How Is Humanity Weak? 5

Humans are oppressed

If we take as a basic definition of freedom “the ability to do what is right without punishment”, then there is not a single human being that is free.

We are controlled by our fears, which force us to do actions to alleviate that fear. We fear losing our jobs, which give us the money to live our lifestyles, so we do whatever the jobs necessitate, even if we know it’s wrong. We fear confrontation, so we stay away from relationships that would cause us to grow to avoid that which we find unpleasing. We fear those who are unlike ourselves, so we avoid all those who are in greater need than ourselves, and make up stories about why we shouldn’t connect to them. We fear punishment from the government, so we keep ourselves from doing good things that would get us punished. We fear being shamed, so we try to fit into our society, even when our society is wrong. We fear death and pain, so we don’t do the good things that cause these things. And because we do not want to face our fears, we make excuses for why following our fears is the right thing to do.

But we do not live by our fears abosolutely—we not mice, scurrying away from every hint of monsters. We also have drives. We are driven by our addictions—that which we know harms us but makes us feel better or normal. We are not afraid of our addictions, but we know that they should be feared. They are too close to who we are to allow us to be fearful. We are driven by our pleasures—our need for excitement or relaxation or to forget our normal life. We are driven by need for family and community, and we will face our fears of meeting the opposite sex, of having a baby, of going to a new meeting full of strangers, just so that we can find or create that community that meets our drive.

But we are forced to do these things, either by ourselves, or by others. Some of these things are good, some are not. But the ethics or spirituality of the situation is almost never what drives us. Rather we are like magnets, either pulled toward or driven away by this or that force. We may claim independence, but rarely do we make a decision based on our own free will, on what is good. We are led by others, by the context we live in. This is oppression. We are not free.