Rocking in the free world

SIMON APFEL

Free expression. Free association. Free movement. Free love. Freedom all round. Martin Luther King had a dream. Thirty-two African countries gained independence from their European colonial rulers. Democracy began to take a decisive hold. Presidents were turfed out, and wars terminated simply on the basis of public opinion.

Men grew their hair, rocked out, rebelled against the system. Any system. Women asserted themselves publicly, and effected social parity. Artists and thinkers began to test the limits of the mind, and to go places that had never been explored – that nobody had ever thought of exploring. At the same time, technology exploded, and suddenly people were free to go anywhere – even the moon – and to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime.

George Orwell’s bleak vision of absolute government control failed to materialise, Aldous Huxley’s fears proved premature. We could call this our “brave new world” without a hint of irony.

Borders and boundaries dissolved. Many limitations were revealed as self-imposed, self-perpetuated hoaxes. In effect, we became true masters of our destiny.

A process kick-started during the renaissance reached its zenith, as “enlightenment” took hold on a wide scale. Christopher John Penrice Booker, an English journalist and social commentator, described the 1960s as a classical Jungian cycle, “in which a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm”.

Finally, our minds were free. We could decide for ourselves what was right and wrong; what to do and what not to. Individual choice became real.

And so it was, that, for the second time in history, man ate from the Tree of Knowledge. The first time, Adam discovered that evil was possible – or, alternatively, caused it to be so. By doing so, he also discovered “good” – a concept which can have real meaning only relative to its counterpart.

This, the second time round, we no longer felt beholden to religious and political authorities; no longer subject to cultural oppressiveness or bound by inalienable social mores and meaningless Victorian etiquette. On top of this, the free and easy access to and availability of information (which ended up going into overdrive with the internet and social media a few decades later) meant we were free to pursue truth and expand our knowledge like no other generation before.

We had arrived at a unique moment in human history. Free choice was ratcheted up to maximum amplitude, and for the first time since the Church had come to power, we had the opportunity to choose to do the right thing for its own sake. We were freer that we’d ever been before, a momentous opportunity.

It’s the world we’re living in today.

And yet, just like mankind after Adam, we’re blowing it. Just like the first time we tucked into fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, we’re abusing our free choice to the point of catastrophe.

Indeed, “freedom” has meant little more than society bringing out into the open – without shame or humiliation, and even with pride – what previously we felt we needed to keep hidden. Now everything is permissible.

At root, the problem might be a misunderstanding of the value of freedom. Today it is upheld as an end in itself – perhaps the ultimate end – as opposed to a necessary means to an end. We’ve become so caught up in the euphoria of being able to do anything and get away with everything – and often to be lauded for it – that we’ve lost sight of the big picture.

Perhaps it’s time to take our freedom and move forward with it. To live virtuous lives and pursue spiritual pleasures for their own sake. To make tough moral choices now that we have one. To acknowledge that now that we have the luxury of freedom, it’s time to put it to good effect.

After all, isn’t that the point?

Three thousand three hundred and twenty-eight years ago, the children of Israel recognised this. Freed from the straits of Egypt, and notwithstanding a few hiccups along the way, they resolved to use their freedom in the best possible way – they chose to bind themselves to boundlessness. In so doing, they made the ultimate choice. They chose to limit themselves to limitlessness. The path of higher living. The path ascribed by our holy Torah.

It’s a path we’ve never been more free to choose.