyond the emotional appeal of the ads suggesting that virtual presence is as good as real presence.  It requires assessing the long effects of the tool on life and relationships, not only the convenience.

If the easiest examples need careful unfolding, the more complex examples, decisions about private relationships and public life, are more insidious still.  A long look would bring us back to our earlier discussions of happiness as an individual concern and happiness as a result of cultivating public virtue.  This may go beyond Ben Franklin's famous system for keeping track of his own moral progress, which was not so different from individuals counting calories or logging miles run.  The practices of freedom are not limited to voting and external actions.  They also involve facing difficult realities about our selves and seeing the world honestly so that we can attend to its legitimate needs, not only indulge our own own desires.