RoR: Forum

"When you have robbed a man of everything, he is no longer in your power. He is free again."

Man is free. You can control him by brute force, robbing him, but when you, the oppressors, have robbed him of everything he fights to keep, you have no more means of controlling him, he will be free again, and you, the oppressors, will have failed - your goal is self-contradicting, you will fail.

There is an inherent contradiction in the "correct" interpretation here.

It is the words "free again". You all claim defiantly- you can rob me - but you can't control me, my spirit is still free.

Why would one then state that you are "free again"? If your spirit is free, regardless of material deprivation, then you are always free.

This is what originally got me thinking it was applauding Christian aesthetics. I am afraid that this quote here - isolated and out of context - is a poorly worded quote.

Post 21

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 3:30am

To be more explicit:

In the correct interpretation the definition of "free" is given two different definitions.

First is:

Someone is robbing you, therefore you are under their power, therefore you are not free. Being "free" therefore is being able to keep your things of value.

Second is:

Someone has robbed you, your things of value are gone, they have no power over you, your spirit is still free. Being "free" therefore is being able to hold onto your spirit.

You can't have it both ways.

Post 22

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 2:18pm

Marcus, the logic behind this quote isn't so confusing to me. Before you were systematically robbed, your spirit was free. While you were being robbed, your spirit was bound by worries and anxious efforts to hopelessly hang on to all that you could. Now that you are cleaned out, it is set free again. And you can purely devote yourself to destroying the robber, who benefited from your previous pacifism stemming from the unwillingness to risk what you had.

Freedom here is pyschological. Of course circumstances affect man's spirit. He still has ultimate control over it, however, and can always decide to forfeit ahead of time what threatens to chain him, and move to Galt's Gulch instead.

Alec

(Edited by Alec Mouhibian
on 8/09, 2:19pm)

Post 23

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 2:58pm

OK.

"Being free" is from a psychological point of view. Not just that, but it is a transitional type of "free". A change in mind-set. Freedom - to desperation - to "I don't give a fuck anymore what you do".

In the context of a person struggling against oppression, yes it would perhaps be uplifting to them (that's if they can still live properly).

However, the predicament of the person in general is not life-affirming at all.

Maybe with regards to this thread I am at the "I don't give a fuck anymore what you do" stage as well.

Damn it Mouhibian, you have no more power over me, my dignity is impugned! ;-)

Post 24

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 6:56pm

It's not only your dignity that I hold hostage, my boy, but your hair!

Anyway, I think it's silly to judge this quote by the life-affirmometer.

Post 25

Tuesday, August 9, 2005 - 7:50pm

Marcus,

It is not just a psychological point of view. But from our very nature as human, as the only creatures that can shape our environment to suit ourselves, as the only creatures that can plan decades in advance and carry out those plans. The inexorable will of man can accomplish whatever dreams can be imagined. That is real, as real as anything you can name.

The concept of freedom requires that we acknowledge our natures. For instance, the fact that we cannot fly as birds can fly does not make us less free. Our possessions can be taken away, therefore lack of possessions does not make us less free. Only a lack of understanding of our nature can make us less free.

Perhaps A.S. was suggesting that when we are stripped of all of the un-essentials do we begin to understand our true nature.

Our nature is as creators not of hoarders like squirrels.

I do apologize for provoking you. I follow your posts with interest mostly, I'm occasionally in a bad mood.

Post 26

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 - 3:33am