[Oe List ...] Jaime on "The human choice to be" on ST Friday

[via OE]

The human choice tobe


 
We quoted Kris Kristofferson's words wailed by Janis Joplinpreviously: "Freedom is just another word for nothing else to lose,"a typical Teutonic starting point of the "nothing" perspective.  Shakespeare in Hamlet offers the choice: "to be or not to be".  It finally does not matter where one beginsor ends.  "No-thing" is acreation of the mind, a psychological apparition; "to be" is concreteand material.
 
Lovers tend to count the petals of a flower: "She lovesme, she loves me not."  Or, inprivate, she does the opposite.  "Not"is a leftover of a previous era of idealism, set against an "ought",an ideal, rather than congruent to what is, the real.
 
In our time, the preoccupation is with the facticity of "beingand becoming" brought about by the scientific understanding that existencerequires both narratives of "substance and process".  Nature is seen as both "matter and force,atomic and energy fields." 
 
Political discourse in a previous generation was about"freedom from", understood as liberation from an external strangleholdbut reflective of an internal desire to be, like the call for liberation fromUncle Sam's military cuddle, or from ISIS cutthroat methods.  "Freedom to" longs to create andinnovate one's path and direction.  I'vecalled that the "wellness unto life"!
 
It is in this last sense that we take freedom to be a humanchoice, a banner for being and becoming, a step further than just be liberatedfrom social limits imposed by the accidents of birth.  "Liberation from" in historicaltelling is usually accompanied by social upheavals told through a loudnarrative, thus, more noticeable, compared to the muted and personal manner thatbeing-and-becoming touches when it hits our soul and the apex of atransformative shift.
 
This may be too abstract for many who still chase identitiesaway from, or dictated by, societal prescriptions, like those in ourgeo-neighborhood not yet free until they determine the terms of hosting a USAir Base.  Freedom embraces the facticityof one's life now, bound by the genesis and terminus of unique cellular life ina specific place, at a particular time, with chosen roles to play, and moreimportantly, of taking the option to relate and demonstrate the substance andprocess of one's existence in all its concrete uniqueness and glory.  Uncle Sam does not determine ourfreedom.  We do.  Nor does Tokyo do Okinawa's. Ryukyans do!
 
In a culture that puts a premium on personal relationship ratherthan ideology (Mao guarded power personal relations, accused of encouraging apersonality cult in his later years), keeping one's public "face"unblemished before others is an artform. Today, it means that the 3G smartphone has the whole of China talking inthe train and on the bus, in the plain and on the plateau, by the river and onthe hill, walking on the road and on sidewalks, even vehicle drivers whiledriving!
 
The human choice is no longer just negating the forceful andcoercive dictates and influence of others. It is taking available assets and plotting out a direction totally ofone's choosing.  In China, that means personalconnection to influence decisions on the financial health of one's householdand kin. 
 
China goes after abusive powers and unexplained wealth.  Bo Xilai, former mayor of nationallyadministered municipality of Chongqing (the others are Beijing, Tianjin andShanghai), and a charismatic member of the politburo, was caught abusing powerby covering up for his wife's murder of a British colleague.  His high profile case, the first judicialproceeding to go on public display, signaled what was thought to be just asymbolic gesture to pacify drooling laptops and media lapdogs; it turned out tobe the new SOP.
 
Xi Jinping drums up the democratic and egalitarian elementsof the China Dream, the CPC on anti-corruption measures, and the bounds of the ruleof law, with equal force.  The three lociof power in China are the military, energy, and finances.  To date, he took down top heads of themilitary and the energy field.  He's gotfinance next even if the current head is protected (might even go down withhim) by no less than former President Jiang Zemin.
 
After orchestrating the conduct and content to APEC 2014, PMLi Keqiang took off for the ASEAN gathering in Myanmar while President XiJinping went to the G20 in Australia, drumming up the civilizational refrainreflected in a peoples' style and profound national understanding of the middle"kingdom" of Zhongguo, of always maintaining a balance of differingforces in partnership and cooperation.
 
We use China in our narrative but we refer to all humans inthe planet, regardless of the circumstances of social milieu.  We are born free.  It is the exercise of freedom that makes ushuman.  The choice "to be" isnot about being safe and secure on top; it is about having the courage to expend one'sbeing away, investing it with care so others may also be free to be.  The option to choose is human.


j'aime la vie

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!




    
             
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