This is what freedom means to me at this point in my life.
For me freedom is taking personal responsibility for my own spiritually, individual choices, personal opinions, emotions, and happiness. I am the only person I can control; I am not in control of anything except my own emotional reaction and my own thoughts and opinions. In order for me to be at peace with myself and there for happy, I must define these concepts for myself in a context that allows me to live in relative contentment with the rest of humanity.
According to the Declaration of Independence “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This is the theory on which the founding fathers constructed the United States. True the country has not always lived up to this, but it is something the country must continually work on this ideal. This ideal must be lived at the grass root level, before it is reflection on a state or even national level.
As an American citizen, I am responsible for defining this ideal in my own life and then reflecting it to the world around me. What does this ideal mean to me? First, I define “all men” as humanity, which includes male and female, every complexion of skin tone and political opinion and every religion. Next is my definition of “Creator”, for me the Creator is an unknowable essence, without descent or assent, and reflected to humanity through certain individuals that appear at critical points in human history to reveal to humanity the spiritual concepts necessary to carry the human race into the next stage of its collective evolution.
How do I define “unalienable Rights”? Dictionary.com defined unalienable this way: “Not to be separated, given away, or taken away…” Unalienable rights are those privileges innate to humanity, which does not mean that we receive them without work. Nor does it mean the individual can do whatever he or she wants without considering the rest of the human race. This is because humans were created to live as part of a human unit and as independent from the rest of humanity. The basic unit of humanity is the family; from the beginning of our existence as a species or a race (which ever you want to refer to humanity), the individual human is a component of a family unit. The family unit is a member of a tribe, a city, a nation and a planet.
Since I am a member of the human race and a citizen of both America and the planet, I am responsible for living my life in such a way that brings no intentional harm to the rest of the human race. Being a human being means I have both a body and a soul, I am a dual natured creature and I am responsible for learning what that means and how to live with other dual natured creatures.
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