The Only Freedom They Can Never Take

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” – Dune

Never forget Cole’s Law:  “Shredded cabbage and carrot can make a decent salad.”

Frank Herbert wrote the opening quote for this post about a desert planet full of sand, giant worms, political backstabbing, and SpaceLSD®.  He could have been describing a Tuesday on the Internet, or maybe even Elon’s plan to get SpaceX™ stop SpaceX®’s shares from crashing and carving a trillion-dollar crater into the S&P 500©.

But back to fear.  Why is it used so often?

It’s because emotions are potent weapons, so they get weaponized.

Constantly.

Every advertisement, every mainstream media news segment, every political social media post is designed to make me feel something specific so I will do something specific.

When my dentist died, his family couldn’t find his tombstone.  There was no plaque on it.

Outrage is easy to provoke, and it motivates.  Fear moves product.  Comfy feels gets votes.  The people pushing the buttons understand this better than most philosophers ever did, I mean, have you ever read much about MK Ultra?

Do you really think they ever stopped, or are they using it now through SnapBook™ and InstaFace©?

The O.G. ancient stoic philosophers wanted to believe that reason was what they used to make decisions.  Marcus Aurelius sat in his tent writing notes to himself about virtue while his son grew up into the Roman version of Hunter Biden.  Using reason as a source of virtue is timeless, but it’s almost completely ignored by actual humans with nervous systems and SnapGram© accounts.

Humans feel first.  Only then do we invent reasons.

Five guys with booze will start a fight.  Five guys with weed will start a band.

That is really the order of operations.  But it also implies that if I guard my feelings then I can guard my decisions.  If I let someone else set the temperature while I’m driving and I have already handed them the steering wheel and they say, “Ha!  Driver gets to choose what’s on the radio!” have I twisted the metaphor too far to include peanut butter and PEZ®?

Absurdity aside, if I hand someone the ability to control me with emotion, I cease to be anything but that MK Ultra automaton.  Thankfully, I tend to run anti-trend anyway.

If the herd is charging one direction, my first move is to imagine that they’re headed toward a cliff at a full gallop.  That habit has kept me out of more than one mistake, like investing my 401K in Beanie Babies©.  But even I, John Wilder, still have a pulse and a set of instincts.

The difference, though, is whether I treat those instincts as orders or as suggestions.

My decisions are my choice.

Any one practicing for a staring contest should take a good, hard look in the mirror.

Yes, emotions matter.  They can be fuel.  But I still get to choose how I feel about an issue.  In the end, that very well may be the only freedom that cannot be taken from me:  I can only give it away.

They can take my money, my job, and MySpace© page.  They can take my reputation.  They can take the flags and the stories I grew up believing.  They can flood every screen with the approved feeling of the week from that high-fructose corn syrup of actresses, Zendaya.

Why high-fructose corn syrup?  No one likes it, and it’s in absolutely everything.

Regardless of Zendaya, what they cannot do is reach into my skull and flip the switch.

Unless I hand them the key.

I used to eat at Applebee’s®.  Then I saved up enough cash to buy my own microwave?

I have watched people hand over that key in real time.  They scroll until the algorithm has told them exactly how angry to be, what to be angry about, and how to soothe that anger.

They outsourced their emotions to the loudest voice in the room and call it being informed . . . “tRUsTinG tHe scIENcE”.

The alternative is to be deliberate.

I notice the emotion when it shows up.  Turn it around in my skull, and name it while avoiding the drama.

Then, and only then, do I decide whether it points toward Truth, Beauty, and Goodness or whether it is just another current trying to pull me somewhere I never intended to go.

That pause is the whole game. In that pause I still own the tiller.

I can choose the things that flow from Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I can choose honor and discipline instead of convenience and shortcuts. I can choose the hard path because, as the old proverb says, calm seas do not make good sailors.  Smooth water teaches me almost nothing about flip flops, pop-tops, inexplicable tattoos, or using a mixer to blend iced alcoholic beverages.  Oh, wait, that’s Jimmy Buffet talking about his rough time.

My bad.  But the point of Margaritaville is that it shows how a life free from discipline leads to hard lessons in the end, anyway.  I want storms.  I want them early.

It’s rare that a defibrillator fails, but when it happens, no one is shocked.

Discipline looks boring from the outside.  And I am boring.  Honor looks stubborn.  And I’m damned stubborn.  Choosing not to feel what the crowd demands can look cold.

Fine.

I don’t control the storms.  I do not control the media cycle, the markets, the next manufactured crisis, or the next fashionable cause.

I do control whether those things dictate my next move.

Everything else can be bargained, taxed, regulated, stolen, or canceled.  The choice of how I feel about an issue stays mine until I surrender it.

So, I guard it.

I hear they have a new parking meteor at the International Space Station.

The sea will not stay calm, our lives are filled with storms.  The only question is to whether I choose to hold the tiller, or if I’ve already given up for a free ride on the SpaceLSD© express.

At least they have Margaritas.