It is a state of mind and being. Like energy it is neither created nor destroyed, instead it moves from one life to another. A prisoner can live free and a world leader can be trapped by circumstance. Freedom cannot be granted, it cannot be purchased, nor can it be exchanged, it must be realized and practiced.

Freedom is the motivation and ability to choose a path in a world of opportunity. Freedom is not tangled in the web of fears of our forefathers, it is ours to experience and reinvent today. Your fiscal debt and bank account may restrict your actions and affect your circumstances, but neither impacts your liberty. Never mind the money.

Cash and Choice

At the beginning of May I revisited the relationship between capital and freedom.

A moment of contemplation makes vividly clear the distinction between the pursuit of wealth, and directly nourishing that which we need, liberty

What I discovered while writing the oasis is that our society is incapable of granting freedom through wealth transfer. Freedom is not something communities are capable of redistributing to individuals. We must discover personal liberty independent of social income, only then may we live free as a society.

Frantically pursuing wealth without experiencing freedom, is a reinforcing social sickness

When we make the mistake of equating money with freedom, we propagate a lie that persists for generations. One does not imply or even correlate to the other beyond a minimal level of sustenance (ie abject poverty inhibits freedom). Ownership of vast fortunes and freedom are orthogonal states of existence, even though I have long mistaken one for the other.