I believe deep freedom is the call of our times.
By deep freedom I do not mean the savage and suffocating freedom to dominate the world and its people which is advocated for by the New Confederacy. Nor do I mean the surface level and superficial freedom advocated for by the moribund and vapid neoliberal center. Deep freedom demands, in the final words of W.E.B. Du Bois, we “live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.”
Deep freedom is the freedom to transform the state of one’s soul, self and society. Transformation is the organized emergence of a fundamentally distinct reality from that which presently reigns. In the history of religion, this radical transformation is named prophetic. In the history of politics, this radical transformation is named revolutionary. We must bind them together; revolutionary politics devoid of prophetic commitment ultimately leaves us in a nihilistic rut, and a prophetic commitment devoid of revolutionary politics ultimately leaves us at an altruistic impasse.
To transform your soul, you must accept that your life has ultimate significance and is ultimately loved and purposeful. To transform your self, you must accept that embodiment is the fruit of life & living. To transform society, you must accept the awesome responsibility of making a world historic contribution towards the Earth and its inhabitants achieving our rightful place in the universe.
This means deep freedom must be nourished. The forces opposed to deep freedom know this all too well, and do all they can to prevent this nourishment. Consider this: today the New Confederacy is marching towards fascist autocracy. Rather than the formal succession of its predecessor, this New Confederacy is achieving a strategy of neo-session, creating a reactionary republic within the decaying liberal bourgeois democracy of this country. It has taken hold of the vast legal power of the judiciary system, transforming it into the primary staging grounds for a full-on assault on the freedom movement amendments to the Constitution—the 13th, 14th and 15th Reconstruction Amendments, and the 23rd, 24th and 26th Civil Rights Amendments. Rather than a formal declaration of war, this New Confederacy has ballooned the funding and scope of ICE and has given it the power and means to be our own American Gestapo. Donald Trump is the towering head of the New Confederate hydra, who immediately upon assuming office has declared a war of deportation against millions of people, has threatened to complete the ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, has orchestrated the largest upward transfer of wealth in modern US history and has used chaos as a tactic on his march to autocracy. And similar to its predecessor, the New Confederacy places the defeat and destruction of mass movements and power-building organizations at the center. In the face of this overwhelm, the nourishment of the vision of deep freedom becomes paramount. But how might we nourish deep freedom?
Deep freedom is nourished by three stances: absconsion, gathering and awakening. Absconscion has a powerful history for Black people. Given the catastrophic horrors of 500+ years of racial terrorism, absconsion is a consistent throughline in the cultural, social and political resistance of Black people across the Earth, and it has led directly to the self-emancipation of many of our ancestors and contributed directly to the defeat of colonial slavery in the Americas. Gathering has a tremendous history for Black people. Gathering is the practice of co-creation, joining together for the sake of something both greater than yet impossible without each of our selves. The petit-maroonage, the temporary communities, dissonant societies of the swamps are all examples of the practice of gathering. Awakening has a challenging history for Black people. Awakenings often refer to specific moments of religious uprising, which culminate in the reconstruction or demolition of specific religious communities, especially Christian. But the best of what awakenings have on offer is the prospect of deep personal transformation, of spiritual revaluation that reconstructs our sense of soul, self and society in the context of an unfolding of the natural history of the universe. Awakening shatters the illusions we find ourselves addicted to in everyday life and allows us to enter daringly into a new way of being in the world.
The present is both monstrous and momentous. Let this truth galvanize us towards the liberation of our own commitment to deep freedom!
