Freedom
We are raised in a century of cumulating freedom. It started with the restoring of democracy in Europe. The postwar industrial high provoked a richness which still is growing in unheard intensity. The embarassing of richness is the cause of a lot of unhappy rich lives. Yet the most strong movement of all, triggered by the widespread rich consumers society, is the freedom movement. This movement was in the hearts and minds of youngsters and adults alike. This freedom is strongly interpreted as the absence of rules, duties and chains. It means strongly an abolishment of any regulating restrictions, be it religious, political, legal or cultural. This “I want to break free” movement suggested an end of slavery but in real was the starting of a new slavery.
The abolishment of cultural and religious restrictions left people with the ideology of post modernity or of “the anything goes’” ideology: it resulted in the feeling that in order to be modern or post modern you should be completely free of any determinating factors in your live. It errased all sort of ignorant and blocking traditional values and parctices. The new citizen will decide for himself what values and which traditions he will absorb. The innerworld got empty.
The synergy between the abolishment of constraints and the enrollment of the consumers society lead to a strong hybrid vulcano of free choices in the market dimension. This market driven and money driven system did gave free space to inhale all the aspects of a pleasure driven paradise. We talk then of course about the western industrialized society. Free from any constraints, the only value that keeps the whole thing together is this freedom of choosing your consumers life. Yet probably we overlooked the impact of these swap on our innerworld and on the growth of the innerworld of youngsters. We see immnes social, ecological problems now, but we have weakened our characters with pleasure satisfaction, relativistic approaches, cool fantasies. Maybe we weaken our internal system by the way we organize our extern world that triggers us. We need proudness, honour and compassion yet we see fear for anything. We see a consumer society that is completely obsessed with risk avoidance. We have so many people useless because of their richness or because of their poorness. We have so many systems that simulate for people their thinking, acting and feeling; systems that take away from them any risky action. Systems that suggest that you can buy your happy live buy buying insurances as if it were consumersgood. We forget that the happiness of people lies within their inner experiences. At the same time we need now strong characters, we know the context that engulfe us now. Probably we need to create again meaningfull context in which we make ourselves stronger. We cannot do this on our own. Just like animals stick togther to beat external natural dangers, we should stick together to beat our common internal dangers. Social contexts constrain you and at the same time give you the medium to evolve to a social character that gives and receives meaning from the fellow social characters. In the end we want recognition from other social characters, we want to be seen by other eyes, we want to be respected. The funny thing with consumersgood satisfaction is that it is fundamentally a yearning for recognition and a way to mimetise the ideal character.
We have to rethink our money driven system as opposed to the traditional value system. Probably we have to integrate again traditions in our public life. Traditions are treasures of community wisdom, that is why we can make new traditions. Designed traditions should entail industrial and consumers values, it should put people in risky human horizons.
We can put education, governmental health and jusitice and safety aside as contraproductive system buttons; we have to design a society around personal growth . Put learning, good life and responability in a model of honour and proud.
Yes Africa has maybe something to offer in this aspect.