They Love Their Servitude

At the beginning of a recently recovered article, Freedom Now, I said:

“Most people really do not want freedom. Most people want security. They want guarantees, assurances that nothing will ever go wrong, that they will never be hurt or disappointed, that everything will always be what they like and what they are used to and they will always be happy.”

Of course I’ve said this in many articles, so it was interesting to find a similar sentiment expressed recently by Jamie Glazov during an interview with Nonie Darwish, entitled, “How the Veil Conquered Cairo University.”

In reference to the amazing difference between photos of women at Cairo University from the 50s through the 70s, in which none of the women’s heads were covered, and the clothing was typically conservative western style, compared to photos of women at Cairo University from the 90s to the present in which virtually all the women’s heads are covered and they are wearing typical Muslim garb. Jamie asks:

“What’s going on here? One would think that people yearn for freedom rather than enslavement, but I guess life experience and human history tells us otherwise …. Being from Russia, I’m not too surprised with many Russians’adoration of a thug despot like Putin and even their pining for Joseph Stalin.”

Of course it’s true, people do not really want freedom. Most do not really know what freedom is and confuse it with “freedom from trouble,” or “freedom from want,” or even “freedom from responsibility,” which is a total contradiction of what freedom is. No matter how much people talk about freedom, it is the last thing they really want, because freedom means being responsible for all of one’s own choices and actions and not being able to pass that responsibility on to someone else—which is exactly what most people really want.

Throughout history and into the present day, whenever people achieve some level of freedom, and discover it is not a, “free pass to success and happiness,” but an obligation to be responsible for their own lives and though they are free to achieve all the success and happiness they are capable of, but must do it themselves, they will throw their freedom off for sake of the security, certainty, or whatever they perceived as the benefit of their previous oppression.

So the Egyptian women who discovered themselves free of the religious oppression that told them how they must dress and behave found themselves responsible for choosing how to dress and how to behave, and perhaps be judged or shunned for their choices, chose to revert to that safer island where all such choices are dictated and all one has to do to be accepted is obey. It’s easier not to have to think about how to dress and how to behave in public.

So everywhere, all over the world, in all the places where men enjoyed the greatest levels of freedom, they gladly surrender that freedom to the promised security and guarantees that governments swear to provide them, and do not know they have made themselves slaves, and are in love with their servitude.