Freedom and Citizenship

Something I've been thinking about lately is the different kinds of freedom, freedom in the most abstract sense: freedom "to" and freedom "from." By freedom "to," I mean those freedoms we as Americans cherish the most, which are children freedoms from the ancestor freedom, the freedom "to [do what we want]." This is an extremely valuable freedom to have, for it makes many more necessary freedoms possible in society: those freedoms pertaining to the individual's rights as an individual and the individual's rights as a citizen. However, this freedom has eclipsed the other freedom, the freedom "from," and the subsequent effects on Western civilization have been extremely destructive.

Freedom "from" is the kind of freedom we experience when things have been denied to us, namely, options pertaining to life decisions. Now any obstruction of our freedom "to [do what we want]" immediately engenders immense opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. The idea that we can do what we want when we want has been so thoroughly engrained in Western society that we, from time to time, witness random and explosive violence on a grand scale, the primary means of malcontents expressing themselves. From what I have read, it appears the recent situation in England is such an example of this.

Tell an American that freedom "from [unwise options], [a destructive outcome], [generally immoral and unacceptable behavior]" is both valuable and possible in society, you might experience such a manifestation of random and explosive violence I have mentioned, though only on a small scale (if you are lucky). The whole concept of someone else knowing what may be best in your life is unacceptable to a vast portion of Americans. What is the root of this? Have we always been like this? Indeed, the root comes from our early history as Americans: through the American Independence, witnessed in the work of Crevecoeur, and increasing in scope and power up to our time. The root of this springs from American Individualism, and enough work has been done on the topic that I find it expedient not to rehash what has already been stated by more enlightened and educated minds.

However, I will say that this Individualism, through our few centuries as a people, has grown up in the hearts and minds of many of us to deny the power of authority. Now, the ways this hate of authority has manifested itself comes from our essential obsession with the keeping out of tyrants, or those who would force their will on the people. Early on, this was a good and proper obsession. The principles outlined in our founding documents call for a system of governance that does not push the citizen down, but lifts him up. Yes, he has been lifted up. He has been lifted up past that which was good, quite some time ago.  He has been lifted up past the respect for freedom "from," because his entire worldview is centered on freedom "to." He has become so Individualistic that he no longer accepts even the highest authority, the authority of God.

This, however, is not without precedent. No matter whether you believe in Creationism/Intelligent Design, Evolution, or Progressive Evolution, and still call yourself a Christian, you probably believe in the Fall of mankind, when humanity denied the authority of their Creator, and instead accepted their own authority as solely legitimate. Whether it was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden or early humans in the horn of Africa, the outcome is the same. Freedom "to" eclipsed freedom "from." I am not saying that the latter must have control over the former; rather, I think emphasis must be put on the latter, while the former is kept in a cherished place. It is only when the Self thinks it has power over its God and over its people's laws that freedom "to" gets out of hand.

However, since the founding of our nation, our nation's laws have been formed around the freedom "to [do whatever we want]," and this has had disastrous consequences. What once was the murmur of mob rule has certainly become mob rule. Somehow, my compatriots have it in their minds that "when two or more of them are gathered together," the spirit of Democracy descends upon them and blesses their actions and decisions. I do not think this is so. Just because they have strength in numbers, veering from moral bounds, does not mean they have legitimate authority. A restriction of action in freedom "from [from the ill consequences of immoral decisions]" only appears as an encroachment upon their freedom "to [do whatever they see fit for themselves, because its their life, their decision, and their prerogative]."

When our Constitution does not leave any room for the protection of freedom "to," and only seeks to spread the superiority of freedom "to [do what we want, because this is a free country, dammit]," we who believe there is a Natural Law in the world that restricts our behavior for our own good, and out of reverence for our Creator who gave us this Law, must make a decision: do we simply watch as our country slides deeper and deeper into acceptance of murder and a host of immoral behaviors, or do we seek to change things for the good of the citizens of this great country? Certainly we must pray. We must pray for the welfare of our people and for their salvation.

Either we change our Constitution or we refuse it. If things get worse, we have no option but to. The Church will have its own say when things get worse. I'm not sure what that will look like, but I'm sure things cannot continue this way without the itch getting too itchy to not scratch. My preference would be that the Constitution be changed. Of course, that would not be possible at the time being.
I'm sure the only two ways the Constitution could be changed would be firstly via a radical cultural change (which could happen, though it seems unlikely), and secondly via the installation of a great authority to lead our people. Authority is the backbone of freedom "from," and only authority will bring us back to sanity. I don't know how this authority could manifest itself. Seeing how little we knew about our current president before he was elected, who knows what kind of person could be elected president in the future? 

Newness

     The last six months have been all of newness. Firstly, I need to rescind things I have written in past posts that contradict my current beliefs. I won't point them out individually, but they must be viewed with a grain of salt. When I wrote every post on this blog antecedent to this one, I was in a place of oscillating confusion, doubt, anger, and fear. I didn't have a solid belief structure to hold my mind together. Because of this, my mind was free to wander to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. I will not erase my past posts, and the various elements of my thoughts that I now find to be to a degree unwise and also to a degree heretical.
     Following my return home from Cheltenham, England, I knew I wanted to be a Christian. I had doubted it before, even encapsulating much of 2010, but following a full day spent in prayer and study the Sunday before my Wednesday flight home, I was decided. I entered into my last semester at Malone this past January still seeking which church would be most profitable to my significantly-less-visible-than-a-mustard-seed-faith. I nearly lost hope by March. But by late February/early March I felt inside me the desire to give something a second chance- the Orthodox Church. I had gone in February 2010 to a Divine Liturgy (Sunday morning service) but didn't like it. In fact, my going then may have contributed to the general "beef" I had against Christianity altogether and harbored for another nine months. The point is that I felt I needed to go again. To make a short story long, I went with some friends who hadn't given up on me the whole time, and at this point I am about to become a Catechumen, essentially I'm in about a week going to be formally entering the Church, as the process usually takes some time.
     What I was initially drawn to was the spirit of worship at the church I have been attending- Holy Assumption Orthodox Church. The reverence is astounding- I can, as I have never been able to do, regularly feel the presence of God in the chanting and litany. I would have scoffed at such a statement only half a year ago. Becoming Orthodox from a Protestant upbringing isn't as much denying what you used to believe as it is supplementing it. "Adding" of course bears the completely wrong connotations: the reason I avoided the word. My past understanding of God and of my responsibility as a Christian has been "fattened up," as it were; I have been delighted to discover the wealth of wisdom found in writers from the earliest days of the Church. In my period of doubt, I would have scoffed at those same writers, and I'm sure in a journal entry at some point I wrote that now that we have such a better understanding of the universe and the anthropological and psychological and sociological (at this point you can add any number of adjectives that fit) inter-workings of the human race that those past writers' work has become null and void. Essentially, I thought that in the face of Post-Modernism, nothing of worth could be grasped from the Pre-Moderns. Now, however, my perspective is leaning the other way. More of that to come.

Home, Christmas, Headaches

I've been waking up with headaches fairly often this past week. I've been attacked with continual waves of zits. Must be stress. I still have 5 papers waiting to get done for my classes in England, though I've been home for a week and a half. I'm going to go to Camp Gideon today for a day or two to write my next short story, though I have a feeling this one will be longer. It will encompass everything.
I've been building its structure in my mind for about four months, though I've only been really focusing on it for about three weeks. I think it will be my best work yet. No, I know so. I just need to get away from society to write it. I was so isolated in England for so long that being thrust back into American culture and everything that used to be familiar has changed my perspective on those very things.
This story will be a testament to change, change forced upon us.

Last few hours in England

Well its midnight, and our taxi will hopefully pick us up at around 1:45am to take us to the coach station. Then to Heathrow and then home.
Its really odd having only a little time left before I leave. At one point, going home felt like it was years away. Now its only a few hours away.
Coming home will be accompanied by changes. Lots and lots of them, and I've never really been big on change. So it should be interesting, to say the least.
Anyways, I'll gladly take all the change that's coming just so I can have home-cooked meals. Beats cereal, apples, and hummus every day.

E+87

If you haven't caught the number thing, this is my 87th day in England. A week from now, I'll be on a plane across the Atlantic, if everything works out. I did a lot of packing yesterday, about an hour and a half's worth. I figure the more packing I get done this weekend, the more I can concentrate on finishing up papers this coming week, so I don't have to do them in Ohio, as they aren't due until January.
Its very strange to be packing. But as I remember, it took me well over a week to pack for the way over, so I may as well take my time for packing for coming home.
So I haven't done much else, other than write papers and read. Read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse last week, and I'm about halfway through A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. I'm really interested to see where Lewis takes his argument, because in this book there is not the structures rationalist thought, but a broken man yelling at God, entertaining views of God as the Comic Sadist, questioning not his belief in God, but his view of God as a loving and essential good being. In both of these fantastic works, or at least in the former and what I've read in the latter, they struggle with the nature of the divine being, but are forced to recognize that there is no way to know. However, just because there is no way to know why God lets certain terrible things happen to humanity, and because God can never be understood, that does not mean that (or from what I personally believe and am drawing from the mentioned books) the only way to God is a leap of faith: I think too many Christians are too emphatic on faith, faith, faith- I know faith is important, but I don't think God would have given us these brains if we couldn't use them and explore the nature of being and of God. I think a leap of faith is part of it, but try to imagine this image: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when he has to take his leap of faith to find the Holy Grail, over a bottomless chasm. Then, when he does, a bridge appears. Now imagine that instead of taking that step, Dr. Jones had put a little more thought and effort into his decision- he had read through the Bible, talked with people much more wise than he, read the works of holy people- he would have been able to build stones across to form part of his bridge. Keep the physics out of it. He builds a bridge across. Each stone is a different thing he has learned about God, such as trusting God, believing in God, the nature of prayer, faith, salvation, unchanging divine beneficence, until he gets to the keystone, the one that holds it all together. That could be his leap of faith.
Anyways, I'm excited to go home. I miss it. Readjusting should be interesting. But at least I won't have jokers pounding their rap music at 2am like last night. I hope.

E+82

Finished my two large papers of the end of the semester last night. Only have a handful of really small papers left. Doing some reading. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. Planning some Henry James after that. Short works. Haven't done much creative writing of my own for the past week or two, other than a really dumb story wrote last monday. I feel like I've exhausted all my ideas, but I know that's never possible.
Anyways, less than two weeks left in England. Coming home the 18th. Wow, that's only 12 days. At one point it felt like home was a year away. I am ready to come home. I think when I get home I'll stay in my room for a week and sleep all day in my bed that doesn't have awful springs poking into my back like the one here. I've gotten used to the springs. Listening to Bon Iver.
It's an exceptionally foggy day in Cheltenham. Maybe I'll just sleep all day.

E+74

Only 20 days until I come home to Canton Ohio. Now that my England trip is finishing up, I'm motivated to look back over the past ten weeks. The past few days I've been doing lots of that, actually. Haven't been getting too much school work done, and goodness knows I have enough to do.
Although this semester has been somewhat lonely in my little room, if I could do it over again I would definitely come to England again. The curiosity of what I would have encountered and learned would have been too great to stay home. Now I know. I know what it is to be in a new situation with new people and a new milieu. I know what it's like to be disconnected from my life in Canton. I've had so much time to delve into my own mind and my own thoughts, and transform those discoveries into creative ore.
I've encountered so many new things in the worlds of art, philosophy, theology, literature, music, and history, to name a few. I've been getting into Russian classical composers more this semester than ever before. I've also learned how important peace and quiet can be for relaxed study and contemplation. In that respect, I dearly miss the quiet of my own space at home.