Personal Meditation No. 131

“Freedom is scary and that is why it will never be popular.”

Embrace the Within.

Libertarians and libertarians always complain that their message just isn’t spreading. They complain that people don’t want to be free. And for once they’re correct. Freedom and personal responsibility are scary and they will never be popular.

I and sometimes you get into a mindset that the world is set up with people that predominantly think like us. They value the same things and share the same beliefs and hopes for the future, however, we shouldn’t feel that beliefs in freedom and responsibility are ever widely accepted or internalized.

Americans talk a lot about freedom and liberty. I mean it is basically their whole identity. They have a whole cult set up about it. If you don’t understand that then just take a few long looks at the iconography of the Capitol dome and the deification of George Washington going on there. It’s a statist church vestibule glorifying the Americanized ideas of freedom and liberty. These terms are used so often with such connotations that bring forth patriotism and duty rather than self ownership anymore. And a lot of that comes from a cursory understanding of the revolution and the founding of this country.

People like the ideas of freedom and liberty. If you can take those ideas and put them on a t-shirt with 1776 on it, then you’ll definitely make some money with the blue collar public servants that think freedom and liberty is gun ownership. If you put that Sky Cloth on a pair of shorts or a hat or a t-shirt made in China then you can sell well at Wal-Mart. If you give out tiny flags at a parade, then the folks will swarm to wave them. The ideas of freedom and liberty marketed so easily for mass consumption are a lot different than self ownership and personal responsibility.

So, I think it’s time we let freedom and liberty take a rest. The terms don’t mean what they are intended anymore. Talking about those terms just confuse folks with patriotism. Those terms just bring up ideas of saying the Magic Prayer to the Sky Cloth before a sportsball game of any sort. Let them be the mantra for the masses.

It is time to talk about living a life of abundance. A life where you have control over what you do and when you do it. A life where you get to make the choices for your self on how you are going to spend your day. A life where you are responsible for what you are going to do with your life. And this self ownership and personal responsibility will allow each of us a different level of abundance. Some of us will want to live as wonderfully abundant life as we can and others will choose to get by with what is provided for us.

So, don’t complain that your catch phrases are co-opted into something they are not. Because freedom and liberty as defined as “to act without control or interference by another or by circumstance” is no longer the meaning represented by the majority. And the majority of people don’t want to act on their own. People just want the symbolism of freedom and liberty.

So, if you want to live abundantly, there is nothing stopping you today from taking up your self ownership and personal responsibility to make that change. You can live the life in which you own yourself and make the changes to live more abundantly or you can settle for the t-shirt.

Have the day you want. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain