Aldous Huxley, in his less-than-famous comic novel Antic Hay, once mused that liberty as a concept simply doesn’t exist in our world. Gilded cages were all that existed in the mind of the now-beloved architect of the dystopian world populated by the enigmatic alphas and betas. Though he seemed to be railing against a commonly accepted notion of ‘freedom’ which has become the watchword for most ‘modern’ countries (especially when looking to justify a war against another sovereign state), his statement was no more revolutionary than any conclusion we could easily reach ourselves. We may laugh at the countrymen of Winston Smith as their governing party shifts enemies so seamlessly and the perception of the populace shifts with the whim of their masters, but in our own undeniable ways we, too, are guilty of doublethink.
Take, for example, the concept of work in our society. At the lowest levels of civilization, humanity lived much in the same ways that animals live today. When a man was hungry, he merely went out and found something to eat. Many tribes of the old world hunted, gathered food as foragers, or developed ways of pulling sustenance out of the oceans; all depending on where they lived. Without venturing into Huxley’s familiar realms of the noble savage, we must stand in awe of the simplicity this life must have entailed. Now, with the complexities of modern society and all of the vices that come with it, we must ask ourselves if this shift into modern thinking, this revolution of ideas was really worth giving up the old ways.
When people began locking food away from others and demanding those without food work for them to get it back (see also: the beginning of government) we established the precedent for what every revolution was looking to dispose of. From that simple act, we can extrapolate the evils of despotism, feudalism, the pitiless greed of capitalism, and the horrible acts of modern-day dictators.
Marxists, without realizing it, were looking to return to a tribal way of life. Not in the tribal sense that we associate with Native American, Australian, or African tribes, but merely a world wherein the proletariat truly decided the way their lives were to be lived. The irony of their struggle is that thousands of years ago, humanity had this very same way of life, but all those who embraced it were stomped underfoot by the march of progress and civilization, or displaced into tiny corners of the world.
And now, with all of the wonders of modern society (see also: famine, uncontrollable crime, pandemics, mental disease, and ruthless or apathetic leaders of government), humanity looks around and grasps at the life which slipped through its fingers, even as it attempted to better itself. What we have, in effect is a funnel of wealth and material into the hands of one percent of the population. Meanwhile, the remainder of the society is forced to work all of their lives to survive. The workers of the world are slaves to work-the only thing preventing them from walking away from their mills and their desks and their countertops is embodied in 2nd Thessalonians as Paul advises, “If a man does not work, neither shall he eat.”
And how is it that the huddled masses are able to endure this torture? A system which seems to throw overboard the actual value of human life and virtue in order to make it easier for a few to stay in control couldn’t possibly coexist with a pacified society. In this instance, we have our own tablets of Soma to swallow, in the form of consumerism, the social constructs of love or family life, petty pleasures like sexual release or gluttony, and of course, the number one ‘opiate of the masses,’ religion.
Though it is impossible to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of our religious overlords, it does an interesting angle to the system. Religion provides the ‘eternal proletariat’ (those, who, the grander scheme of things, do not represent the one percent of the world with most of the wealth) with semi-profound notions of an afterlife, and, more importantly, the concept of natural human flaw. The only defining trait of all religions of the world is that they see mankind in this state as imperfect. The principle western religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all use the word “salvation” as a cornerstone of religion. Salvation from what? Mankind’s natural ability to be free.
Original sin was freedom from the inability to think for oneself. When Adam and Eve partook of the tree of knowledge they were merely freeing themselves from the inability to think for themselves. Our religion tells us that freedom is slavery. In this case, freedom to think is slavery to sin. Even eastern religions contend that mankind must strive to attain higher levels of reality to become complete; meaning, of course, that man in his current state is essentially flawed and incomplete. And so, with our priests, and rabbis, and imams as the lords of our fields of faith, humanity has surrendered a part of its own freedom-our spiritual freedom-to become spiritual serfs to the concept that salvation is the only saving grace of the human race.
Our gilded cages are not hidden away from us; I have said nothing that anyone on this campus does not already realize. It is, perhaps difficult to see the bars of our cages when attempting to live good lives and fulfill ourselves emotionally. The sad truth is, however, that until slavery is truly abolished in this world, humanity will never be fulfilled collectively, and no one will be truly fulfilled individually, but from the modern world, there are very few abolitionists.