Free at last!

The Brazilian street pote Bulebule says that, "though the door to our house is open we stay home in the dark because we don't understand that we are free." This is as true today as it ever was. We take for granted that our roof doesn't leak, our car will start in the morning, and that when we push that piece of plastic into the hole in the wall it will spit out cash. No one tells us when we are allowed to head out the door of our homes to go for a walk and no-one stands there with a machine gun and forces us to go to work in the morning.

I've been thinking about these things because lately I've been reading a lot of history about world war II. The privations and horrors of that war are scarcely to be believed. I had long thought that the view I had of that war from school, and from popular media and indeed from the stories my parents told of it that I had a fair idea of what it might have been like. Only now am I beginning to appreciate the full horror of that period of history.

It is true that we don't fully appreciate what we have until it's gone. Actually, I might go beyond that. It's perhaps not until freedom, or peace, has been lost and then re-gained does one perhaps fully appreciate it the most. The trick then is to maintain that appreciation and not let it become stale, hence the importance of history and the frequent consumption thereof.

I do understand how privileged I am to be able to walk out the front door whenever I like. I do appreciate the fact that there's not an armed soldier standing on each street corner wanting to see my papers. And I know that when I get up and go to work in the morning it's not because I have to, but because I choose to, and if I really wanted, no-one is going to stop me walking away from work and never returning. These freedoms are valuable and, in the overall scheme of things, a rare privilege in the history of humankind.

And yet, I'm also aware that these freedoms are always under threat. My emails and phone calls are all susceptible to interception should some authority somewhere decide to do so. My very identity and the cash I need to survive are all at the mercy of some bureacrat or villain with a computer perhaps on the far side of the planet. And I know I can't walk down a city street or into a public building without being captured by a small barrage of surveillance cameras. And while all this may genuinely be about the greater safety of society, sooner or later, when the veneer of ethical governance breaks down, it will be used as a weapon. That day will come, as inevitably as conflict arises in human society.

Everything goes in cycles, and freedom (or lack of) and oppression are not exempt. There may be nothing we can do to stop the inevitable decline into anarchy and war, but what we can do - perhaps the one way in which we ordinary mortals can make a difference - is to appreciate and understand what others before us have gone through and what they have sacrificed in order to give us the freedom we now enjoy - not forgetting of course the people still fighting and dying for those freedoms this very moment. The simple luxuries of life: good food, books and music are all the more enjoyable when viewed in that context.

Bravo à la liberté.