A View from the Precipice: Freedom balanced by Love

I believe history is on the side of freedom. We are free to live for only our own self and not without sound reason do we do so. But there's no getting away from the fact that we're social beings tied to the earth; there's no getting away from what one might call the soul. Ideologies that exonerate freedom at the expense of others and nature disgraces freedom and, ultimately, jeopardizes it as well.

It is often said, with freedom comes responsibility. While I believe that's true, in my vision freedom ultimately must be sustained by love. Human history appears to be in a flux between the individual and the collective; and individual freedom is ultimately balanced by love for the collective, or collective 'spirit'. Here we must make greater use of the talents and gifts of our poets.

To my view, the modern era appears as that of an adolescent, young adult time. Free to create a sentimental, self-indulgent idea of our selves apart from others and nature, full of our reason, confident in our scientific reductionism, thinking ourselves old enough to do away with childish myths, we struck out towards that distant land in the pride of the self. Granted freedom, we thought we could live a life of self-interest if only other people would be more educated, more reasonable, or more responsible. But as I see it, human salvation will never come through an individualistic ideal, whether based on reason, morality, or the propagation of media images; human salvation comes through greater realization of our collective nature.

On the trail of the poetic genius, we come to the parable of the prodigal son, a story that ripely lends itself to a collective narrative towards a kind of spiritual movement. Yet I find myself sympathetic to the plight of the prodigal son and one senses the father is as well. Because by going off into the distant land, one learns more of the wisdom of the father than had they never ventured out there. Not like how the modernist who looks down on the middle ages as the so called "dark ages", I expect we'll look back at the modern era with dramatic sympathy, marked by tragedy and triumph, a period of learning nonetheless.

Through the promotion of a collective narrative, it can provide an invitation difficult to refuse, or difficult to disengage from. It casts roles that others may find in themselves, including those who reject it. While marked by an air of festivity, it calls into question one's sense of self, eroding away at the false pedestal, and enables an awakening towards the truth of our plight and the individuals role in its outcome. All together, the project provides a hypothetical basis for a spiritual movement capable of purging pride from the land, or at least to a critical degree towards the restoration of harmony and balance.