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It seems like a great idea, doesn’t it? Wars are fought over borders, so let’s lower them. Boundaries keep us in as much as others out, so let’s break them down. Identities limit us, so let’s make them so fluid as to be meaningless. It’s a grand scheme, this freeing the world of all that limits and binds, isn’t it? Makes for a freer world, doesn’t it?

Erich Fromm’s distinction between freedom from and freedom to seems most apt, right now. All this destruction of those structures that have for so long acted as the impetus for growth, is it out of a sense of freedom from or freedom to?

People leave their own countries because they fear the regimes in authority and, in their millions, they traipse over those lowered borders into other countries seeking refuge and hand-outs. So much better to be free from the burden of having to fight for one’s liberty, of having the courage to reclaim one’s own nation from the clutches of tyranny, isn’t it? Freedom from.

Boundaries are divisive, demarcating us from them – with them always seen negatively. We must rid ourselves of these false separations and accept all on equal terms. Makes nothing but good sense, doesn’t it? Yet, there are nations, cultures and religions which don’t give equality to women, have little care for the plight of the child, and which would execute those who feel love (or desire) inappropriately. And these are those others who insist on the rubbing out of all distinctions between us and them. Freedom from.

Identities are imposed at birth when, in fact, we should be free to choose who we are. Why should anyone live with the burden of being identified as someone they don’t recognise? Yet, those who would seek the right to self identify are the weakest among us, unable to allow others the same freedom they seek for themselves, hysterical in the face of opposition. Freedom from.

We are a species on the run! We duck and weave, dodge and dive, all the time hiding from the authorities, the powers who would march us under guard back to our cages, keep us from escape. But, really, where is it we can escape to?

Wherever we run, we take our own prison guard with us, for it is us! It isn’t society or politicians or priests who would keep us bound – it is ourself!

This is precisely why the hysterical minority must shout down voices of opposition – they cannot bear to hear from others what they hate about themselves. And the hysterical minority is all about hatred of the self! They claim to be seeking the freedom to be truly who they are but, in reality, they hate themselves so much they’d prefer to have no sense of Self. No Self ever really needs to deny another.

The very idea that we must all agree is the surest sign the idea is born of self-hatred. Only those who know their claim is weak need to prevent others from voicing opposing views. This is precisely why dictators establish the cult of personality – a dissenting voice is an attack upon the person of the dictator. Think about it, those who would prevent the likes of Jordan Peterson from speaking do so because, as the dictator, they feel every word he says as a personal attack. In a dictatorship there is no other way to interpret dissent.

The problem is that the alternative is not so attractive. If freedom from leads only to dictatorship, where does freedom to get us? Well, really, it gets us precisely where we have always been. This is why the Victorians remain an object lesson in how to be human. They were, probably, the first to deal with our inherent human need to go beyond ourselves technologically while being forever bound by our humanity.

The Ancient Greeks had it easy by comparison. They soared to heights unimaginable to us today – but only because they had the clearest sense of who they were. Athens didn’t have to worry about what others thought, their only concern being what they thought of themselves. And just look at what they achieved! So much that we still live in their shadow several thousand years later!Who will remember this age a couple thousand years after our passing? Who will there be to remember?

The Greeks could go as far as they wanted for nothing they could do had any effect upon the health of the world. The Victorians had no such illusions. They were the beginning of our conscious awareness of our destructiveness. We are the offspring of the Victorians. They were fully aware of our freedom to destroy and gave us the example of how to live with the duality of our nature.

Think about the Nineteenth Century for a moment. It began, literary speaking, in 1818 with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and ended in 1897 with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In other words, the century which gave us modern science still had time, after all that had been achieved, to listen to the irrational, ageless forces arrayed against us. The Victorians accepted that to be human is to be both great and evil – and, if truth be told, it is that little pinch of evil that makes us so damned great!

So, the greatest of human societies have always been those that erected borders, boundaries and distinct identities. Because only when we are struggling against ourselves are we at our best.

Refugees are cowards! Anyone who expects the world to just give them what they want because they are too frightened to stand up and fight for their right to exist is a coward!

I truly don’t give a crap what you do to yourself in your quest to destroy yourself. What I do care about is the right of the rest of us to be who we are! I might not be the best version of humanity, but I have the right to be me just as much as you have the right to be you. If you can’t live in a world with me in it, you really shouldn’t be trying to tell me about diversity because you really don’t know of what you speak!

I have the freedom to be myself because I refuse to accept your power over me. Not because you don’t have such power – I work for a boss with whom I don’t agree fundamentally. That authority dictates I do what must be done if I am to retain my job. Am I inauthentic to myself, as the existentialists would have me believe. Not at all! And why? Because to be human is to be able to live with our duality. That little pinch of evil exists within us all. It is what makes us human!

We defied God within moments of our creation, we are not cowards! We defied God and lived to tell ourselves about it. As one tradition would have it, the whole of Heaven went to war because we paltry humans would be who we are.

So, you seek freedom from yourself; I seek freedom to be myself. And, who am I to want such a thing? I am you!