Independence Day.

It is the 4th of July — Independence Day.
_{^{What does that even mean?}}
“Freedom isn’t free!”
_{Come again?}
FREEDOM ISN’T FREE!!!
^{Is that a koan?}… isn’t the point of…
(… there I go being all literal again.)

But it begs the question¹:

What does “Independence” truly mean?

To be free? Liberty?
From what?
^Tyranny? _^Caprice? _Avarice?
For what?
Freedom?

If freedom is contingent… _{I give up.}

It’s an American tendency:
Fetishize an impossible concept.
Paint a layer of white & blue on that red herring.

Look at me getting all political on America’s birthday.

Interesting that, as a culture, we associate our birth with independence on the civic level, yet not in other cultural frames.

For example, I was born on a Friday almost half a century ago. On that day, while I may have been born, I was not independent. One could argue there hasn’t been a day of my life that I haven’t depended on someone or something (funny how everything, even in something, becomes someone).

FREEDOM! IT’S A FREE COUNTRY!
All of this, true.
Independent?
What does it mean to be independent?

I live at the friction point between the will to be my true self and the longing to be a part of a group.
I like to think that the sparks generated at that tenuously imperfect junction are the essence of humanity.
We are blessed with an ineffable need to express and understand ourselves and each other.
While balancing that with the needs to survive through the cooperative support of the group.

Growing up, I realized that while it may be nice if the world treated me as if I were its fulcrum, that’s not how life works.
Not if you’re an empathetic human being.
You realize that true freedom comes in choosing what and to whom you surrender.
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains, said Rousseau.
But we choose some of these chains. The social contract binds as it liberates.

Perhaps America’s original sin is an inherited condition, encoded in her very DNA.
America, the beautiful. America, the land of opportunity, cooperation, and community. This is America’s anima.
Then there’s America, the strong, the powerful, ruggedly individual, land of the free. This is America’s animus.
And from these disparate gametes gestate these United States of Contradictions, a confederacy of sovereign governments, a Venn diagram of infinite nuance and depth.
Some look to serve.
Most strive to rule.

The short-sighted may see themselves as alphas.
Force their way to the top of the mountain.
Only to fall prey when the energy required to maintain position is no longer available.
It reminds me of the concept behind Highlander. It was a sci-fi film in the 1980s wherein a race of immortal warriors believed there can be only one. They could only be killed by another member of their race and were driven to be the last one standing. Thus, they were in a constant state of competition where even the closest friendships were tenuous.²
I remember feeling similarly torn apart over collabs in American Idol.

But therein lies the folly in seeing relationships as transactional. When people are merely resources, a means to an end, you realize that those things in life that you thought were luxuries were merely the emergent energetic manifestation of all those people, the whole that is exponentially greater than the sum. And people doing things together, following the genetic programming that propelled us to the supposed “top” of the animal kingdom³, that is the ineffable force that animates mere matter.

I wonder, for some, what it must be like. To be standing at the very edge of what you think is the apex of existence… only to have the diminishing angles constrict you into an acute singularity…
…Only then do they realize there was a deeper well… it just required more time, more focus, more love… but once you taste its waters…

It’s as simple as turning away from that narrowing corner of solitude toward the infinitely opening vista of existence.
They both exist.
Turning away from one doesn’t negate the other.
In fact,
Both are there for us. Always.

Maybe it’s all about self-determination.
But even then, the very notion of SELF depends on other.

It’s all red wheel
barrows glazed
in rainwater,
beside the white chickens
and there’s nobody here
but us chickens.

I can’t help but see the macro in the micro and the versa of the vice.
America celebrates a fairy tale.

We are born dependent.
We will die dependent.
The space between
depends on how
much we fight
or embrace
that notion.

1. Full disclozsche, I don’t know if it begs the question. I don’t even know what it is and why it would beg to ask this, or any, question. ↩︎
2. Although on reflection, I don’t see why the protagonist couldn’t just be like, “nah, there can actually be more than one.” Probably some plot point I’m forgetting. Also would have been a shorter movie.
   
   Don’t get me started on the sequels. ↩︎
3. Of course we’re the “top.” We created the damn hierarchy.
   
   
   
   You know, crows, somewhere in one of their secret roosts, have a much different perspective. ↩︎