We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
Interpretation
True freedom requires effort and action; many do not pursue it.
Karl Hess's quote highlights the concept of freedom as an illusion for those who do not actively seek it out. He suggests that while we believe we are free, our choices are often limited by societal norms and regulations, akin to a balloon constrained within a factory of pins. To experience true freedom, one must challenge these constraints and strive to live authentically, regardless of the obstacles.
In practice
In a speech about civil rights, you might reference this quote to emphasize the need for active participation in securing freedoms.
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.
The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
Freeing oneself from words is liberation.
If you are seeking for security, certainty, your eyes will become closed. And you will be less and less surprised and you will lose the capacity to wonder. Once you lose the capacity to wonder, you have lost religion. Religion is the opening of your wondering heart. Religion is a receptivity for the mysterious that surrounds us. Don't seek security; don't seek advice on how to live your life.
Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.
The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory.
The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor
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