Types of Freedom

“Oh yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but the time will come when, from the depths of our despair, we shall rise up once again in joy, without which man cannot survive and God cannot exist, for joy comes from God and is His greatest gift.”

Dmitry Karamazov, in Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

In Brothers Karamazov one of the key protagonists, Dmitry Karamazov, finds he is well prepared for his likely sentence to Siberia because of the internal freedom given to him by faith.  During the years of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe Orthodox priests in solitary confinement were amazingly able to transform solitary confinement into a spiritual journey.

In his recently published book The Cunning of Freedom:  Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols, Polish academic, political philosopher and politician, Ryszard Legutko wrote about the inner freedom of authenticity, the positive freedom of the virtues and the negative freedom of the liberal.  Inner freedom is the ancient and classical freedom of metaphysical man, homo metaphysicus:

“Metaphysical man is driven by the pervasive conviction that the goal of his existence transcends physical and societal limitation and though beyond his immediate grasp, it will determine his destiny.  Even the miseries that result from his finite nature, the failures, the fragility of life, the fear of death, point in this direction.”

Legutko therefore identifies three forms of freedom in European thought, first negative liberty – the dominant one of our contemporary era is the freedom from controls and restrictions.  Positive liberty is about the freedom to live consequent upon the virtuous life, so that a man is free insofar as he achieves his telos of virtue and is no longer enslaved to his passions.  Thirdly is the inner freedom of authenticity.  The last two freedoms are closely related, while the positive freedom achieved through virtuous living is in tension with the liberal idea of freedom, which in effect enslaves us to our passions.

If we were to live in a world different from our own, where the cultural idea of freedom were positive rather than negative, then the inner authenticity of the person would also be strengthened.  The liberal man, who is free to live his life as an individual following the drives of his passions is likely to be unable to withstand the situation where his appetites are unsatisfied and he must instead endure suffering.  Because his freedom has meant nothing more than following his passions or appetites, when the liberal is threatened with the totalitarian state he will discover he does not have the inner resources of the inner freedom that positive liberty, with its emphasis on freedom through the virtues nurtures.

Yet as with Dostoevsky’s Dmitry Karamazov, a character distinctly lacking in virtue, inner freedom is still attainable directly through faith and then comes virtue afterwards.  Instead of living virtuously authenticity of the inner life could just as easily be the result of a shock or a crisis.  Such a situation often occurs when one has lived according to one’s passions selfishly for too long and life takes a terrible turn in consequence.  To survive inwardly though still requires an underlying faith in something greater than oneself, even if one has avoided participating in that until the great shock or crisis comes.  The liberal does not believe in anything greater than himself or his own choices.

The strength of character and virtues resulting from the positive liberty of virtue ethics will always defend the person when his temporal benefits and distractions are removed, as Boethius discovered many centuries ago.  It is at that point, the point of arrest and the GULAG that one will know whether one’s freedom was merely of the negative type - that freedom of liberal ideology, mere individualism, or the true freedom of the metaphysical man.

When we reduce the situation to its extreme the concept of inner freedom based on a vertical spiritual participation versus the negative freedom of the liberal to follow his animalistic or even unnatural appetites is revealed.  The liberal will be far more vulnerable and have no inner depth, if he only lives for his passions.  The man whose freedom is about participation vertically in the higher realm will survive, as has been evidenced by the men who survived the prison camps of the Twentieth Century, such as Viktor Frankl.  Those who were not metaphysical men, such as Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn survived by becoming such during the shock of their imprisonment and from their encounters with imprisoned Orthodox Christians.

This reveals which freedom is true and which is actually a sham and no more than a form of enslavement to the things of the world.  It also has some worrying implications.  We celebrate liberal freedom in the West with our consumerist society that encourages all types of irresponsibility and sexual deviance as freedom.  And yet when deprived of our things, our fetishes, our appetites are we still really free?  The man living in Stalinist Russia, with few of our choices, survived through the strength of inner freedom.  It is a disconcerting thought that brutal oppression rather than the free society might create an inner freedom.  Is it any wonder that Christianity today flourishes in Russia and is in decline in the West full of things and opportunities to focus us on our passions?

It would be helpful to remember the etymology of passion, linked as it is to the Greek word for passivity.  When we are driven by our passions something has control of us other than ourselves.  Through attainment of the virtues we are freed from our passions.  Passions being indulged are not evidence of freedom, as the liberal believes, but slavery.  Living the liberal life denies the possibility of transformation through transfiguration.  On the other hand not only the virtuous man, but the prodigal son recognises the higher freedom.

The free man is the one who has the inner strength through faith to look hard labour in Siberia steadfastly in the eye and still he will remain joyful. 

As Dmitry Karamazov exults the day before his trial in the novel:

“If they drive God off the face of the earth, we shall welcome Him down below!  It is impossible for a convict to be without God, even more impossible than for someone who is not a convict!  And then the time will come to pass when we, the underground people, will join in a solemn hymn to God, who is the source of joy!  Praise the Lord and His joy!  I love Him!”

It ain’t over until the woke lady sings – The Battle of the Proms

 

Over the years the conductors and the BBC itself have become increasingly uncomfortable with the popular and patriotic music of the Last Night of the Proms.  For that one night only, the British are allowed to take pride in their nation and celebrate who they are and where they are from.  The woke British Broadcasting Corporation dislikes anything that celebrates Britishness, dominated as it is by the contrary woke-ideology that encourages the validation of disparate identities at the expense of the mainstream population.

Fearful of a head-on confrontation with the British public, up until now the Beeb has attempted to subvert the Proms from within.  It has selected lesbian conductors and sopranos and tried to turn a celebration of Britishness into a celebration of woke British values.  Instead of that which has traditionally been understood as Britishness – rooted in a Christian society that values virtues such as stoicism, courage and martial valour – the non-values of Sodom and Gomorrah are celebrated.  This Trojan Horse strategy of subverting patriotism from within, so that to wave the Union Jack means you also support the waving of the LGBTQ + rainbow flag, is very clever.  Meanwhile across the world our political class promotes values inimical to traditional society and calls this disastrous identity politics “British values”.

People are naturally patriotic and particularly on a party night like Last Night of the Proms they are easily susceptible to having a nefarious agenda slipped past them.  No one wants to be a party pooper.  The BBC’s Last Night of the Proms therefore got away with portraying Britishness as wokeness.

Nonetheless wokeness cannot hide its true colours.  It is not about unity or tradition, it is by definition hostile to what holds us together.  Wokeness is about creating disparate identities that define people as small and “oppressed” groups, downplaying and denying what unites them with their countrymen.  This is the corrosive and poisonous dogma of intersectionality.  It makes the marginal the mainstream at the expense of tradition and shared culture.  This is why the woke are sympathetic to the promotion of traditional Islam and feminism – seemingly contradictory ideologies.  This is not a contradiction if your overarching ideology is actually about destroying the mainstream culture and eradicating tradition.  Contradictory perspectives and ideologies are equally worthwhile of promotion if you wish to destroy Christian society.

Now there is not that much explicitly Christian about Last Night of the Proms (apart from Jerusalem).  Rule Britannia is from the Seven Years War when our Protestant identity was far stronger.  Land of Hope and Glory being Edwardian is more from the zenith or peak of British imperialism when perhaps more Masonic and Deist ideas were in the ascendancy, but the composer himself was a Roman Catholic.  Nonetheless patriotism more than faith is what is celebrated, albeit with references to God natural to a Christian society.  The reason these pieces of music are a target is they support a coherent national identity and that national identity because of our culture and history is linked to being a Christian country.

Subversion by the BBC had been working and was powerfully symbolised in last year’s last night, with both EU and Rainbow flags being unfurled and waved.  Particularly symbolic was the choice made of the soprano for Rule Britannia.  A rather large bisexual or lesbian American was selected who unfurled not a Union Jack, but a Rainbow flag.  She also sang the innocent children’s song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with strong hints of sexualisation.  It really was decadent degeneracy.  In a free society people can follow their sexual leanings, but in a decent society one does not advertise that as an integral part of one’s identity, particularly for a national celebration meant for everyone such as the Proms.  Claiming to be inclusive this behaviour is really exclusive of most of us, who really do not need to know about someone’s preferences and passions in the bedroom . . .

The contrast seemed even more powerful because the beautiful Tartar soprano Aida Garifullina was outside in the park also singing Rule Britannia, as though the mainstream and the traditional ideas of beauty were banished to the outside, while the margin had moved into the centre.  Orthodox Youtuber Jonathan Pageau has talked extensively about the topsy turvy way the woke agenda places the marginal in the centre at the expense of the traditional and normative.

This rendition of Rule Britannia by the woke lesbian Jamie Barton was the very peak of the Trojan Horse strategy.  She was able to ride the patriotic cheers as though they were actually cheers for what she was inclined to do in her private bedroom (a fact she was all too keen to make public).

This strategy that was working now seems to have been abandoned.  Covid 19 has changed the strategy.  Just as we had to witness unrepresentative BLM demonstrators destroying the monuments of our history and identity so the newly appointed Proms conductor from Finland, Dalia Stasevska, sees Covid and our virtual house arrest as an opportunity to “sanitise” the Proms of our patriotic songs.  This really is sneaky, because just like the BLM demonstrators, the conductress feels she can make this move as the audience will not be there.  It is though a strategic blunder.

This move, to delete patriotic songs, just proves wokeness and patriotism are not compatible.  For the former is about minority identities at the expense of cohesion and the latter brings us all together.   Wokeness, let us be clear, is not simply about tolerance, but promotion of the abnormal, the irregular and the marginal at the expense of the traditional.  Its whole narrative thrives on painting history and shared identity as oppressive of minorities who are of more importance than the majority.  So it was never really true that British values could be woke values.

Britain is a tolerant country, but tolerance is not the same as active promotion of the marginal.  Britain has a history we are proud of that has allowed a space for the margin, but has not attacked the mainstream tradition.  It is a history based on the recognition the mainstream does not need to oppress the margin.  Wokeness, with its cultural Marxist philosophy cannot accept tolerance, because really its programme is all about revolution.  It aims to overturn the normative and will utilise disparate groups and interests to do that.  As with all revolutions it is not promoted by the ordinary working class, but by a narrow group of privileged intellectuals who do not share the concerns of normal people.  Sadly this narrow group dominates in fields like the media, especially the BBC.

What will now happen is that the ordinary public, Sir Henry Wood’s key audience, who so love the Proms will react and no longer accept the woke propaganda, being revealed for what it is and what it is hostile towards.  Thus if the proposal goes ahead, the Proms would become a narrow world for the self-important woke and privileged.  Patriotic music is so often a way into the world of classical music for those not fortunate enough to have been educated through the private system and university (where nowadays you seem to learn to sneer at tradition).  The Brexit voters are the descendants of Sir Henry Wood’s target audience. 

The BBC might see its legitimacy at stake, when the unpopularity of the proposal becomes clear.  Most likely a “compromise” will be found in a dispute that never was other than in the inflamed imaginations of the privileged media class, so the songs will remain, but sanitised and made bland.  Nonetheless, what has happened is a major error.  The woke, having wormed their way into British life have now clearly cast their ideology as the opponent of patriotism.  We can now hope that when the woke soprano sang, it was the swansong of using patriotism as a mask for the woke agenda.

Trafalgar Night reminds us . . .

When a parliamentary candidate the blogger was pleased to partake in the local Conservative Association’s annual Trafalgar Night dinner.  It is understandable that Plymouth Conservatives in particular should want to keep alive the immortal memory.  In Plymouth the memory of our Naval history is very strong.

Admiral Horatio Nelson’s defeat of the Franco-Spanish fleet was a story both of superior Naval discipline and daring tactics.  Indeed the national celebrity that the one-eyed, one-armed admiral was becoming had a history of daring risk taking and ignoring orders since his teenage years as a midshipman when he allegedly attempted to hunt a polar bear.

The Royal Navy’s victory at Trafalgar, which confirmed Great Britain as the supreme naval power in the world, was part of a pattern and should remind us of that pattern.  Throughout history it has generally been the free societies that have won wars.  Whether it be the Ancient Greeks defeating the despotic Persian Empire or the British defeating Napoleon’s republican empire, the free polities win.  It seems generally societies less militaristic and less organised defeat their more ruthless and apparently more organised enemies.  In the early Nineteenth Century Great Britain, an old and free country governed by unplanned institutions that had evolved almost accidentally, defeated republican and imperial France – organised and planned on a war footing, where the whole society was galvanised to achieve an overriding ideological goal. 

Whatever people might assume, chaotic democracies do better than centrally-planned regimes.  Often voices in democratic societies have asserted we need to become more like the planned societies of the East, whether it be the Soviet Union in the Cold War or the Persian Empire.  In fact, history and the empirical evidence teaches us that free countries survive their despotic opponents and they survive, this blogger believes, precisely because they are not restricted by planning.

Let the dictator in the bunker micro-manage the war and his own flawed and limited understanding will lead to disaster.  Whether it was Napoleon or Hitler, hubris led them to attack Russia too early.  Because they were dictatorships, there was no alternative view.  The centralised planning in those regimes eventually led to their downfall.

Much as centrally-planned economies lead to disasters, where thousands of toothbrushes might be delivered when there is an overwhelming need for bread or other ridiculous situations arise, so dictatorial regimes cannot adapt in the flexible way they need to, to survive.

True democracies can seem to be bickering and short-sighted places – one thinks of the recent crisis in the politics of the United States, with a dictatorial China looking on as American government shut down.  However, for all their bickering, free societies ensure an alternative view can be put, which might have been overlooked.  Free societies allow individuals who think in a different way from the norm to succeed and bring their genius to the situation. 

Trafalgar Night should remind us; there would have been no room for someone like Nelson in the regime of the Little Corsican – and that is precisely why we rather than France won!