Only Ever Freedom - James Ellis

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The modern mindset and its consequences have been a disaster for man’s freedom. He unknowingly finds himself ceaselessly in a state of servitude to thousands of micro-masters, each coercing, compelling, and pressuring him into doing, buying, and acting in ways that are likely contrary to his genuine desires.

The abstraction that is ‘the modern world’ on the other hand, does seek to control, it does seek to tell one what to do, and it does so via that individual’s own reason, using them like a flesh-puppet. Covertly stripping out values of culture, family, tradition, heritage, and religion, and parasitically infecting them with modern rhetoric - the modern mindset - that declares itself true by virtue of its own logical form alone.

the contradiction this book seeks to tackle and uproot is this one - The modern world is collectively understood as an exemplary form of civilizational existence, and yet everyone is miserable.

Before going on I must make my position clear - I don’t primarily consider ‘modernity’ to have a connection with objects, material, and possessions. Modernity is an internal mindset, it is a materialistic parasite that seeps into the brain and quickly erodes basic understandings pertaining to liberty, freedom, individuality, principle, faith, belief, order, etiquette, and various other so-called (by modernity’s standards) outdated relics

Many of the objects which happen to exist within modernity have also existed within times that weren’t modern, and so it is only in our understanding of them that they become modern. I believe this to such an intense degree that I would even argue a computer can be used in a non-modern way, a smartphone can become alien to its habitat, and so-called ‘modern technology is simply technology that happens to exist within the era we define as modern.

In some sense, the collective agreement that such a thing as the ‘modern world’ exists, has in turn developed a sort of autonomous psychic entity which we all refer back to when making our choices. That is to say, we all unconsciously make ‘modern’ choices, but have no anchored reference to what modernity actually is - its existence is thus materially elusive, and psychically invasive.

The Average Day

Why aren’t we happy despite everything ‘being in its right place’?
Why, after acquiring a house, a car, a dishwasher, a big TV, and all the other required apparatuses and techno-umbilical cords needed to be a good, normal person, are we still not content?
Why, despite - often hidden - alternative options to the life we live do we continue to do that which knowingly makes us miserable?

Most modern work amounts to a human being existing within a room for the sake of appearances.

Freedom is the right to act and think as one wants to, with respect to their individual preferences.

Freedom, for the ‘moderns’, is always freedom of or for: freedom of choice, of place, of gender, of style, of taste, and freedom for more, for X, or for Y - in short, modern man’s freedom is always based on the presumption of consumption or excess.

To enact his freedom, modern man needs to acquire, consume, show, tell, or display. His personal freedom is always aggrandizing. His freedom builds upon itself like a cancer,

We see this in the notion of minimalist aesthetics, whereby one still owns the same amount of objects, but they’re all white or gray. Thus, even the freedom to not have something, becomes a consumptive freedom. One doesn’t simply adhere to simple living, but one consumes the ‘simple living’ lifestyle.

Instead of consuming less clothing - the majority of which, if looked after, will always be fine - he finds a niche, ‘environmentally friendly’ brand from which to both appease his lust for consumption, and his internal need for signaled collective virtue. Instead of actually spending less time on the PC, modern man now spends the same amount of time on anti-tech or computer-critical websites and forums

a culture of unfulfilling consumptive action, followed by hasty self-justification. People consistently do things that don’t increase their quality of life in terms of actual freedom, and then offload this failed contentment onto various third parties, as a means to not have to admit they’re living a lie.

The Deceptive Denied Desire

When talking about desire we generally speak it in such a way that X - be it shoes, a car or any 'object of desire' - is something which can be obtained. This is of course the basis for our general understanding of desire. Or, put succinctly by David Foster Wallace - 'It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.' We have a lack, and that lack can be fulfilled by the purchase/acquisition of a certain item of value (products etc.), or a certain form of value (affection, love etc.)

This type of relationship with desire-at-large creates a normative foundation (read: modernity) which inherently assumes that (very roughly) everyone desires everything which is considered to be a modern desire, and the position of non-desire, i.e. 'I don't need/want that.' isn't itself a positive position made on behalf of an agent, but always a negative position made in reaction to collective beliefs pertaining to various desires.

It's very difficult to see - especially within our contemporary, hedonistic and consumerist world - but there isn't, truly, any such thing as a negative relationship with desire. No desire has to be an option. It's entirely plausible and possible that someone seeks to exit from said framework of desire entirely

in either the positive or negative relationship to the desired (or non-desired) item, one retains a mental relationship built upon the presuppositions of others

in either the positive or negative relationship to the desired (or non-desired) item, one retains a mental relationship built upon the presuppositions of others - in short, in this state, one is always keeping themselves in check; in ‘pain’ because they don’t have the desired item, upset because their desires don’t match with the status quo, or even confused because the acquired desire didn’t actually fulfill them

Choice of Dependence

A working definition of freedom which I find to be helpful is that one is free to the extent they have control over their immediate environment.

When one looks around their immediate surroundings they will find it full to the brim with gadgets, appliances, furnishings, objects, bygone pastimes, delayed hobbies, long-forgotten wishes, and various other detritus. Such objects are the items which one can utilize for a hopeful increase, or (accidental) decrease in relation to their quality of life.

When you consume, you consume belief first and the object comes second,

When you buy a new sofa you believe that in doing so your quality of life will improve, you will be more comfortable, and - if you’re a little more self-aware - you believe that your friends will think more of you due to your new increase of personal capital, that you have your life together etc

If the modern world is so great, why is everyone miserable? We can begin to see that modernity’s reliance on externality as something to actually carry meaning is itself an impossible task. For it is only the internal life of man which can imbue external objects, events, and customs with meaning, and thus, if the internal life of modern people is inherently lacking, then it can be said that eventually no amount of material, or intensification of material, will be able to satiate his existential void

Independence

This, in short, is the state of modern man. The cell itself is the multitude of multitudes of self-imposed desires, obligations, habits, etiquettes, beliefs, pastimes, nostalgias, agreements, tasks, duties, liabilities, debts, engagements, pressures, compulsions, and constraints man internally puts upon himself as a means to appease the elusive judgmental social order he believes is eyeing him down 24/7;

This will likely be my most controversial statement, but, in short, the misery of the modern world is almost solely the fault of those who are miserable. The world is just the world, and you have every right not to be miserable. You have every right to internally mediate the so-called ‘modern world’ in a drastically different way than is expected of you. You have every right to purge all the presumptions the modern world collectively affords you and begin again.

Internal/External

Many of the things which are the cause of your misery, alienation and anxiety, are precisely due to your choice regarding how your internal world forms a relationship with the external world.

It is almost never the case that the person who cut me off in traffic appears to have the same inner-life as myself, I rarely assume they may be late for something more important than my current errand, or perhaps are unwell, panicked, or in an emergency. No, it is always the world which is in the way of me. From such presumptions life never appears to be right. From a position of requirement, assumption, and habitual reaction, one becomes a slave. They have accepted that the world should be such-and-such a way, and when it doesn’t meet their demands they indulge in the disappointment and misery which follows

A thousand desires never desired appear, as if from a void, and now a simple, happy, content life which could have been, is transformed into a perpetual game of cat and mouse, wherein no amount of purchase, consumption, or partaking can suffice to scratch the elusive itches.

You’ve Been Schooled

As to the question regarding the reality of schooling, the ‘why’ as to why it exists at all, this isn’t my concern, I’m not a historian, and to begrudge the fact it does exist would be to enter, once again, into that negative relationship between the internal and external. And so we shouldn’t ask, as individuals seeking internal freedom, why does this exist at all? But, what has the existence of this institution meant for the way I perceive the world?

Modern education, therefore, has little to no coherence. It is a disordered collection of facts, bereft of any larger purpose, being taught to minds which are craving that very same thing that has been cut away, namely, meaning.

The substance of schooling being that which one actually learns and understands, and thus can utilize within the world to make their own and others’ lives better is clearly lacking. But this very same substance - knowledge and understanding - is subsumed into a system whereby it is confused for grades, matrixes, credentials, points, stamps, awards, etc. The quality becomes quantity, and thus academic proof is sought over genuine experience. (Note: This very same confusion is synonymous with the idea that complexity & difficulty = smarter/higher intelligence).

The student quickly learns the loop: To stay quiet and obey is to learn, and to learn is to succeed, therefore to obey is to succeed.

Modern schooling, as we’ve seen, is a recursive argument, it derives proof of its superiority and legitimacy from the very fact it’s collectively deemed as legitimate.

Many of the so-called ‘common’ experiences of modern schooling are, as a matter of fact, intrusions into personal space, violations of basic human decency, and arguably assertion of power for its own sake. Children who question such moronic and abusive rules such as permission to go to the bathroom, to eat food when hungry, or simply be able to leave a room without due reason, are duly punished. Such punishment is clearly not in lieu of genuine hostile, aggressive or abhorrent behavior, but for the simple act of questioning the tyranny set before them.

Each individual of each category is at the whim of their group’s societal expectations, to breach these in a productive, critical, or even optimistic light is always perceived negatively, for in doing so one is unmasking the nonsensical categories, asserting the existence of the individual in a world where such an existence is only viewed as a hindrance.

We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people…the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him.

The assumption is that such a transition is primarily based upon a level of maturity, a level of responsibility, and a form of individuation. However, in a material-focused society, the transition itself is now reliant on various material signifiers. For instance, we consider someone an adult if they have a car, have a job, rent/own a house, and do various other ‘adult’ things, most of which are materially intuitive.

Within the modern world, which understands one to be a child if they haven’t obtained X, Y, and Z (house, car, career etc.), multitudes of adults are kept within an infantile-limbo due to their inability to ever acquire X, Y, and Z. In turn these adult’s dreams and desires quickly regress to that of children, wherein we now see many adult couples taking trips to Disneyland, entire markets are constructed around toys for adults, and some ‘adults’ even take to using adult coloring books as a means to calm down. One common argument against criticism of this is to ‘Just let people enjoy things.’ My counter-argument to such an empty statement is that such people don’t genuinely enjoy these pastimes but are artificially regressing to the state of a child

Credentialism

The neurotic internalized compulsion that one is ‘unable’ to ‘do’ without a credential or teacher seeps into every facet of life.

Success and Failure

Schooling teaches you to form your life around the system’s understanding of success, without once allowing you to think critically about what success might mean for you.

A businessman who becomes a billionaire is successful, and so is a chef who gets 3 Michelin Stars, as is a devout Christian who enters a Monastery; success is subjective, to succeed is dependent on individual parameters

To be successful within the modern world, as I’ve shown, is usually to acquire a job or lifestyle you never wanted or questioned in the first place, and therefore all success is impotent,

Careers

I am putting forth the argument that the reason many people stay in jobs they - often openly - dislike, if not actively despise, is (aside from the need for money) because they have no capacity to develop an alternative structure of meaning. Stripped of sincere familial, cultural, religious, and communal values, the modern worker has little else to satiate their oh-so-human need for meaning than their job,

Normality

Normality

Normality

someone is understood to be a ‘normal person’ the general assumption is that they have the very same desires as everyone else, and have such desires for the very same reasons. The very concept of normality is for automatons, who utilize it constantly to appease their own inability to seek out an authentic purpose amidst life

To consider something normal is, within the modern world, not only to assume that it is the standard the average person uses, but that such a state is typical, assumed, and/or expected. Normality is once again a tautology, it’s normal because it’s normal, and as such we name anything outside of its bounds peculiar, weird, odd, uncommon, eccentric, disorderly, irrational, or even insane. This logic, whereby normal becomes synonymous with correctness, slowly constrains various spectrums of existence

In short, normality always seeks to make itself more normal. And, to be ‘not-normal’ in the modern world is itself anathema to what it is to be modern at all.

Poverty

Firstly, there most definitely is the aforementioned poverty which has a ‘very human face’. One in which those who find themselves within such a state struggle to acquire the most basic essentials of existence: shelter, food, water, and clothing, usually due to a lack of income or lack of job prospects leading to a lack of income. We can name this type of poverty ‘Objective Poverty’.

However, it is my argument that such a state is fairly rare within the modern world which I am addressing. This is where the notion of ‘subjective poverty’ comes in, a falsified, artificial poverty which causes misery in relation to non-existent ambitions. Here we can draw in the previous idea of natural and artificial desires as a means to view objective and subjective poverty. The objective is understood in relation to what is needed and what one must have as par the natural course.

The UK Parliament has even addressed this issue by stating in a nationwide ‘poverty briefing’ that - ‘discusses income-based measures of poverty, but there is debate about whether this serves as a relevant measure of poverty. The Social Metrics Commission (SMC) proposed a measure based on the extent to which someone’s resources meet their needs. This accounts for differences among households such as costs of childcare and disability, savings, and access to assets.’

proposing a measure based on whether or not someone can meet their needs is, quite literally, an impossible metric to calculate. Why is this? As we’ve seen, and as we should understand, after our genuine, objective needs (shelter, food, water etc.) are met, anything further cannot, by definition, be considered a need, and to publicly consider it as such is to covertly insert artificial desires into the fabric of ‘normal’ society

*What actually happens due to this institutional projection of material ambition onto the masses is a mirroring of the schooling process. Poverty, by its very definition -
The state of being extremely poor, or;
The state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount

• implicitly denotes a negative state or even a failed existence.*

Entertaining Screens

Despite everything we’ve been afforded by the modern world - which is a lot, by the way - we continue to make an active effort to avoid it. With the majority of our common ‘hobbies’, becoming less about an intensification of life and self-betterment, and more about…filling time.

We have come to fear the immediate, for the fact it is deprived of all third-party legitimacy. Alike a worn rural path without signage or even coordinates, the immediacy of experience brings to the surface our innate ignorance concerning the world.

As we grow we continue to be taught to only trust credentialed individuals for the majority of life’s undertakings, and even if such things don’t work out, it’s never a fault of the system itself, but a glitch or an error.

The gravest error we ever make with respect to our free time is calling it as such, as if to state that the rest of our time is no longer ours, and this is simply to be accepted. All time is free time if you’re internally healthy.

the majority of contemporary screen-usage is ultimately the reverse of this. One is presented with some empirical, immediate data, be it visuals, pain, personal insight, historic knowledge, revelation, or sense-data, and, instead of investigating and analyzing the reality from reality itself, one is quick to ‘look up’ the phenomena via their ‘screen’ and thus mediate the experience, handing over their responsibility to a third-party, just as they were taught to do from a young age.

Living within artificial, reconstructed, arbitrary environments that are strictly the products of human conception, we have no way to be sure that we know what is true and what is not. We have lost context and perspective. What we know is what other humans tell us. Therefore, whoever controls the processes of re-creation, effectively redefines reality for everyone else, and creates the entire world of human experience, our field of knowledge. We become subject to them. The confinement of our experience becomes the basis of their control of us.

In its re-creation, mediated experience eventually becomes entirely divorced from the reality it was created from, with the entirety of our screen-based virtual experience being subsumed under the common term ‘entertainment’.

In abiding by the logic of modernity itself, given free time, man has little-to-no recourse of anything outside of that which has been programmed into him, and instead of cultivating a potentially rich, charitable, good, creative, beautiful, or virtuous inner-life, he simply plunks himself in front of one of the many screens afforded to him, and waits for his next allotment of allowed life, i.e. work or sleep.

Replicated Reality

It will come as no surprise that from this mode of being - one in which ultimately the individual’s personal agency is continually internally diminished and handed over - that two pastimes become increasingly popular, namely, video games and social media

In single visual experience video games afford the modern user everything they’re unknowingly missing from the real world - responsibility, practicality, understanding, purpose, and meaning

In fact, the distinct rise in popularity in video games which are literal one-to-one recreations of ‘real life’, complete with mundane jobs (Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a key example), gives credence to the idea that in truth, when people play video games, they are actually seeking internal freedom,

It needn’t matter if such freedom only amounts to ‘being a farmer’, driving an old bus, walking freely throughout a city, or creating a peculiar style of house, these virtual replica video games allow the user a momentary escape from their prison cell, without having to bear the cost of risking their real-life normality.

let’s look at the other common form unto which the same form of reversal happens, social media. Much like video games, social media affords the user a reality within which they are in complete control - they can sculpt their persona, ‘add’ or ‘remove’ friends, filter conversation, and even create the equivalent of a fictional avatar to take their place.

social media is modern society condensed to the point of absurdity. In acting as themselves (read: normal, successful, happy, schooled moderns) whilst on social media, users engage in the very model of mediation that controls them.

despite the fact social media is an intricate replication of the world, people still have a preference to spend hour upon hour there as opposed to in the reality it represents

What exactly is the difference, then, between sincerity and modern status? It is, in truth, a difference between experience and object.

Identity

Identity (especially in relation to politics) has been the social buzzword of modernity for the last 20 years or so, and yet, in spite of this, very few people within the modern world have an ‘identity’ of any quality. Beyond vices, political allegiance, and consumption habits, the identity of most people is a withered husk, kept alive by the latest innovation in mainstream-mediated virtue.

In growing within an environment bereft of familial, cultural, national, and/or religious values, the modern self has only production and consumption as its benchmarks for understanding itself.

Politics

For as we’ve seen, anything deemed truly radical, dissident, odd, extreme, or weird by the modern herd cannot even be humored due to existing outside the bounds of modern logic; real politics is akin to an escapee returning to Plato’s cave - but lest we forget, the prisoners will try to kill those who return.

Money

The entire logical work > money loop presumes a need for further money, which equally presumes there’s going to be further expenditure. But what if we just…didn’t desire those things we so desire?

Poverty is Your Choice

Objective Poverty, wherein one’s actual needs (food, shelter, water, etc.) aren’t met, and then Subjective Poverty, wherein one’s desires/wants in relation to the ‘modern standard of life’ (holidays, appliances, fancy clothing, etc.) aren’t met

to ‘succeed’ by the standards of the modern world, is, unsurprisingly, to live by the standards of the modern world. A normal quality of life has been set, and to not live up to it is to fall short of what it is to be a modern man, it is thus ‘to fail’.

the modern lifestyle always manages to keep going, it somehow keeps needing you to buy just one more thing to complete your life

Arguably we only need money up to a certain point - to get us out of objective poverty - beyond that, any of the time we sacrifice and money we earn is used solely for something we want. There’s nothing wrong with this when the desire in question is entirely our own, and hasn’t been programmed into us by the modern world.

conveniences have overstepped their bounds into the realm of the compulsory. Comforts have become requirements. Life’s little extras are now life’s little stresses.

Debt is servitude; it is willing slavery in the name of a few material acquisitions.

Which brings us to the third option regarding our modern ‘quality of life’ or ‘standard of living’, which is to question it. Despite both terms - standard and quality - denoting a spectrum (lower or higher quality/standard) there appears to be only one single standard with respect to the modern world, namely, the modern standard

To briefly repeat the argument from earlier (The Deceptive Denied Desire) - Just because one person wants X, and you don’t want X, doesn’t mean you are denying a desire or leaving a lack unfilled. Not a denied desire, but no desire at all

it should come as no surprise, that more often than not the same people who state they solely just ‘Wish to be happy.’, are equally the very same people who happen to be abiding by the most vacuous, repetitive, schooled desires

Beneath most of what modern man does is an assumption it will lead him closer towards happiness, in spite of the fact he, firstly, has never truly enquired into what makes him happy

when we look at the logical loop of modernity, we notice that it implicitly pushes the idea that if only we just got to the next stage, then things would be better.

Practical

Rarely do we meet anyone who states or does something genuinely ‘outside-of-the-box’, and this is because much of what we commonly consider to be ‘outside-the-box’ is truly just at the limits of the modern world's acceptability.

The most important thing to understand about freedom is that it’s primarily (if not solely) an internal state of being.

In short, one could say this - There is a possibility that a billionaire, a homesteader, a wage-laborer, a vagabond, a freelancer, a public school teacher, a private sector worker, a janitor, and a principle are all equally free

. Our internal life which is the programmed reasoning for why we react and deal with the external in the way we do. Sounds complicated, but ultimately it amounts to the idea that separate individuals can react to the same object in different ways, but the modern world has attempted to train us to react the same way (largely as a means to make selling objects easier), and defends this habit forming process under the guise of ‘normality

For instance, when many people see a big shiny new car, they often think about it and react in such a way that they wish to buy it. A whole plethora of concepts quickly run through their mind: attractive, sleek, status, posh, classy, normal, likable, etc. All of a sudden they find themselves already legitimizing the need. Contrary to this we may find other people who, upon seeing such a vehicle, view it as abhorrent, a burden on their finances, and as ultimately needless. Contrary to these two opposing camps, we may find someone who views the car, but doesn’t see it at all, that is, it’s nothing to them, it is of zero interest.

Finding Freedom

In finding freedom in the modern world, one key undertaking is the effort we put into unschooling ourselves. Picasso said “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child

In short:
There is rarely ever certainty or security in life.
Success is entirely subjective.
You are entitled to absolute privacy.
You don’t have to get a career.
You don’t owe the state anything.
Credentials don’t equal actual knowledge.
Authority is only legitimate if you deem it to be.

This isn’t something I should need to explain, but here we are, in a world of homogenized success and ambition. Success: the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. That’s the definition, but the problem then lies in the fact that most moderns either don’t have any aims, or, their purpose has been defined by the logic of modernity itself

Once we come to believe that certain credentialed people are the be-all-and-end-all with regard to their respective fields, in failing to ‘cure our ills’ or fix our problems, we’re left entirely without recourse for a solution.

In this sense, we can begin to understand freedom as being empirically reliant on our range of qualitative experiences.

With regard to the average modern, in being filed down by the schooling system into a single ‘field’, and, in being continually promoted within that field, their experience becomes more and more niche, eventually exists within a singular spectrum of experience

You don’t owe the state anything, because you never consented to give them anything,

Democracy: The God That Failed (2001

Entertainment

If we’re to understand entertainment with respect to both its common definitions - to be entertained by something, and, to entertain something - we can begin to ask ourselves a helpful question: Are we actually being entertained, or, are we merely entertaining something? The former is a choice in relation to a personal value or preference, be it art, aesthetics, morals, interests, curiosity, religion, philosophy, etc. To actually be entertained is to be open to the possibility of having one’s internal world imbued with something more. To merely entertain something, on the other hand, is to sit in your prison cell and apathetically stare at the shadows on the wall.

Social media is the next in a long line of societal options which has since become quietly mandatory. People assume that one will be able to be ‘contacted’ via some social media platform, that there will exist somewhere online an artificial CV of that person’s life ready for public consumption.

Social media turns life into an abstract competition. The only rule is to play, and to ‘win’ is to amass artificial popularity. In reality, it’s a competition one never chose to enter, in a race towards rewards one never cared for. All the while this very same race grinds one’s attention span to a pulp, increases anxiety, depression, and jealousy, normalizes narcissism, develops insecurity, and quantifies the quality.

The ease of use of social media and smartphones in combination - unlimited communication with everyone all the time - results only in an increase in quantity and not quality with respect to relationships. Given the ability to talk to your ‘friends’ 24/7, one no longer refines or ponders on the content of their discussion, thinking about it and actually listening, but merely fires off a ceaseless stream of ongoing events and thoughts;

All consumption is a choice. Such choices are based upon the belief that said consumption will improve one’s quality of life. This quality of life is likely based upon a ‘generic’, unquestioned standard of living programmed into you from birth.

When one starts giving or even starts giving their stuff away, the reaction from the modern world is one of worry. For this is not a halt due to lack of money or credit, but an active renunciation of the modern consumptive foundation. Such an act is viewed (once again) as an error, a glitch in the system; such a person is not acting of their own accord, their programming must have gone haywire.

David Foster Wallace -
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship...is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive

There is a figure in literature that isn’t exactly well known, is extremely divisive, notably explosive, quiet, reserved, forthwith, and notoriously difficult to ‘pin down’. I am speaking of the figure of ‘The Anarch’ as found in Ernst Jünger’s novel Eumeswil.

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