Field Notes - What is Freedom? - Part One

We start a four-part set of field notes by admitting the word freedom still surprises us when we hear it from Solzhenitsyn, Kierkegaard, Berdyaev, and Chesterton. We trace the “freedom we inherited” through American politics and pop culture, then question whether external rights, endless choice, and economic survival can leave the inner life unfree. 
• why the word freedom suddenly feels unfamiliar in classic writers 
• the four-part structure from inherited freedom to biblical roots to embodied courage 
• how Braveheart and American patriotism shape instinctive ideas of liberty 
• political freedom as rights and protections that can stay external 
• conservative and liberal frameworks that miss the formed inner person 
• cultural freedom reduced to desire, authenticity, and consumer choice 
• what happens when freedom detaches from responsibility and moral accountability 
• modern economic pressure as quiet captivity despite legal freedom 
• Office Space as a parable of cubicles, compliance, and despair 
Stay tuned for part two 

Transcript

Why Define Freedom At All

SPEAKER_01 0:06

This is Field Note for the subversive Art Galaxy podcast. Field notes. What is freedom? A four-part series. Part one. The freedom I inherited. So I wanted to do a series on freedom because this podcast doing this podcast, we're about 19 episodes in, and now we're doing Merton right now, Thomas Merton. But in the middle of that, I had been working on this meditation on freedom for pretty much all this year, just kind of going back to it and elaborating on it. So it's four smaller parts. So I want to tell you about this feeling I kept having having while I was researching this topic, but also while we had been recording episodes like Solsenitsyn and Kierkegaard and Berdiev. It started with Solsenitsyn, and then I heard more with I think it was Kierkegaard than Birdiev or vice versa. And I kept stopping and thinking, this person is talking about freedom, and I recognize the word, but I do not fully recognize the way they're describing it, like the way they're using it. It felt like they were pointing at something I had always been like in the midst of, but I never really looked at it directly. Like, did I ever even analyze this word before? What I what do we mean by freedom? The freedom they were describing, it sounded deeper, it sounded other than like what I was used to, what I what I grew up with. It sounded more demanding and I don't know, I could just say the word deeper or more more costly, more more something. I couldn't put my finger on it. It's somehow more inviting, also. It was like there was this whole room I never walked into when you talk about freedom. So these writers have been living in it and trying to describe it to people standing outside of it. So I did what I tend to do when something is bothering me intellectually. I start digging and I start asking questions and pulling on this or that idea to see where what am I what am I missing? And trying to figure it out as honestly as I could. So I wanted to see the full the full scope of how people define freedom across different disciplines and traditions. So I was kind of looking into that, you know, Google and AI, just trying to gather information and then put it back together. So what I found was pretty interesting because there is a there are different types of freedom that I never never really thought about, but I kept getting kept getting through the podcast. So this series is me reporting back from that that meditation. So there's four parts.

A Four-Part Map Of Freedom

SPEAKER_01 3:05

The first part is like what I inherited and where probably most of us actually live, like this, we live with this type of concept of freedom, like American political version of freedom, the cultural version that surrounds it. I want to just kind of identify those, those versions and and and get right where we where we all kind of probably started from, or at least maybe even still are stuck in. Maybe that's all we well we think about when we think about freedom. In part two, I want to go into a wider survey, different disciplines and traditions, how they've defined freedom, and lay them out and see what starts to emerge when you look at the whole picture together. In part three, I want to go back further than any of those modern definitions, back to Eden through Exodus, you know, biblical, the biblical origination of the concept of freedom, because freedom's a big, a big theme in the Bible. It's older and stranger and more comprehensive in the Bible than than we probably have ever been taught. And then in part four, I want to land on some people who started all this for me, you know, going deeper on this meditation. So, first the Christian martyrs who embodied a type of freedom that, you know, stands fearless, or not fearless, but stands brave in the midst of extreme circumstances. And then, you know, Solsenitsyn, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, Berdiev, four of the thinkers from the podcast who come from different places, who all pressed in on this same same deeper freedom that I that I wasn't quite aware of, I don't think. And it seems like they were kind of describing what the martyrs knew. And so by the end, I think you will understand why I couldn't stop thinking about it and why I put some time and effort into this little series of field notes, and why the word freedom, which I thought I understood, turned out to be pointing to something much larger than I had assumed.

The Freedom We Inherit

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So let me get started where this all began for me. So, as long as I can remember, freedom was shaped by a brave heart and being American. So, long before I ever analyzed the word or even knew anything about anybody who had a political political philosophy out there, that movie formed something very primal in me, like that deep sense of needing to be brave when something wants to totally dominate you, like an empire. Or yeah, I mean, really, that's that's what it was in that situation. And it appeared as defiance, resistance to domination, refusal to submit to an empire that demanded demanded loyalty and took away your dignity. So that image didn't function in in me like a like a philosophical argument. It was like just an image, you know, the whole image of the m images of the movie and the and the courage of that character, it kind of you know gave me instincts like this is what a man who stands against what is wrong would look like. And, you know, with all the violence, definitely in those days, that's what it would have taken to stand up to tyranny. So that instinct blends easily with American context, where we did, we did similarly. We stood up against the same country, England, in violence. Freedom was already sacred in the era of American of the American air. So between national history and movie myths, you know, freedom became something assumed for me, and something I didn't really question. It's just like that's what freedom is. This makes me think about how much of what I believe about freedom I never really chose. I just kind of like assumed that's that's all there is to it. It was handed to me through culture, through film, and the American political patriotism, which raises a real question, like how examined is our concept of freedom? Like, what are Russians talking about the same thing? Because here we have Soltsinits and Imbertiev, guys who were living under Stalin and stuff. Like, how how is their concept of freedom different than American political

Political Rights And Their Limits

SPEAKER_01 7:04

freedom? So in America, freedom's usually understood politically, like it refers to rights, protections, legal boundaries, places around individual life, you know, freedom of speech, movement, worship, property, protection from coercion. And obviously, these are great freedoms, and these are reasons why people want to live here and why people immigrate here. They restrain tyranny, like they don't allow tyranny because they're giving you these rights and they create space for dissent. You're allowed to disagree with your government, you're allowed to speak, you're allowed to disagree in this country. Many people across the world rightly long for them, these rights. Because in the absence of these rights, you get fear and oppression and tyranny. So it's it's obvious why those are good. This understanding of freedom tends to stay external. It's like you're counting on your government to uphold itself. It assumes that if the system is properly managed, human life will flourish. So questions of internal formation or internal desire or the interior life kind of aren't really spoken of in that in that sense of freedom. A person can experience extensive political freedom and still live under enormous internal constraint driven by fear, ego, anxiety, or compulsion. So there's one distinction: internal and external freedoms. Conservative political imagination tends to frame freedom around order, sovereignty, protection. Freedom is preserved through strength, borders, tradition, moral clarity enforced by authority. So that's kind of our conservative political imagination. The liberal political imagination emphasizes different things, but it's still, you know, freedoms. They frame freedom around autonomy, equality, more rights, more expansion of rights, preserved through protection from discrimination, and the expansion of personal choice. So both both visions identify real freedoms, and both of those visions identify real dangers that can happen in our society or in any society. They both tend to absolute their own values and their own remedies. Neither fully address the question of what kind of person is this freedom for, or what is this freedom actually forming. So it made me think about how much political energy gets spent arguing about which system produces freedom, while almost no energy goes towards asking what a person what a free person actually looks like on the inside. Structures are debated constantly, and we don't really even discuss internal freedoms. So

Desire As Freedom And Its Fallout

SPEAKER_01 9:43

in broader culture, freedom gets even more narrow if you just think about, you know, the people out in the bars on Saturday night. It becomes the ability to act on desire without restraint, as long as that desire is called authenticity or it's not hurting anyone. Choice itself becomes the primary moral category. Like as long as you get to do whatever you want, that's what freedom is. Measured by options and no limits. This vision is mostly what we get in like popular music, most films, advertising. This would be any movies that are not asking harder, deeper questions, like just basic sense of freedom of like doing whatever you want. And social media, obviously, and advertising. Being yourself gets treated as sufficient justification for action without much attention to how that self was shaped or what it is becoming. What often gets unexamined is what this vision actually produces. Entire industries operate on the premise that desire makes things legitimate. Desire legitimizes actions. So human trafficking networks, pornography empires, and organized criminal systems are frequently built by people who have fully detached freedom from responsibility and power from moral accountability. So there's a sense of freedom. Like I can be a stripper, I can be a prostitute, I can run a human trafficking network, I can do a pornography empire. They don't have, you know, some people that are in that sort of a scenario may have fully detached freedom from responsibility and fully detached from moral accountability or any sense of morality. And when desire becomes the primary authority, the strongest impulses tend to govern, and that can create domination over vulnerable peoples. So over time, that reshapes the inner life of everyone involved, which has definitely impacted our country. Desire has become consumerism, and we've lost a lot of dignity and sense of internal moral responsibility. So this makes me think how rarely do we even ask what freedom costs each of us as a community, as individuals making up a community. We ask what it costs politically, economically, and socially, but almost almost never what is this doing in our interior lives of the person that are that are living under this or that type of freedom.

Work, Fear, And Quiet Captivity

SPEAKER_01 12:06

There's also something happening in ordinary life where people are not living in an obvious captivity, but they're technically free by every legal measure. But salaries, benefits, the way life has become with work and inflation and the cost of living, healthcare access, fear of instability, these are all things governing our decisions. And people stay in work that is, you know, I know I know people where work is diminishing them. They're they're they're kind of dying inside. They don't really know how to say it other than that and kind of joke about it and laugh it off. But it makes people feel, you know, despondent almost. And and they feel like leaving is irresponsible or it could be dangerous for their family, like if they have to take a risk and try something else. So over time, the self has to become divided. You have to compartmentalize. This is my ability to make money. Sorry, kids, I don't get to see you very much. I have to work, those types of things. So it's like the existence of for survival, and the other life gets buried or postponed. The life of your of your enjoyment and passions and rest and recreation and the and your inner interior life, like having having anything that's not just your work. So the culture praises this as maturity and realism, but as we know, we you may know yourself or you have close friends who may be feeling like they're they're captives to their jobs. And it doesn't involve any chains or whips or any any prison, any locked doors, but you know, inside it feels like a chamber. So it makes you kind of think of the movie Office Space, which sounds like a strange reference, but that film resonated with so many people because it it was completely talking about something everyone feels. The comedy was based on the fact that there's this horror of living in these very uh sterile sanitized world of an office and cubicles and HR departments and protocols and getting the memo. Did you get the memo? Yeah, so people see themselves as basically, I don't really matter, I'm just like this interchangeable, compliant cog in the machine. And that movie has a guy stepping out of that and just not caring anymore, and he ends up, you know, becoming a leader because of that. So it's it's a funny movie because it kind of speaks to this exact thing.

A Deeper Freedom And Part Two

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So when I when I look through these versions of freedom, political, cultural, economic, endless choices, I keep noticing like that something feels it's it still isn't the freedom that like Berdiev and Kierkegaard and Chesterton Soltsinitsa were mentioning. So they're all they're all like real freedoms, but there's something more. So what is this idea of an interior life and uh what kind of persons being formed and communal responsibility? What are these types of freedoms speaking to? Or how could that even be considered freedom? So we may be living inside a very thin version and thinking that that's enough. So in part two, I want to widen the lens considerably and I want to look across multiple multiple disciplines. This is where it's not from my expertise, it was just from like gathering some some main ideas from different different disciplines and traditions on how they define freedom. Because if you look up every if you look up a definition of freedom from all different disciplines, you kind of get a different answer. So that's pretty it's kind of interesting. So I what I found when you put them all next to each other, something starts to emerge. It's like definitely more robust than the the way I the way I saw freedom from the beginning. So stay tuned for part two.