If we do whatever it takes to give them a childhood of unparalleled freedom, they will know themselves and naturally progress on the freedom track. They won’t be bogged down with asinine rules and regulations created to ensure docile obedient adults…adults who have no understanding of freedom.

My freedom lay in raising a free child, in ignoring the remarks of others telling me that I was ruining her life by giving her freedom. I felt freedom radiate through me as I sat, year after year, quietly watching my daughter grow and make decisions according to what she really felt and believed. Her choices came from her heart and were not influenced by what she thought a teacher, controlling parent or even a peer wanted.

Raising my unprocessed child was more freeing than anything I’ve ever done – before or since. And now she soars.

School is the antithesis of freedom. Remove that burden from your child’s life and they will experience true freedom, naturally entering the adult world with a strength that is lacking in today’s leaders.

by Valerie Fitzenreiter, author
The Unprocessed Child: Living without School
www.ubpub.com

I have enjoyed exploring what it means to be free by using processes that are themselves free. I play and record improvised music and also host a radio show where I interview people about social change and spirituality.

The Great Leap Forward airs weekly on Free Radio Santa Cruz, 101.1 FM, www.freakradio.org The radio station is an experiment in being free by being the media without any outside authority; FRSC is commercial-free, collectively-run and has been operating without a license from the US government since 1995.

Ever since I did an interview with Native American activist/musician John Trudell, I often choose to use the words “being free” instead of the word “freedom.” He pointed out to me that freedom has become “a habitual, lazy abstraction.” Trudell offered his personal way of liberating freedom; “Life is about responsibility,” he told me. “Freedom is an abstraction. Responsibility is not.”

In an interview with performance artist Laurie Anderson, I asked about the lyrics from her song Statue of Liberty; “Freedom is a scary thing / Not many people really want it.” She told me that, “A lot of people are scared of the responsibility that comes with freedom. The idea that you’re the only one in charge is too much for people.”

To be free is to experience life as it unfolds, without borders or rules. When we feel free, there are no conditions or authority that we accept or deny, submit to or rebel against. The authority of science, religion or politics can be helpful in communicating ideas that point to reality, but ideas can become a restriction if their meaning is codified and if free interpretation is sacrificed.

To be free is to be conscious that we have a choice in the way that we experience reality.

Marshall Rosenberg is the founder of Nonviolent Communication and in my interviews with him I’ve been reminded that we each choose where we place our attention in every moment. We have been taught to think that we are not free in how we experience reality; we may believe that the words and actions of others cause the feelings that we experience.

In this way we easily become slaves to moral judgment and we focus our attention on receiving rewards and avoiding punishment from teachers, parents, friends, lovers and everyone. Marshall Rosenberg turned it around this way, “People who are in touch with their feelings don’t make good slaves.”

The concept of time is also an authority that we trade our freedom for. To be free from the past and the future is to experience reality without conditions. When habitual tendencies are not present, reality is experienced with a curiosity and openness in the present and not within a closed relationship with the authority of past / future.

Become your own authority. Be free. “Be a lamp unto yourself,” said Buddha. “Do it yourself,” said Ian MacKaye from the punk bands Minor Threat and Fugazi.

Our individual expressions of being free are diverse and independent, yet interconnected. In Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl writes, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

By John Malkin

Sounds of Freedom is my book of interviews with 16 musicians speaking about social change and spirituality including Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, Ani DiFranco, Utah Phillips, The Indigo Girls, Boots Riley, John Trudell, Michelle Shocked and Tom Morello. Sounds of Freedom has an introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh and comes with a music CD with one song from each of the artists interviewed.

Check out Sounds of Freedom at the Parallax Press website: www.parallax.org. I am currently putting together a book about punk rock and spirituality. Please contact me if you would enjoy being involved in this project or if you’d like more information about my writings, interviews or music: jsmalkin@hotmail.com

Also, freedom means the ability to dress, work and play the way I want and to live how and where I want, as long as I am not harming anyone else. The concept of freedom is so confronting to so many because it makes them question their values and behaviour which they know are lacking but either do not know, or do not want to know, how to change.

World leaders should be preaching tolerance, acceptance of diversity, especially in this age of rapid globalization, and love for all humanity regardless or color, creed, and religion. Much more energy and money could be put into programs and policies for healing and creating peace than for war.

We need to set an example for future generations; practice what we preach, dematerialize, love unconditionally and unreservedly and look after the planet.

by Jo Garnett
Australia

Is there, in fact, hope for Africa’s future?

Yes. Provided human populations develop programs that will stabilize, or optimize, their growth rate. It is very important to implement child health care programs along with family planning so that women can expect that their children will live – instead of knowing, as they do today, that many of them will die.

There are many signs of hope. Along a lake shore in Tanzania, for example, villagers are planting trees where all the trees had disappeared.

Women are taking more control over their lives, and, once they become better educated, then the birth rate begins to drop. And the children are being taught about the dire effects of habitat destruction.

There is the terrible pollution around the world, the balance of nature is disturbed, and we are destroying our beautiful planet. There are fears of new epidemics for which there will be no drugs, and, rather than fight the cause, we torture millions of animals in the name of medical progress.

But in spite of all this I do have hope. And my hope is based on four factors.

The Human Brain

Firstly, we have at last begun to understand and face up to the problems that threaten us and the survival of life on Earth as we know it. Surely, then, we can use our problem-solving abilities, our brains, and, joining hands around the world, find ways to live that are in harmony with nature.

Indeed, many companies have begun “greening” their operations, and millions of people worldwide are beginning to realize that each one of us has a responsibility to the environment and our descendants, and that the way each one of us lives our life does matter, does make a difference.

The Determination of Young People

My second reason for hope lies in the tremendous energy, enthusiasm and commitment of a growing number of young people around the world. As they find out about the environmental and social problems that are now part of their heritage, they want to fight to right the wrongs.

Of course they do – they have a vested interest in this, for it will be their world tomorrow. They will be moving into leadership positions, into the work force, becoming parents themselves. Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.

The Indomitable Human Spirit

My third reason for hope lies in the indomitable nature of the human spirit. There are so many people who have dreamed seemingly unattainable dreams and, because they never gave up, achieved their goals against all the odds, or blazed a path along which others could follow.

As I travel around the world I meet so many incredible and amazing human beings. They inspire me. They inspire those around them.

The Resilience of Nature

My fourth reason for hope is the incredible resilience of nature. I have visited Nagasaki, site of the second atomic bomb that ended World War II. Scientists had predicted that nothing could grow there for at least 30 years.

But, amazingly, greenery grew very quickly. One sapling actually managed to survive the bombing, and today it is a large tree, with great cracks and fissures, all black inside; but that tree still produces leaves. I carry one of those leaves with me as a powerful symbol of hope.

I have seen such renewals time and again, including animal species brought back from the brink of extinction.

So let us move into the next millennium with hope, for without it all we can do is eat and drink the last of our resources as we watch our planet slowly die. Instead, let us have faith in ourselves, in our intellect, in our staunch spirit.

Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace impatience and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love.

by Jane Goodall
Author, Activist, Primatologist
The Jane Goodall Institute
www.janegoodall.org

In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.

Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. to deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it.

With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness-and our ability to tell our own stories.

Stories that are different from the one’s we’re brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

by Arundhati Roy
author of War Talk and
The God of Small Things