The X-Factor: FREEDUMB (5/8/20)

 “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt.

If you don’t know that you don’t know, then how are you going to address the situation? Memory and ignorance may seem like close bedfellows but they’re more like distant cousins. To be who you are, character, personality, idiosyncrasies, requires you to remember ‘who you are.’ And who you are today, is nothing more than the composite of experiences and memory. Some of them are logged in muscle memory. That’s how sometimes you can’t account for a period of time while driving to a destination. You realize that you weren’t thinking about driving, you just did it. If one morning you woke up remembering no one or anything about yourself, what do you think would happen? Perfect segue to ignorance. It therefore follows that an absence of memory or knowledge are even more dangerous than the presence of information, especially if it’s only available at great expense.

Mental Ability 

If freedom was only a state-of-mind, then at any point during the course of the days of our lives, we could emancipate ourselves, from mental slavery. All this self-help psycho-babble about just thinking something and somehow that makes it more likely to happen is more about helping authors sell books than getting you any closer to what you want. No amount of thinking or obsessing is going to change the reality of a child entrenched in a life of destitution and poverty. And many times, their effort, however valiant and well-intended, counts for naught. Why? Because as important as the right attitude is, a positive outlook and resilient spirit even, we cannot do it alone. The cycle of dependency in a state such as ours, necessarily requires the majority of its citizens to live in a state of comatose reliance for several reasons. It is politically expedient to have a sheep-like electorate you can control with rhetoric and handouts. For economic reasons, those without will always spend exorbitant amounts of money on things they desire and crave, but can’t truly afford. And thirdly, my favourite; when a people are afraid and lack true confidence, they may grumble but never really challenge the status quo. The fact that you’re still reading this article presupposes a level of awareness about things outside the realm of the average conversation about things and people. Imagine then if most Jamaicans had the luxury of caring about matters not related to surviving the day or week? They would then have the mental acreage to plant something other than corn and rice; mere subsistence essentials. They would have the tools and know-how to sow and harvest rich and even strange fruit if they choose. Imagine further if you will a nation of sharp, questioning, vigilant individuals united not necessarily in ideology or opinion, but in purpose. I know it sounds like a feel-good movie script, but it really does all start in the mind. It’s just that it takes the right food AND dietician to make it bear healthy fruit. What we lack are persons who are willing to give more than just advice, but take responsibility for feeding and nurturing that most priceless bit of real estate between our ears. 

Painful Addictions

In the final analysis, many of us are masochists, more so than we’d care to admit. What’s that you say? Simple version; someone who likes pain. I’ll roll off a few examples and you tell me (figuratively of course) which one(s) apply to you. 1) You eat poorly, late at nights and rarely exercise but truly feel you deserve to have a nice, toned body. 2) You always choose to get involved with persons who have a known history of things you don’t want to be a part of, but you secretly hope you can change them. 3) You know that getting out of bed a certain time will cause you to be frustrated, irritable, rushed and late for work, but you somehow hope the roads will look like 5pm on Sunday today. Nothing yet? How about this? 4) Your instincts scream ‘stay away from this person’ and for whatever reason you convince yourself everybody deserves a chance to prove themselves. I’m sure you learned the hard way, each time. 5) WE actually believe each election cycle that our elected, employed-by-us representatives (I chose not to use the word ‘leaders’) will do things differently this time around, just because we voted. The list could go on, and I’m sure you could add a few. We act as if we can’t think and do for self. You and I may not be as educated as some, but we don’t need a degree to know when something is not right. We’re not stupid and neither are we cowards, hopefully. Being afraid does not make you a coward. It’s not trying to do something about it when you know you should, that’s cowardice. Bravery is deciding that you won’t be taken for a fool anymore and doing something, anything about it, especially when you’re afraid. It’s not the absence of fear; it’s the presence of a deep-seated will to change things for the better that overpowers the fear of what may be the outcome of your actions. But nothing happens if the individual is unwilling to challenge what is given to him or her as fact or their reality, and depend instead on fostering and fueling an enquiring mind and passion to make something out of their life. An economic or personal commitment is not a life-sentence. The only real shackles were always in the mind. We can decide how we live; in Freedumb or with Freedom. Just know that both come with a price. It is never Free! B+ Email comments to [email protected]