What’s Your Definition of Freedom?
It’s true! Freedom means something different to everyone. It’s an overused word with multiple meanings and thus discussing it with others can be tricky. For me, freedom meant earning my own money in order to achieve financial independence while living a debt-free life.
Many Americans, however, can live with debt most of their lives while equating freedom with something else entirely.
The freedom to choose to get a vaccine or not, own a gun, say what you want whenever you want to whomever you want can be definitions of freedom for some Americans. We could go round and round about what freedom means to us and never reach full consensus, yet Americans are clearly in love with the idea of freedom.
In spite of our mutual love for the idea of freedom, modern Americans are more dependent than any time in history.
Think about it! Most of us haven’t enough food in our larders to feed us for more than a few days, weeks, or months. We’ve become completely dependent upon someone else, often someone other than another American, to provide us with EVERYTHING we need. Our goal has shifted away from self preservation to dependency. We’ve put our entire faith in paper money, so we work tirelessly to acquire as much of it as possible. Why? Because it has become the norm to believe that this magical paper that we get for our hard work will give us access to everything we need and want.
My grandparents were never rich.
They grew up in Kentucky, coal-mining country. My grandfather remembered the Great Depression as a kid and several winters when his family survived on turnips from their garden. His idea of security as an adult meant a huge garden, putting up enough food to feed a large family for a year, and even raising chickens and a pig or two. My grandmother sewed all of her clothes and knew how to can and freeze produce from the garden. She cooked most things from scratch. Sadly, a lot of those skills that sustained my grandparents and gave them a feeling of security went by the wayside in the next generation.
But that’s not all, folks!
Not only have individuals lost survival skills like gardening, canning, hunting, fishing, gathering, sewing, weaving, carpentry, and so on and so forth, but our country itself has traded its independence to manufacture and produce goods of almost any kind for cheap labor and higher profits. Cars, medicine, food, toys, furniture, clothing, tools, you name it, are all being manufactured many, many, many miles away by hard workers in other countries.
How can one claim to be free when so dependent?
Our recent supply chain issues have revealed how utterly fragile our systems have become. At least in the 50s when my mom was leading a “Father Knows Best” life, my father was manufacturing her stainless steel kitchen and modern washer and dryer, the prepackaged food that she shopped for every week, and the clothes that my brothers and sisters and I wore to school. That all started to change when my husband and I got married. America took a different path then. My husband lost a series of jobs because the work was shipped to China, Mexico, Thailand or elsewhere.
When even our medicine is being produced overseas, you can be sure that independence is not the popular definition of freedom.
We’re now so vulnerable that if China wanted to really harm us, they could just stop sending us antibiotics. If not the finished product then the raw materials to make medicines in the US often come from China, India, or other locations across the world.
When I think about freedom these days, I do so with a revised definition.
Several years ago, I started strengthening my gardening skills. My larder is always full these days. Rather than eat at a restaurant, spending three times what I would spend if I cooked the same meal at home, I add food to my freezer. My husband is fixing things around the house again instead of hiring the job out. We save more money and buy less plastic junk from overseas. We repair things and use them longer if at all possible.
Yet, I fear that the average Americans only recourse if things get really tough will be to resort to using their guns rather than honing their survival skills.
Because along with giving up our independence as a nation, we seem to have lost a measure of problem solving skills. We become frustrated really quickly because we’re so used to hitting a button and everything we need is delivered to our doorstep. Our brains may have atrophied a bit. So resorting to violence feels like the only solution to many.
I don’t know where all of this will end, but I do know that people seem to have forgotten that freedom must involve a level of independence or it’s just a word. Maybe we’ll understand that when we have nothing left to lose.
Maybe then we’ll be forced to redefine freedom.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, world traveler, author, and professional myth buster. You can buy her books on Amazon.
