stray reflections

Good start to the day: a beautiful post from anton -which I hope she will permit me to copy?- and some wonderful lines from Roxana. Plus: halva puri.

For anton and roxana (please note: the spirit of this is non-confrontational, just some stray reflections)

Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and in the best sense, free.

Was leafing through some Ruskin at Nabil's place and came across some lines which were similar to those above. About order and "real" freedom, about how freedom was an inner relation to outward circumstances, how serving one's superior is not necessarily servitude-and nothing compared to manancles of the machine, etc., etc.

First things first.

Nabil, what is this crap? Pass me some chocolates (he has an endless supply).

White or dark?

Black, bro'. It has to be black today.

Second thoughts:

Do you instinctively flinch on reading such words? Of course, you're not a 'medieval soul' for all your self-deceptions. But you liked Ruskin, the little you had read, the conservative radical. Wasn't that the type of 'left' that appealed to you, away from the radicalism of the bolshies, with their hatred of the past, their scientism?

But are instincts enough? What are your reasons? Without them, doesn't that lead you to fanaticism or subjectivism? But no, today it doesn't seem that way. Being 'like minded', sharing in the 'commons of the mind', is not, really about 'thought' but ultimately a matter of one's temperament.

I am in pain.

Do you need to hear me say that, think about it, 'know' that the statement is 'objectively' true, a "fact"? Do I need to say it to myself?

What do you want to avoid? What you think are two mistakes:

Firstly, that what 'is' is the same as what 'ought' to be. That the structures of dominance are to be accepted; that submission, passiveness, willing passiveness, can be a type of freedom or even the best type of freedom; that everyone must 'know their place'. The freedom to be oneself, a positive freedom, is not really about the lack of constraints, and is something of a different nature to the 'lonely freedom' (Augustine) of the moderns. Freedom within Tradition, norms, the familiar, the Truth.

But what about your radical Islam: do not bow your head to any person. Only in relation to the Divine: to be free slaves, a 'higher fatalism' (the Allama). But even here you are uneasy. The more he blasphemes, the more he praises God.

Secondly, that freedom is just the lack of constraints, a breaking free into the open, the uncharted. For you feel that this 'mechanical' view of freedom (Bloch?) can and does lead to, paradoxically, a lack of freedom. A slave of one's desires. The 'shock of the new' is the dominant discourse and it informs all practices. Go which way you will. The arbitrary will, the open road. Freedom is not about vision or 'the good' but revolt, rebellion, traveling, not reaching.

But then the question of orders of pleasure, of second-order desires. The ability to take step back. Preferences are not merely 'given' but socially formed, constructed, manufactured. Evaluate, consider, form judgements (Arendt). Without this, are we human (Frankfurt)? Your guru, though you have no gurus: Sen:

We need both rationality and freedom, and they need each other.

We stray, we reflect. In both there is freedom.