Freedom is an inconvenience
The human body in order to survive needs to be fed by the kind of nutrients it craves to survive. We starve it of these nutrients it will die.
It needs to be remembered corporations, banks, rentiers the state need the nutrients that we supply in abundance to them, or they to will die.
Healthy human bodies can not develop on a diet of baby food, Neither can developing minds function on pre-digested junk news, junk politics. But this is what is fed to the general public through a whole variety of medium each day and we just keep swallowing it. Because it's convenient and easy to digest.
Unfortunately folk don't like being inconvenienced and taken away from their passions, obsessions, addictions and such like, even when they know they are doing harm and the effect of their inaction may have on future generations. Because it is to inconvenient to act.
Freedom is like a growing child an inconvenience we gladly accept. If freedom is to mean anything it needs to be nurtured, cared about and watched after like a growing child.
The economic systems we live under and are controlled by is the equivalent of junk food, junk economics. Political policies are more junk food. We need to starve the banks of the nutrients that keep them alive and spend them in our communities.
Perhaps the most concerning factor in all of this is the saviour mentality, the someone else will fix it. Someone up there is looking out for us. Someone in government will not allow bad things to happen. This is nonsense. Has never happened before and has less chance of happening now than it ever has.
We also can not "social entrepreneur" our way out of poverty with eloquent speakers or the right-thinking charismatic individual with the right business plan and no power. No matter how much they know and how much research has been done. This is more nonsense.
The inconvenient truth is, it is the complete opposite of the history of movements. Only when the poor and disenfranchised become fully engaged and have a roll in affecting the problems that afflict them do they benefit from any beneficial change. Change that should be good enough that we all are able to share in.
The radical imagination works here at the grass roots. You can join us by walking out of your front door into any community where you will find it in abundance.
Philosophy and the unexplored avenues of Scottish culture
“Countries should determine their own existence and Scotland is a country. The decision is not managerial. It belongs to the people of Scotland. We are the country. There are no countries on Mars. This is because there are no people on Mars. How we move ahead here in Scotland is a process that can happen only when the present chains are disassembled, and discarded, when the majority people seize the right, and burden, of self determination… …It is patently absurd that the majority people should expect solidarity from the ruling elite and upper classes. In Scotland there is no justification for such a hope let alone expectation… …The British State has sought to deny the right to self determination consistently over the past few hundred years in Africa, the Americas, Ireland, the Indian Sub-continent, South East Asia or Australiasia. The State has used every argument it can to cling onto power and when necessary applied the requisite dirty tricks, and finally moved in the army to achieve their objective, at whatever cost, including the slaughter of innocents… …Imperialists and colonisers lay down the judgment that there is no ‘right’ of self determination. But that judgment has no place in the 21st Century. The right to self determination inheres in every adult human being and distinguishes us from animals, mammals, birds, fowls or fish. No one grants us this right. It is not allowed to us by a benign authority. People exercise the right. It can only be denied to us, as it is denied to the vast majority of the world’s population… …We are talking about freedom. We exercise freedom. If freedom be denied us we seize it as our right. No one gives us our freedom. We take it. If it is denied us we continue to take it. We have no choice. If it is taken from us and we allow it to be taken from us then we are colluding in our own subjection.” Jim Kelman