Community and Freedom 4 – April 16, 2019
(This is the 4th in a series. The first three parts can be found here – Community and Freedom, Community and Freedom 2, Community and Freedom 3)
What is Community? – What is Freedom?
Good morning,
It is time to define as clearly as possible what these two things, Community and Freedom, really are. This is not easy. I have read many different definitions of community, and they vary considerably. Those differences, however, are as nothing compared to the wildly differing views about what freedom is – an argument that has been going on for millennia.
To spare you all that, let me race forward to my short and simple conclusion with regard to how best to understand community: A community is a group of people who feel connected to one another in a significant way, who feel a mutual care and concern for each other.
Using this definition, being in a community does not insure it will be a healthy one, for both heathy and unhealthy communities fit this description. Later I will try to delineate the differences between fairly healthy and not-so-healthy communities, but for now, let’s approach what a community is by understanding what it is not. For me, a community is not a group of people who simply have a shared interest – support the same football team, belong to the same political party, play the same video games, or like the same kind of music. In these and many similar cases, the people involved might not know each other, or not know each other well. But knowing your “others” is essential for true community. As David Spangler put it: Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and know the other.
In the positive direction, people who are in real community have a sense of a shared world, a sense that “we are in this together,” that they are living a part of their lives in relation to a specific group of other individuals. These people have some degree of commitment to each other – plus, they have accepted a framework for how they will interact with each other and for how decisions will be made. Further, almost all communities have some shared values that its members try to uphold (with many failures along the way, of course, but they try). Needless to say, the members of a community can change over time, but there must be a continuing critical mass as time moves along that can maintain the essential character of the community (and to allow it to change as well, but not too precipitously).
Through most of human history, most communities were determined by place – your community was made up of all or part of the people who lived close by. With the changes in the modern world, however, communities take many different forms. Some are organized around a specific interest, such as a sport, profession, or hobby; some are organized around a church, social club, or neighborhood action group; others come together to undertake a specific task (a military company, climbing a mountain, organizing a campaign); some come together around a shared practice (a reading, study, prayer, or meditation group). And in our modern world, we each can be a member of several different communities, with varying degrees of commitment to each.
The many, many communities that make up the modern world are quite different from each other, but to be a true community, the members must know each other to a certain real degree, and they must have developed a certain amount of care and concern for each other.
Reflection: What are the communities in which you are now participating?
What Is Freedom? The first answer many people give to this question is that freedom is being able to do just what you like, when you like, without any constraints. But there is a problem with this answer, as suggested by Vaclav Havel, the scholar, Czech freedom fighter, and then first President of the hard-won Czech democracy. He said: It was with a great deal of effort that people in these lands attained the freedom they yearned for. The moment they gained that freedom, however, it was as if they had been ambushed by it. Unaccustomed to freedom, they now, suddenly, don’t know what to do with it; they are afraid of it; they don’t know what to fill it with.
Feodor Dostoyevsky eloquently wrestled with the same issue, giving it voice through the Grand Inquisitioner in The Brothers Karamazov, saying, in essence: Only a few people will be able to endure the terrible gift of freedom; rather, most human beings do not want to be free, but prefer to be told what to do, as long as they think they will receive safety, security, and material comfort in return. And, on the further condition that they will not have to make hard decisions or put in hard effort. For these reasons, choosing to be truly free seems too difficult for many of us; deciding for ourselves what is true and how we will live is just too hard.
There are many other possible ways to think about freedom, but let me jump to the one I find most compelling and inspiring. Immanuel Kant, the greatest western philosopher of the 18th century, was pointing in this direction when he said (in my paraphrase): Only when we can transcend our material interests do we know freedom; only when we are able to defy our material interests, even to the point of risking our lives, do we really know we are free. Or as Edmund Burke wrote around the same time as Kant: “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” In other words, if you think freedom is simply to run after one urge or desire after another, you are not free, but a slave to your passions.
Following this trail, the novelist D.H. Lawrence had this to say about the nature of true freedom: Men are free when they are in a living homeland, not when they are straying and breaking away. Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom. Men are freest when they are most unconscious of freedom. The shout is a rattling of chains, always was.
At another point Lawrence said: “Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. … [they] are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes. And there is getting down to the deepest self! It takes some diving.” In other words, to reach true freedom, the path usually runs through the land of limitation. To be truly free, we must get down to the deepest self, get to know what is really important at that level of our being, then choose to organize our lives around that – which is totally different from the pseudo-freedom of joining a group that serves up group-think for its members. Ultimately, we must exercise the discipline and make the sacrifices necessary to live toward what our “deepest self likes,” which always involves limiting the ego’s claims of supremacy, restraining our id energies, redirecting our whims, and molding our urges and desires toward what the deepest self understands as truly important.
True freedom, then, is to recognize that we can’t fulfill every desire or have everything our egos conjure up as alluring. It is only by committing to one thing (or a few things) and letting go of all others that we escape from the bondage of our egos and of our whims. You can’t have a hundred truly close friends – you don’t have time. You can’t be a great pianist, and tennis player, and chess master, and gourmet chef, and parent, and romantic partner, and meditator, and spiritual seeker, and on and on, in this one life. You can’t go to every party, read every book, see every movie, answer every text, or watch everything interesting on YouTube. You must choose. You have to choose what is important and focus your attention and energies there – and by your choices you will determine who you will become. Real freedom lies in the capacity to choose what is truly important in your life, developing the strength to commit to that, and having the discipline to let go of the other things that tempt and beckon. You must sacrifice many enticing things if you wish to be free to fully live what is important for you.
This is, of course, what the spiritual traditions have always taught; it is the reason for their otherwise bewildering array of disciplines, limitations, practices, and austerities. Although the disciplines and proscriptions are sometimes misused and abused by unwise teachers and spiritual leaders, their wise use is necessary for a fulfilled life – for their real purpose is to help us give up what is unimportant so we can focus on what is truly important. As Henry David Thoreau put it, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
This is the path used by many wise souls to find their way through to a fulfilled life. And, having the support of others – of a community – is crucial if you wish to follow such a path. Of special importance, notice that in understanding freedom this way, there is no conflict between true freedom and being part of a community. Nor is there a conflict between following the deepest spiritual calling and living in relation to a healthy community; in fact, the two are crucial for each other. As Plato captured it: “Only after a long partnership in a common life devoted to this search does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark.” And Henry Miller, more than two millennia later, said it succinctly: “Spiritual growth is an individual affair that is best pursued in groups.”
Wendell Berry also captures this idea in his poem. “The Law That Marries All Things”:
The cloud is free only
to go with the wind.
The rain is free
only in falling.
The water is free only
in its gathering together,
in its downward courses,
in its rising into air.
In law is rest
if you love the law,
if you enter, singing, into it
as water in its descent.
Or, song is truest law,
and you must enter singing;
it has no other entrance.
It is the great chorus
of parts. The only outlawry
is in division.
Reflection: What is the freedom you seek?
Take care, David