The Losses Of Liberation

The ramifications of my own conception--exposed here--have instilled in me a life-long question. I have always wondered if freedom, at any and all costs, is an inherent good?

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Should we seek freedom no matter what? Is the liberation of human energies--sexual, emotional, physical, spiritual, or otherwise--always a good thing?
 
A cursory reading of history makes it seem as if History itself is the slow march of ever-increasing Human Freedom. As the story goes--and you may recognize this story--we are told that we are all moving away from bondage and oppression, repression and restraint towards freedom. We are heading into the unfolding of greater and greater capacities: capacities that we have always held within us, but have not been actualized due to repressive social and cultural forces and factors.

As Freud told it, Culture is the repressive constraint of the Individual and his or her instinctual nature (id, libido). All of the energies that exist as part of our Human Nature are made to conform to the dictates of Culture: Culture is the container.

Further, it is through threats of punishment and suffering that the Individual learns what is an appropriate use of his or her Energetic Nature. The INdividual learns what is 'right' and what is 'wrong.' And yet, the Individual cannot totally deny his or her Living Experience of Energy-Being, so the Individual will tend to come into a state of ongoing tension, as the forces of Culture and Nature collide within the Human Psyche.

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How we deal with that tension--both collectively, as revolutionary Movements, i.e., the Hippies, Flower Power, the Religious Right, the Taliban, or Feminism, and as individuals--pretty much sums up the main Plot of what it is to be Human. We have the two forces (Culture and Nature) doing battle within us and we seek to deal with--manage, treat, address--that ongoing state of tension through manipulations of both Culture on the outside and Nature on the inside.

For instance, the Revolutions of the 1960's were attempts to liberate Inner Nature through the removal of Cultural Norms and Standards. Nature wanted to move (or should I say that Humanity went through a period of dealing with psychological tension through asserting the Indvidual's Freedom over and above the primacy of certain Cultural Norms?). As a result we saw all of the attempted destruction of Cultural Norms--like the traditional Family, traditional Roles, Gender typologies, Sexual Orientations, and so on.

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The attempt of Nature to reassert itself in the face of Culture can easily be felt as the reawakening of Freedom. It feels good to let your Nature flow and to be Free. It can feel.... ahem.... very liberating. And yet, that is not the whole of the story. It doesn't just end there. There are consequences to Freedom. Liberation has its repercussions. In fact, Liberation of that sort is a type of loss. One's Freedom is another's Tragedy. And though the story has not often been told, the Chaotic fallout of the 1960's is, in my estimation, a story about just that: that with Freedom and Liberation come consequences that few, if any, who were caught up in such heady times could have ever foretold.