Patrick Henry, a founding father of the United States, is attributed with saying “Give me liberty, or give me death!” in 1775. Every grade school student in America is taught this revolutionary war quote. As such, it is one of the cornerstones of our founding mythology. Its message is a simple one: we’d rather be dead than not have the freedom of self-determination.
We like to think we’re free, but unfortunately, most of us seem to be choosing death.
A death from narrow political thinking and pacifying modern comforts.
A death from ecological and environmental destruction. The eternal Barons of Energy leave our planet pockmarked and hollow. All to extract the remains of evolutionary foremothers. Our ancestor’s cries released in a never ending stream of toxic gas. Sunrays, trapped by heavy exhalations, heat the land, air, and water to lethal degrees. Can we exercise liberty in a place devoid of life?
A death from incessant advertisements that convince us we are not whole. They demand we must look and act a certain way, or to simply buy More. Content, whether it is from social media, the news, entertainment, or whatever, bombards us at supersonic speeds. Its sonic booms splatter our gray matter into thousands of different consciousnesses. All of them demanding our attention. Reality is shattered and remade at sixty frames per second. Is our will free or are our actions predicted by a marketing algorithm?
A death that autonomizes and statisticizes us. At our workplace we are no more than a data point; a profit-loss calculation. If we bring in more wealth than our wage, then we can continue our daily routine. But even that’s not guaranteed. When we clock in, the few rights we do have are suspended until we are allowed to leave. At work our bodies are no longer our own - they belong to the worms and dirt of cubicle shaped graves. Every night we crawl our way out and howl at the moon, lamenting our time lost. Is freedom a natural right or only for nights and weekends?
A death reanimated from our labor, turned into profits for a company's owner. All controlled through the necronomicon of Supply and Demand. If the sun god Invisible Hand is not pleased, our livelihood will be sacrificed at His altar. Last century the kings of the market were brought to heel and the nation's wealth was more evenly shared. Now, a handful of liches sit upon the thrones of capitalism. Their greed and hunger cannot be sated. The three richest people have more wealth than half of the country. Is it freedom to have no control over what we produce?
But there is still time for liberty. For life.
We, the working class, still have the power to turn away the grim reaper and send him into the shadows of the past. We must organize our workplaces, build independent electoral power, join grassroots organizations, and take our grievances into the street. Only then can we chase the ruling morticians into the very graves they’ve dug for us.