Hemmed in by Freedom
“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’, honey, if it ain’t free, no no
Yeah, feelin’ good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues
You know feelin’ good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.”
— Kris Kristofferson, Me and Bobby McGee
I have experienced complete freedom twice in my life. Ironically, one experience involved profound lack of authority, and the other unlimited submission to it.
The first experience was at the tender ago of 18, when I set out to backpack around the world. Every possession I had was contained in a 70-pound pack — my house, my clothes, my tools, my finances. For most of that trip, I was utterly out of contact with any support network, and any attempt to contact anyone who gave a shit about my welfare involved a choice between eating and a heart-warming 3-minute call to safety. It was 1980, and a long-distance call required a reservation at a telegraph office in some god-forsaken two-goat village, and a meter above the phone displaying just exactly how much food I wasn’t going to get.
The second experience was as a Benedictine monk in deeply remote northern New Mexico. Here, the phone involved a radio connection to the Chama forestry service, who patched calls through to the landlines. Mail only went out or came in once a month, when the brothers made a two-day supply run into Santa Fe. In this case, I had no possessions, spent a year with
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.