The Power and Poverty of Freedom
Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray
April 2016
http://www.questformeaning.org/quest-article/power-poverty-freedom...A major theme of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, is the authoritarian government’s use of doublethink. This likely inspired what we commonly call doublespeak, the art of using language in a way that deliberately disguises, distorts or reverses the meaning of words. In the novel, the superstate of Oceania is a world of perpetual war, with constant government surveillance and public manipulation by masters of doublespeak. Doublespeak in politics is when powerful, patriotic, even moral language is used, but with a contrary or empty meaning to the underlying words. As a great example, one of the official slogans of the ruling Party was “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
...And even after the brutal Civil War brought an end to the institution of slavery, the struggle for equality, dignity and freedom continued, and continues today.
...The Jewish Austrian psychiatrist, Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of the famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, writes:
Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.
This is so important, this coupling of freedom and responsibleness. I cannot be free if you are not free. For, in the words of Nelson Mandela, “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” This idea that freedom by itself, alone, has the tendency to degenerate into mere arbitrariness is why our rhetoric of freedom echoes so hollow when it is deployed to defend and protect individual religious preference, personal ideology, or the protection and benefits of privilege.
...True freedom is knowing that we cannot be free when others are oppressed. The power of freedom is in the call for equity and liberation and justice for all. And this freedom does not exist by itself, or in a vacuum, or as some idealized state. It exists in relationship, arising from how we live in ways that enhance each other’s freedom.
...As Unitarian Universalists, we are a people of freedom, committed to religious freedom, but that commitment cannot be separated from the call to love one another. In one of the most precise and beautiful articulations of the challenge and the aspiration of the religious life, A. Powell Davies describes us as, “The religion that knows that we shall never have hearts big enough for the love of God until we have made them big enough for the worldwide love of one another.”
...When we choose love, we move toward freedom—we move toward God, toward beauty, toward our highest aspirations, toward the fullness of what lives within us. When we choose love, we begin to be the people of freedom.
Alex's comment: This sermon is very good! Doublespeak is what the Hong Kong government and the pro-establishment camp is doing right now.
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