Are we anything more than the sum of our fears?

Think about it. Hopefully the answer is “yes” — but not by much, if at all! The Buddhists say there is “no self”. If the self is but the sum of one’s fears, then it’s pretty much a non-entity.

So how do we go beyond being but the sum of our fears?

It occurred to me during my drive to work today that the month of June is a good time to ponder the idea and ideal of human freedom (I discussed freedom a bit in my post on May 25). Why? Because there are several historical anniversaries in June that relate strongly to freedom. Let’s start off way back in the mists of the Middle Ages, with the signing of the Magna Carta by England’s King John. That happened on June 15, 1215. The MC was an incidental byproduct of the political wrangling going on at the time between the King, the barons and the Catholic Church. However, it set a precedent that eventually inspired ideological and political developments, including the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

King John wasn’t doing so well at the time, so he agreed to formally promise the barons and the Church that he was NOT an absolute dictator and that the people of England (well, at least the richer people) had certain rights that the King could not take away. In the coming centuries, the various English kings and queens went back on this pledge, and Oliver Cromwell threw it out the window during his religious dictatorship in the mid-15th Century. But the idea of inalienable rights for English citizens (again, for the richer ones at first; the commoners had to wait) never died. They were like seeds that lay dormant for centuries, until the conditions became right in the Eighteenth Century for their resurgence, growing into what we know today as the Anglo-American ideal of freedom.

From the plains of Runnymeade in 1215, let’s zoom forward in time to Galveston, Texas in the year 1865. Do you remember the theme song from the TV show “F Troop”? The first stanza describes the situation in Galveston: “the end of the Civil War was near”. (Theoretically it was over, as General Lee had surrendered to the Union in April, 1865; but back in those days, communications were slow, and there were ongoing “pockets of resistence” in the South that had to be mopped up by Union forces). President Lincoln had already declared slavery dead in his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. However, life went on as usual on slave plantations throughout the Confederacy.

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was one of the last areas in the South to be “emancipated”. As such, June 19 became a local celebration amidst the former slaves and their descendents, known as “Juneteenth”. June 19 is still marked today as a celebration of the end of slavery in America. And the end of slavery certainly represented an advance in the realization of human freedom. There was obviously a long way yet to go in that “realization process” for the slaves and their future generations. But, as with the Magna Carta, it was a milestone along the road.

Next, let’s go to a land where Anglo-American ideals of human freedom never got much traction. I.e., China. As Prof. Rufus Fears and others point out, our ideal of freedom can be broken down into significant components, including personal freedom, political freedom, and national freedom. The Chinese have, over their many centuries, done fairly well with national freedom, and are doing a lot better lately with personal freedom (stemming mostly from the fact that a lot more people there are better off economically these days). But political freedom has just never been a significant part of their history. Can our American values regarding political freedom be transplated to that culture? Do these values represent something universal about humankind, or are they just a by-product of our own history and circumstances? Back in the spring of 1989, it seemed as though the notion of political freedom was finally taking root in China; a group of students and intellectuals were leading protests centered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Unfortunately, in early June the Chinese government decided to put a halt to the whole thing at a cost of several hundred lives. However, the moving story of the “Tank Man” is still remembered by many Chinese and westerners, and will hopefully inspire an eventual flowering of political freedom in China someday, when the time and conditions are right. In a nutshell, a group of Chinese Army tanks were leaving Tiananmen Square on June 5, following the bloody battle fought over the previous week against the protestors. One brave man from the scattered protestors decided to stand in front of the tanks, halting their progress. Since there were a lot of journalists present taking pictures, the Army decided not to crush or shoot the guy on the spot.

For a number of hours, there was a brave stand-off; at one point, supposedly the “tank man” got into a conversation with the tank drivers and lectured them about freedom. He was finally escorted off the scene, and was probably killed shortly thereafter (western reporters and historians are unsure about what happened to him). But the pictures of his moment in the sun live on, and like the “blood of the martyrs” in the Second and Third Century Roman Empire [i.e., the early Christian leaders acting in defiance of the pagan Roman government], they may well inspire a future movement that will change the world. Or a big part of it, anyway.

In the USA, our big patriotic celebration is on July 4, the anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from England. But the month of June is perhaps the better time for Americans and westerners in general to reflect on our “heritage of freedom”. Oh, one interesting P.S. that fits in with this theme. In a recent presidential proclamation on the White House website, Barack Obama has proclaimed June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month”. Freedom is still a “work in progress” here in America, and the current movement towards full social acceptance and personal rights for gay or “gay-like” people is certainly a sign of progress. So it’s June — let freedom ring! (And may it ring someday in those Middle Eastern lands that our President so ironically decided to visit this month).