ROBERTO A SAMSON, a Filipino-Italian living in Ireland, on why some of us work hard all day only to become immersed in a dubious kind of freedom when we return home in the evenings
Finally, the evening’s here! After a long day of complying with other people’s requests, we can again be in control of our own time.
Yet among the myriad opportunities offered by our free world, our choice often falls on the most uninspiring one: television. Even though sometimes our intention is to watch a particular show, we know how it usually ends; just wanting to see what’s offered on the channels we have decided not to watch, we end up seeing a lot of what we had originally discarded, and little of what we had chosen. And once we have made a choice, it’s very difficult not to think of what we have set aside.
Because in reality, we would like to have everything – or better, not give up anything. In our ‘special-offer’ society, we are plagued by the difficulty of choice. Austrian sociologist Peter Berger says that advanced modernity means the passage from a world of destiny to a world of choice. But in this brave new world, we don’t have the support and the orientation of the community to guide personal decisions anymore.
Without a common reference point, we feel insecure. What are the consequences of this?
We ‘are’ many things at the same time – switching back and forth, taking different positions depending on the situation. In a way, our conscience has also changed, for a lot of us like to have our fingers in many pies. It also makes some sense to multiply experiences and possibilities without ever following a clear direction for our lives.
This is the time for flexibility and temporary choices, for short-term decisions. “Love is eternal as long as it lasts”, as a recent movie tag-line goes. In the dictionary of our dominant culture, the word “forever” is conspicuous by its absence. That’s one reason why lifetime choices – from marriage to religious consecration – are considered foolish, eccentric, and absurdly restrictive in our free society.
The choice falls on what is less demanding: choirs, discos, common interest groups and other social gatherings are no places for deep discussions. When we are together, no politics please. Please do no talk about anything more serious than the weather. Something deeper would hinder other opportunities. Of course we would like to talk about other topics, but we need the time to do it, and the time is simply not there.
Before, our choices were dictated by ethics, and what we defined as good or bad. Now we have other guidelines – beautiful or not, profitable or not. We can still decide to do what is good, but this is becoming a mere choice alongside others. And many people in turn choose to live their lives only for what is beautiful or what provides them with more money. An example? We all agree the environment must be saved, and then we allow experiments on embryos, as if to say: ‘You can’t mess with forests, but you can mess with humans!’ The same evangelical ideal of love seems to appear more and more as an option for a small group, but not as the basis for our society.
What can we do? If, in the past, philosophers reflected on the existence of God, perhaps we should now reflect on the existence of man. We have to free ourselves from the lowbrow culture and pornography spreading on television programmes and other outlets. We have to stop to simply follow our emotions, with no choices to make, and go beyond our day-to-day feelings.
Freedom is not a remote control for surfing channels which offer more and more of the same fare. Freedom is the ability to discover horizons far wider and more exciting than our own limited dreams. This is why even when we have everything we want, we don’t feel happy.
Freedom is God’s most incredible gift. But in order to avail of this gift, we need to go back to the source – infinite love – because we need a great amount of freedom to render our own smaller freedom great.
