9ish AM
I just watched Alex Gibney’s Gonzo documentary about Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson has been one of my true heroes since early high school and I felt I owed it to him to see the last – or at least the most recent – study of his life.
It showed me very little which I did not already know about the man, but one great revelation did come from that over-edited ether:
That in a culture of law and commerce,
it is impossible to be both independent and free.
Most see independence and being an independent as the same game, but they are wrong. Not as wrong as those who see the pairing between the independent and freedom, but both parties are heavily stupid.
The Simple Truth is: Independence is no more than the word itself implies – a lack of dependence on anyone else. An Independent should therefore be this concept personified, a Jeffersonian animal, totally self-sufficient. But this is not the case.
An independent, in today’s culture, is someone who holds fast to beliefs more than to people. Someone willing to stand for a thought or a cause against the winds of disapproval and hatred, even if he or she must stand alone.
I have great respect for educated Independents, but they seldom, if ever, have any idea of how the world works beyond the broad strokes. And this is a great tragedy, for these dedicated and simple few are often our best fighters, wasted on causes they died for without leaving any impact.
Now FREEDOM is another matter entirely. Colonial freedom, as Mel Gibson once cried for and millions still kill for, is not human freedom. The freedom of a people fought for does not create free people.
This may sound convoluted and overly-didactic, but bear with me, for I will have a point eventually.
A free people work together to make their tiny world as good as it can be. They fight for one another, create laws to protect their own and choose who will enforce those laws so that no one may break the community. A free people is a unit, a collection of souls united in the belief that, together, they can be something better than they are apart.
A free people is a force to be reckoned with.
Not so “The Free.”
People who claim to be “Free,” who do whatever the fuck they want, are the least free people alive.
“The Free” as I shall call them, who live life entirely for themselves and no one else are never free, not in the true definition of the word. To be free is to owe nothing to anyone and be at peace with one’s place in the world, a unity that gives a person the limitless potential of a mind unhindered. Therefore, The Free, who do as they please, can never be free, for to act without a thought for consequences mandates that there be someone else who foolishly cares enough to follow behind and clean up the mess.
The Free who never take responsibility for themselves, let alone their actions, spend their lives running full speed ahead, pausing only to look back and spit on the very people who keep them fed and in shoes. The Free do not understand that a life spent covering ground does not leave a mark, nor does it create memories, but rather guarantees that the runner will eventually end up somewhere dark and strange, alone and tired.
The jails are full of The Free whose loved ones cut them loose and walked away to better lives. And no one but The Free blame them for walking away.
Only a very lucky few of these Free, hedonistic fools escape this world unhated, unbroken, unburned and unraped and only then because someone in power thought them necessary.
And ten million people out of ten million and one aren’t necessary.
The rest just die repentant.
I believe in insanity.
I believe in mayhem and the lewd
and the shocking
and I support all these things
because I believe they make us better people.
But I am not so foolish as to believe that
If I live my life
Entirely for myself
that anyone else will be there
or miss me
When I die.
Independence and freedom are two of the most perfect ideals of the modern time, but those who attempt to personify them miss the point. Ideals are meant to apply to humanity as a whole, not to people individually.
People can and should stand for ideals, but no man, no woman, will ever be big enough to personify one.
Until people understand this, we will continue to be a generation of the lost, scratching at the past we don’t remember in search of an identity we pray generations gone left buried and waiting behind.
Still, what more can we expect when these days the only people brave enough to stand for an ideal are also those stupid and egomaniacal enough to proclaim a dedicated belief in a word without understanding the definition.
Monday, March 30, 2009
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