It is for her - freedom - that all and sundry have fought since time immemorial. "Liberation wars" is a phrase that is familiar, like "fresh bread" or "blue sky". However, "freedom" is one of the most shabby and most controversial concepts.
THE MYSTERY OF THE EVE APPLE
The tempting serpent who convinced Eve to taste the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil made her and Adam taste freedom. For the Lord was angry and not only expelled His rebellious Children from Paradise, but … gave them freedom. The freedom to decide for themselves how to live on, what to do and what not to do, where to go. In other words, he relieved himself of responsibility for their fate - and shifted it onto their own shoulders.
Don't you think that this is where the cornerstone was laid, which most of those who yearn for freedom and even fight for it stumble over? That's right: there is no freedom without responsibility for every step you take. If you are free in your decisions and actions, there is no one to blame for failures, that life does not work out, that it is difficult to exist … Only yourself. Oh, how hard it is to put up with it!
THE LORD GOD'S PUPPETS
Free will, freedom of choice - this is the most valuable and most insidious gift of the Creator. How could He allow all THIS - wars, violence, injustice, absurd early deaths, excruciating diseases? Why didn’t he interfere and take away the hand of the murderer with the knife from the innocent victim? Only because He does not play with dolls, but creates humanity, which must come to goodness and light, learn to be humanity, and not the descendants of monkeys living according to the laws of the flock.
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Between the wars of liberation, when people defend the independence of their own country from the invaders, and revolutions proclaiming in one form or another the idea of freeing a part of the population from slavery, as they say, is a "huge distance." And our Russian history has shown this to the whole world more than clearly. Having driven out the "enslavers", the freed crowds moved to "plunder the loot", and then, terrifyingly soon, found themselves in a new, even tougher yoke. Because they did not conquer any freedom, and they did not strive for it. They understood it very scanty and one-sided: to remove or kill those who make you do something, in some way limits you. What will happen next - no one thought. The sad result is known: no freedom shone, no matter how many spells were uttered, no matter what slogans were hung at all corners.
FREEDOM SEEDER DESERT
One of the most tragic and hopeless poems by Pushkin, in essence, offers us a complete philosophical formula:
Graze, peaceful peoples, you will not be awakened by a cry of honor.
Why do the flocks need the gifts of freedom?
They must be cut or trimmed.
Their inheritance from generation to generation
A yoke with rattles and a whip."
The flocks … and really, why does the flock need freedom?.. It grazes itself, dutifully pays tribute to the shepherd who chooses the animal for slaughter - but the rest will be taken out to the meadow tomorrow, eat fresh grass, and the wolf will be driven away, and will not be lost. Convenient - much more convenient than looking for pasture alone and keeping away from predators.
WILD WILL
One of the synonyms for the word "freedom" is "will". Free will - they said in Russia. She was not for everyone, she was chosen by loners. Will does not imply any political, state context, it is something completely personal. This is an internal state to which one must mature.
Actually, this is exactly what Pushkin wrote about: you cannot "give" freedom to anyone, you have to grow up to it, only then will the gift go for future use.
Let us recall literature again, the play "Dragon" by Evgeny Schwartz. The hero Lancelot goes to battle with the Dragon and kills him in a deadly battle. The city is free - so what? But nothing. The place of the Dragon is taken by the Burgomaster and his son, they act in the same way as the Dragon before. And the townspeople in the same way obediently live, giving honors to the Burgomaster, which previously fell to the lot of the Dragon, paying the same tribute, but at the same time they glorify the newfound freedom at all corners. Such a sad and so familiar picture! No wonder a year later Lancelot, having recovered from his wounds, returns to the city and says that now the most difficult thing is to kill the Dragon in everyone.
Here Lancelot will not help, as well as in general - "neither god, nor king, nor hero." Only man himself is capable of doing this. If he wants to. If you have matured enough and grown internally to the realization of the need to be free.
By the way, the Soviet poet Vladimir Uflyand, who had been in a state of some kind of internal emigration all his life, once wrote in his diary: “I don’t know if I need freedom. Moreover, in my opinion, I have it."
THE LIES OF THE SLAGGERS
"Freedom, equality and fraternity", the slogan of the Great French Revolution, seduced more than one generation of revolutionaries around the world. But it is initially false, by definition! As, however, any romantic message …
We have already understood that freedom cannot be won back or given to someone. It was given to us from the very beginning - but sometimes it takes a whole life to accept this gift and learn how to use it.
Equality is a different story. We are unequal by definition. Someone from birth is more talented than others, more attractive, more decisive, and so on. And when the political idea of freedom becomes a ruling force, not equality begins, but equalization, as a result of which the last crumbs of this freedom are taken away from truly free people - so that they do not "stick out" with their talents, do not shine too much against the background of the gray majority. It's funny to talk about brotherhood in this situation.
Recently, an interesting survey was conducted in Moscow. On the streets they approached young men of the so-called draft age and asked something like: "If tomorrow is a war, if tomorrow is a campaign," whether they will go to fight. The overwhelming majority answered the following: they would go for the country without hesitation, but for the state so convenient for the oligarchs, they would not take a step. Significant, isn't it?
But it is not for nothing that it was said: every nation has the government it deserves. And there is nothing to blame on the mirror. If you are ready to get up under the saddle and allow yourself to be bridled, do not count on the fact that you will freely walk in an open field. Wait for riders with a whip.
PERSONALITY PLUS PERSONALITY
Let's leave the oligarchs and the government alone. Let's talk about you and me. About personal freedom. The topic is fashionable, popular, and many trainings for personal growth are devoted to it, which our compatriots are so greedy for today. And they teach them, sick people, to be personally free from everything and from everyone, to act as the heart commands and as the left leg wishes. Why, they promise, and they will be happy.
What a bright idea, right? And very attractive. I remember that even in the old Soviet cartoon "Little Devil No. 13" the imp-teacher proclaimed it: "Love yourself, sneeze at everyone." Then they laughed, now we seriously write it down in the cherished notebooks and accept it for execution. Only the trouble is - as soon as you start living according to this formula, those around you turn away from you. What don't they like? Envy, probably?
Well no. They simply do not want to deal with a person who takes into account only their own interests, spitting on those close and distant.
Somehow everything is going badly: while you live, trying to fulfill someone's desires, you do not feel free, as soon as you send other people's desires to the side, you find yourself in a vacuum that no freedom will fill. But everything is simple, and the recipe has long been known. Your personal freedom is limited by only one thing - the personal freedom of other people. It is equally harmful for the soul and fate to follow the lead, even with the closest ones, and constantly brush aside the interests of others. That's all. I'm not sure that learning this simple truth requires training …
Irina BEREZINA