Butterfly Freedom

You can't be 'safe' as well as free

It was the mad, tumbling flight of a western yellow tailed butterfly that got me thinking about freedom again. The only one we have is to choose from a menu that none of us control. And after nearly two years of pinning reality to the page like a dead butterfly, I am coming to the end of it. I began this series of essays at the end of July, 2021, when I needed to clarify and pin down a reality that had become malevolent and sinister. The most read post compared the onslaught of propaganda to the heyday of the Nazi regime. It was read even in Germany and today, Old and Bold is read across 20 US States and 10 Nations. Not bad.

And as for clarifying the reality of what was going on, it mostly sorted out the people who disagreed with my views from those who gave them a thumbs up. Some of the people who got fed up with me were long time friends and associates. We no longer communicate. But others have stepped into their place. Some of them are on Substack, like Margaret Anna Alice, CJ Hopkins, Geoff Olson and The Naked Emperor; others are new, personal friends here in Victoria. The reshuffling of alliances has been a painful process. And we’re not done yet. As we, as a society, grapple with questions about the pandemic that may never be fully answered, the endemic corruption in high places has become glaringly obvious. It cannot be ignored. What can be done about it is not clear. This is, however, a long, bitter fight to the finish. I can’t call it, but I am getting weary of the fight. I am planning to abandon the essay format in favour of more creative, less constrained ways of sorting my reality. Poetry and painting. I hope to have more on these at the moment vague plans soon. The Muse is in charge here, not I.

In the meantime, what worries me the most is that a large percentage of young people appear to want more state surveillance, not less. They really don’t want to be free. No, they want to be safe above all. It’s hard to fathom for someone like me, for whom freedom is the essential bedrock of existence and without which there is nothing left to fight over. Mary Harrington has summed it up nicely in her latest substack, Devour Me Mummy, with this opening paragraph:

According to a new survey from the American Cato Institute, three in ten Americans under 30 support the installation of cameras in the home to monitor for wrongdoing. The survey, which explored the attitudes of 2,000 Americans to central bank digital currencies, sought to explore whether there was a link between support for central bank digital currencies and wider attitudes to surveillance. The report bore this out; it showed that while only 16% of those surveyed support the rollout of a central bank digital currency, and 75% oppose the installation of cameras in homes. And among that 16% that supports CBDCs, more than half (53%) also supported surveillance cameras in homes.

We’re a long way from the days when the vast majority of people loved movies like the romantic comedy Butterflies are Free. Based on a stage play about a blind aspiring folk singer whose neighbour, the free spirited Goldie Hawn in one of her first starring roles, falls in love with him and has to face down his safety obsessed mom. Goldie discovers things about herself, about love, and what it means to be free, while Adam sings a sad song about free butterflies. She makes some mistakes, but in the end, love does prevail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterflies_Are_Free

It’s a lovely old movie that would never get made today for the simple reason that too many people are obsessed with safety. The central theme of this old gem is that love is about taking risks, and it has become uncool. Risk taking is the opposite of safety, and essential not just to love but any creative enterprise. Perhaps the safety conscious young of today are having such a lousy love life because they’re afraid to take risks? Just wondering out loud here.

Our elites have noted this wide-spread ambivalence about risk taking, and are planning wonderful ways to make us ‘safe’ at all costs. You can bet on it. And it may be up to the last of the boomers and my ‘silent’ generation to start screaming rather louder that we prefer freedom to safety. That we have learned from History. That we will not be reduced to the status of digital sheepdom. This is an existential fight, and it involves taking existential risks. I will be taking them in a different voice, in poems, short stories, memoir and paintings. I will return when the Muse has indicated that she is willing to help. That she is back. It may take a couple of months, or maybe just a couple of weeks. Stay tuned. Butterfly Freedom is fragile but it’s also hard to kill.