how free are you.........really?

note; mods, feel free to move this, i had no idea where it should belong.

ok, here'e the basic idea. what does living free really mean to you personally?

i've always considered myself to be about as free as an american can be in the present atmosphere. i do own land in new mexico, paid for, off the grid, and as a rec property i owe 74 dollars a year property tax. i only spend a few months a year there and spend the rest traveling in a small toyota r.v. 15 to 20 mpg. i do go through about 5 gallons of propane bi-monthly. otherwise i have no bills other than car insurance, i do make sure my rig is legal just to avoid the headaches of being pulled over without.
i live on the cheap, do not pay taxes, other than sales tax on needed items.
i do live on less than the amount than need to file taxes, easily provable if need be.

i'm just wondering, in your opinion, is does this concept define freedom?
what other concepts come to mind?

Anything that has escaped Earth's gravitational field, and entered space....

Originally posted by freetree64
Anything that has escaped Earth's gravitational field, and entered space....

lol, great answer, even though it's a bit out there.

i've been having this conversation with friends lately. a buddy of mine is buried in debt and considering walking away from everything, in his words, "to regain his freedom."

who ever thinks were "free"... just wow.


Comon, we live in a prision without bars, they always know where we are, they know where we live, they know where we work, if they wanted to they could probably figure out what we eat, we are watched, and monitored just like a jail without bars, we have a house number, a persons number (SS)

Since the first day you're born things are planned out for you, i mean you can do anything you want, in a way. You can do what ever you want, become what ever you want, as long as it follows GUIDELINES LAYED OUT by earlier generations on what you can or cannot do, the ways you have to take to get that job.

There are no more firsts this far into existance, you can't start your own country, you can't branch of america, its not goonna happen your not free, your american, owned by america, you have to do what america says, and if america doesn't want you to leave america it wont let you.

You dont get to start a new chapter, write it, your apart of it. you are the writing.


FREE is NON existant.



YOU KNOW WHAT show me how free you really are, try running across the boarder as fast as you can without stoping.


you'll see how free you really are.

reply to post by sv_gravity 800


yes, i agree to a point, but alot of what you said really doesn't concern me personally, i spend most of the year in the woods, way off the grid.
your reply seems more oriented for those on the grid, working 9 to 5 for a conglomerate.
when the time comes, it would be pretty difficult to round me up, i may be one of the holdouts that will fight back and not die when the stores close their doors.

I like your question. It is important for all free-thinkers to contemplate. I don't know the answer. But I can begin to answer it from the back-end.

i think the most enslaving thing to man is his body. It requires lots of stuff. Food, water, clothes, sex, etc. This is universal and cuts across all generations. It imposes daily, sometimes hourly, demands. It is our choice to keep up our body, abuse it, or kill it.

The second most enslaving thing, is living the American dream: get married, get a house, get a job, have a kid, etc. The obligations of home, work, family and paying the bills are extraordinarily enslaving. It is our choice as to whether to keep these obligations.

Thus, I would say the most enslaving things are what we choose to do everyday.

Paradoxically, our mind is the most free thing that we possess but the most enslaving too as it directs our daily choices which as outlined above is our ultimate enslavement.

Cool question.

I think each person defines their own idea of freedom within the larger framework. I can't define freedom for you or say whether or not your life sounds "free". Although, it does sound pretty darn good. But even with all the freedom you have, you are still bound to do certain things to maintain the level of freedom that you like.

I'm free. I'm free to do pretty much whatever I want. I can get a job if I need to, I can go just about anywhere I want to, I can buy pretty much whatever I want. My needs are few. My husband and I own a home on a little bit of property in NM. I'm free to surround myself with the kind of people, animals and life that I like.

There are people on death row that consider themselves free. Then there are people that wouldn't know freedom if you slapped them in the face with it.

I guess it all depends on how you define freedom. And we each define it differently.

reply to post by rubbertramp


your right, i was talking towards people on the grid.


l i f e is boloney, took me way to long to figure that out.


"When you hold the information you can bend it all you want"

reply to post by Sibilance



ah, yes, nice.

is freedom not only a state of mind?
for some, maybe freedom is a matter of buckets of money?

I would say I am about as free as anyone can be under the dismal circumstances of a human being that was born without any choice in the matter into a life of servitude to a ever hungry state by way of being required to pay taxes and national insurance.

In my freedom I must keep in mind that I must adhere to rules I do not respect and that I constantly find contemptuous as I have no real rights to live as I wish to live. I must remember never to break the connection with the war loving hegemony branching out from Westminster and I must continue to feed the machine I despise a percentage of the fruits of my toil – or suffer prosecution for my choice to cease and desist.

I am therefore as free as anyone else who is forced to obey the laws of their land and who must adhere to regulations that relentlessly come thick and fast, a forest of rules that when you find yourself failing to keep up, the roots, their agents will sweep your feet from under you and trample you in their courts.

Suddenly you might find that you have risked an even greater loss of personal wealth or worse, freedom to wander in the open air because the faceless and uncaring, the ones that are “only obeying their orders” have thrown you into jail at the whim of the corrupt and high and so called bloody mighty.

Freedom indeed!

So that all said I would say that I am about as free as the next person even though this being has no power in regard to opposing the mounting crimes my society inflicts onto others in far off lands under the guising lie of freedom, justice and liberty via rousing words like patriotism, hero and best of British, words now sullied and dirtied in my mind by their association with this cynical age of eternal warfare. Something nags at me, like a scratch in my mind’s eye that by paying my taxes I am complicit in blood but I do not have the freedom to wash them clean by refusing to pay my taxes so yes indeed I am free but only as free as anyone who finds themselves caught between a rock and a hard place.

I ache to shout “STOP” but it is just a word and I must remember that this freedom I should love but do not comes with no bite and no power as the vote I wield is carried on a slip of paper, a nothing!

How can a being love such a thing?

My so called freedom allows my tax monies I must pay to the machine to wage wars even though I am diametrically opposed to these wars, so yes indeed I am free – a freedom that only really becomes a reality when I close my eyes and sleep or when I wander in the highlands supremely happy and cut off from my race?

Freedom during the day in the cities is therefore to my mind just a miss-matched chimera built up over generations of lies and half truths, strengthened with indoctrinations initiated in the classroom and psychological programming continued via the vast media barrage that assaults me every day.

I want to be free more than anything but I feel I am in a cage built of contempt by inhuman scum for my very mind and soul.

This is not me in cynical mood this is just me seeing my life and the lives of others as reality as I recognise it and though it might seem I am unhappy to know this, the opposite is actually true because ignorance is not bliss, because ignorance is only a dank dungeon that lies behind the eyes.

As it stands I am conscious to identify beyond all doubt that I and the majority that is forced to feed the machine are so much more than a numbered resource and I hope that one day I live to see this “civilisation” fall like those citizens in Rome saw that mighty world fall.

A real freedom then or just a chance of freedom as we could risk a new dark age of a survival of the fittest? A chance of real freedom however without an entrenched elite is better than the freedom we have today in a world we have to share with a very entrenched elite I think .

[edit on 24-3-2010 by SmokeJaguar67]

reply to post by SmokeJaguar67


i love it. thanx to you and others who can explain themselves in such words.
at times i think the easiest solution to the freedom question only really involves ones personal level of happiness.
waking in the morn and not smiling to yourself about the day to come can't give one a feeling of freedom.

You cannot be truly free unless you are all powerful. For instance, if you think, I want to fly to the other side of the universe you will not be able to.

The only freedom we can have is the freedom to use all of our abilities. However, we don't really have that freedom right now in human history.

reply to post by rubbertramp


Thank you Sir.

I am crazy manic about daily exercise and meditation so I do manage to keep the black dog at bay but depression used to blight me many years ago due to PTSD but at least I can hold on to the knowledge that I am in a much better place now than I was then. I had just finished a good period of successful meditation hence the earlier post so life is good.

I suppose freedom could be a state of mind as someone told me once but I am not completely sold on that one yet

reply to post by time91


is it safe to assume your meaning mankinds mental capacity?
telepathy and other topics come to mind.'
interesting, never considered it.

reply to post by rubbertramp


Thats part of it(mental abilities), but mostly I meant even mundane freedoms like the choice to be or not be part of a system at a certain age. I think there should be land set aside where people can live if they do not want to be part of a system, and being part of any system should be by free will.

reply to post by rubbertramp


Thanks, thought that one up on the day i became freetree.....

reply to post by time91


got ya', personally, for me this is one of the reasons i spend so much time in wilderness areas, blm land and national forest. even though i do understand that wilderness areas were mostly set aside to keep resorses in the hands of the government, i do appreciate having places like the bob marshall left pretty much alone. i take much advantage of it.

reply to post by rubbertramp


Yeah, there is a small woods area of a few acres near my house I go to often as well. There is a small pond there as well as many trails, and it is very peaceful. I do feel more free there, even if it isn't true freedom its better than being in the city.

damn. i just want to make one fricken post but i have to reach 20 posts!

please, just let me get there. got a really juicy quote to post