Wow! Amazing piece, with tons of quotable material in this post.
It's quite paradoxical to think about who we are as individuals, vs. in relation to each other. Our society supports the focus on who we are as individual in all the wrong ways: competition to be the "greatest," your looks, how much money you make, victimhood (ending what we feel is hurting us as individuals vs. ending injustice on a systemic level). We're not encouraged to focus on who we are in deep ways, which naturally invites questioning authority, finding our purpose, and opening up to our interconnectedness.
The media overwhelms us with human failures, tragedies, and news we fear. No wonder we feel like awesome things like Shareable, which focuses on social movements based on sharing and decentralization, is idealistic and unattainable on a large scale. On top of the negative news overload in the media, we have captured government agencies that serve establishment interests. Thus, it makes sense to me why none of us know how to summon the right social resources. With our WTK work, I've learned that many other countries have stronger social resources in place because their government actually supports the interests of the public, vs. corporate/private interests.
Most countries have banned toxic chemicals and DTC advertising in the pharmaceutical industry. Many countries have strong regulations in place to reign in the harmful impacts of wireless radiation. Finland offers free healthcare and education. What other examples exist?
And now that I think about it, we need a more nuanced definition of freedom. Many people look at the US and its lack of regulations (at the expense of the health and wellbeing of the people) and justify it by saying, "Hey, this is America. We're a free society." Yet clearly there are huge issues with the neoliberal economic policies that drive our country, even if there are benefits to a free market. What do you think about this?
I always come back to your powerful quote about freedom: "Imagine a society where everyone was both perfectly free and entirely accountable."
I think it was @lovejoy who was telling me recently about a Chinese saying that roughly translates to "the air of freedom." His friend lives in a major city and tells him that she can go anywhere at anytime of the day or night and feel perfectly safe. Here in the US, we "breathe the air of freedom" and have rampant crime and other social problems. I don't think China's way is better in general, but it does do a better job of holding people accountable for their actions.
I would love to see a truly free market in the US. Instead we have unfair monetary policy, corporate welfare and captured regulators constraining the actions of individuals and small businesses at every turn. What results is a heavily manipulated market, not a free one.
Despite our air of freedom, our society as a whole is likewise heavily manipulated rather than free. Maybe a more nuanced definition of freedom is called for. But I'm inclined to think that we all know what freedom means while the opportunities to truly exercise freedom have been systematically stolen from us by a control regime that keeps us too befuddled to even realize what we've lost.
Yeah they call it... 自由的空气 “Free Air”