Freedom means every life form’s right to survive, thrive, multiply; and for me, to have the right to claim my share of the resources of nature and the collective of human knowledge, power and enterprise, to survive and thrive. Freedom means to have the right to try to live as well as I can, even if it means I take more than the next woman or man, or yield to the other, provided we start with equal opportunities. Freedom means the equal right of negotiation to stake claim to survive and thrive.
Freedom is the right to the means to enforce the terms of contract we make with each other as humans, or with the state as citizens. It means a claim to the right of equality before law, to argue and obtain a change of law if it fails the test of time and context. Freedom means the right to argue against wrong, even when it has sanction of the majority vote. It means the establishment of a code of inviolable principle and unalterable law, to keep the dharma of contract with nature, to hold in trust what we receive when we are born and make it all better, but never leave it worse than before.
When we have broken that contract with nature, as we have done now, freedom means to be able to enforce that contract on the unthinking, uncaring majority. Freedom is to claim that nothing is more sacred than the right of life, beyond rules of state or transaction. In simple terms, delivering justice to any one must be subordinated to the keeping of justice with all -- nature and community. Freedom also means to own the dharma of contract with belief in the indiscernible, provided that each one of us is allowed to claim it as much as the next woman or man.
Finally, freedom is the right to ask questions and seek answers, to let humans own the unquenchable quest to know more than is known, to speculate and experiment, provided it keeps faith with the dharma of contract that shall allow all beings to survive, thrive and multiply. This seems hard, but this is all we can live by.
The author is a well-known threatre artiste and actor