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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Volume 1, Number 8 The Yin and Yang of Love and Freedom by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR February 19, 2007 All
men are brothers and each man is free.
Love
and freedom intertwine in human life, forming a core duality
in harmony with the ancient concept of yin
and yang. Because
love and freedom are connected parts of a whole, each requires the other.
A lack of love harms freedom; a lack of freedom harms love. Individuals
and societies need high levels of both
love and freedom for optimal health. Individually, we require love because
we are all brothers and sisters, and love is what we were born for. Yet we
also require freedom because each of us is a separate and unique
individual. We each have our own desires, abilities, interests, and
preferences. This
natural diversity among individuals makes us more than drones; it makes
life interesting, for one thing. Individual differences make human society
as we know it possible and bring surprising strength and adaptability to
the group. Love, for its part, is the necessary lubricant and
anti-corrosive for a free society. Neither laws, nor religious teachings,
nor anything else can replace the need for widespread love.
Our
dual nature means that love includes both a sense of oneness with others and respect for each person as a unique, free, and self-controlling
individual. Love
requires freedom. Without
freedom, love withers and dies. To
take away anothers freedom is to treat that person with un-love.
Extreme examples include kidnapping, slavery, and police states, but all
forms of coercion damage love. Even
seemingly minor reductions in freedom begin the process of corrupting
love, because love and coercion are polar opposites. More of one always
means less of the other (aside from natural exceptions mostly having to do
with protection of infants and young children; pulling a toddler back from
a busy street, for example). Coercive
government the State as we have known it has historically been by far the greatest enemy of freedom, and thus the greatest
destroyer of love. This remains true today, as any newspaper will amply
confirm: war; torture; death camps; unjust laws and imprisonment including
vast
gulags; needless poverty and even famine
all of these are the results of government action, and the extremely
widespread emotional damage caused by such horrors perpetuates the worst
elements of the human condition. Freedom
requires love, no less
than love requires freedom. Without
sufficient love, a society falls apart. Healthy social interaction, honest
market activity, the division
of labor, and other cooperation ultimately needed for humans to
survive and prosper all require the widespread sense
of connection that only comes with love. Love
for others is a natural part of emotional health, which develops in the
earliest weeks, months, and years of life if
we get the love we need during that time. This
sensitivity to early conditions makes the treatment of pregnant mothers,
newborns, infants, and children absolutely critical. Emotional damage in
the young caused by neglect, emotional cruelty, violence, coercion,
sexual abuse, and other distress lasts
a lifetime. Neurosis has been passed down from generation to
generation for thousands of years, and bringing a halt to this ongoing
disaster is of critical importance in the 21st Century. Not only are
individual lives ruined by a lack of love and freedom, in extreme cases
(which are not all that rare) widespread emotional damage combines with
government coercion to create the epic horror of a Germany
under Hitler, a Cambodia
under Pol Pot, or a Zimbabwe
under Robert Mugabe. Fortunately,
it is possible to reduce the
emotional damage we inflict on the young. Small, simple actions right at
the start (a gentle birth, for example) can have enormous and life-long
positive impact. Treating children with respect and compassion is not
difficult and makes
the children happier and thus more pleasant to be with. Reducing
government coercion (war, drug laws, eminent domain, the militarization
of police, the purchase or other control of government power by
corporations and special interests, etc.) would have very widespread
benefits. Simply reminding others of the connected
nature of love and freedom will encourage positive action; so will
spreading understanding that the character
of our world is created largely by our
treatment of the young. The
rules for balancing love and freedom in life for example, in
protecting a child or infant from harm are engraved deep within us,
far below the level of intellect. Trying to replace these ancient, natural
guidelines with high-level, upper-brain logic typically leads to problems
and often to tragedy. That topic the nature and importance of
different levels of consciousness is the subject of next weeks
column: Feeling, Emotion, Intellect:
Why Rational Thought Is Not Enough. Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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