Liberty – Independence – Freedom.

We often use these words interchangeably. It is easy to open a dictionary and seek a simple objective definition. More words.

But to truly KNOW what these words encompass, as with any abstract concept, we have to dig deeper.

Doesn’t “Freedom” just mean our “Rights?” That is the illusion in which our lives have been shrouded. This is an infantile whitewashing, a feel-good obfuscation, and false entitlement. Freedom is not free.

Either you are free, or you are cattle. That’s it.

David Gerrold, “A Matter For Men”

What is the difference between “free” and “cattle?” “Freedom” versus “enslavement?”

Freedom is the opportunity to be responsible for yourself.

David Gerrold

There it is. Responsibility. Freedom is more than “Rights. You only have “Rights” if you accept “Responsibility.” To be Independent, you simply must not be Dependent.

“Responsibility” is a big, scary word for many in modern America. It amounts to work, and our culture has been intentionally shaped to be averse to work, particularly if it is actually challenging, as a distasteful imposition in favor of convenience and entertainment. Show up, get a trophy. Bread and circus.

Let’s break it down more simply. “Responsibility” is the same as “Needs” …your “needs” that must be tended, for yourself, your family, and your community. Those needs are truly more simple than you have been led to believe. Humanity has survived fending for ourselves and independently tending our own needs of survival and community for thousands of years.

This does not mean slaving away hours of your life in exchange for Monopoly money to trade for your every need, fulfilled by someone else because you are not allowed or do not know how for yourself. It means actually fulfilling these needs for yourself, and coordinating within your community. Food and water, shelter, education, medicine, goods and services.

“Responsibility,” or “Needs,” is the crux of it all. Our every responsibility has been silently and subtly shifted away from ourselves over the course of recent generations, and as a society overall, we accepted it. Some of us submitted begrudgingly as we stood alone against the flow of the crowd running happily off the cliff, while so many applauded this shift for convenience, believing the lie that this is what progress looks like (when really, this is what degradation into despotism and communism look like).

However, once you have allowed your “Responsibility” to be outsourced, your “Needs” to be tended by someone else… That someone else now owns you, just as cattle are owned by the farmer who feeds them, to later slaughter them for his meal or his profit. You have abdicated yourself of not only your responsibility, but your rights as well. The two are not independent of one another. They are intrinsically connected.

These personal responsibilities are so very innate that our Founders likely felt it utterly unnecessary to outline this concept anywhere beyond simply stating that we are entitled to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” because tending our own needs is simply an inherent critical component of these rights. The possibility that humanity could ever be quite so enslaved as not to be skilled in or permitted to freely exercise basic life skills of survival and community engagement, and so ignorant to it happening, would have been unfathomable to them.

As David Gerrold also states in his novel when he speaks of “Freedom,” “The answer is so simple you won’t accept it. You will insist on complicating it.” Freedom is not complicated. When you accept the truth that Freedom simply means the opportunity to be responsible for yourself… Your world will change.

And you have a choice to make.

Do you really want to be free, to accept the Responsibility that comes with Rights? Are you willing to take care of yourself… or would you prefer to remain a dog?

To be free, to have rights… you simply have to accept the work.

And I promise you, it is not as complicated as your masters have led you to believe. They WANT you to believe it is complicated, that it is too difficult, that you NEED to be taken care of, that you NEED THEM.

You don’t.

Your “Needs” and those of your family and community are truly simple. So simple that, as Gerrold highlights, you won’t accept it. You will insist on complicating it (in part, because that is what you have been taught).

Break your chains and leave the cage. It’s time to walk away from their circus.

Life is simple. Freedom is simple.

Live. Free.

Liberty.