Man himself is quickly becoming a cataclysm. Those “freedoms” which are now in man’s hands, given through the cultivation of technologies, have now become a prison for our brethren creatures, and our Mother, Nature, is convulsing, spewing poisonous liquids into her own children’s playground, on account of us.
There is the now old saying, “Give him enough rope to hang himself with”.This saying suggests that freedom, taken in a certain way and to a certain extreme,becomes self-destructive or suicidal. Imagine if, with a view to manifesting as much as possible, human beings of every sort were to perform whatever whimsical act crossed their minds without the slightest sense of restraint or self-control. Suicides might escalate to enormous heights, simply because one took no care to second think a feeling of freedom that came over them at the moment. Persons might walk out the door completely naked simply because the thought happened to cross their mind. Lies would no doubt escalate whenever honesty required an admission of responsibility for the faultiness of an action. And so on. In light of this, it is fairly obvious that freedom is not always something good in itself, but rather, remains good as part of a whole, a virtuous world, in which other virtues, such as self-restraint, sharing, and responsibility, are also cultivated.
In the discourse recorded as the Bhagavad-gita, Sri Krishna describes what later commentators refer to as “the regulative principles of freedom”. Here, Krishna asserts a critical principle which is to guide us, that freedom is tied into a regulative character. We imprison the beast, sometimes, even for its own sake.
Yet the prison of man, and that of the beast, though in some ways similar, are in important ways different. The zoo holds beasts as does the prison hold man. What is common in both cases is that the creature held loses the luxuriousness and freedom of the wider natural world. What is different is perhaps that we may in some greater degree feel kindly toward these coiled creatures whom we measure, these rotund mammoths that we coddle, whose companions we arrange marriages for, whose children we watch, as if loving
In their impatient struggle for power, they destroy incidentally, because that which they must move through blockades their grasp of power. They seek freedom-to, but also attempt to maintain themselves in a freedom-from-responsibility that attends this freedom. They want the milk without maintaining the cow.
grandparents. We watch them, who are as if our own family, with awe and reverence for the diversity of forms whose like we have never seen. It is a different situation in the prisons of men. Here, we do not coddle and comfort, but strike and restrain. We may measure here, but not because we care-for; rather, we fear-from. The prisoner’s satisfaction is not sought, in the case of man; only his complacency. Thus, a minimum of care is given, in stark contrast to the maximum given to our endangered friends.
The critical point is that we seek freedom, not for its own sake, but rather because freedom itself seeks satisfaction. This satisfaction is an ideal state, something to be legitimately striven for by legitimate means, a clarity in which the world is seen as good in itself, and anxious longing disappears. Such is the most complete and authentic freedom, a freedom to be sought for its own sake. But this requires that we practice self-restraint in the direction dictated by a mature understanding of self-satisfaction.
It is perhaps no small coincidence that the words ‘damage’ and ‘domain’ derive from the same ancient phoneme, as any life in man’s domain is certainly a creature in danger of damage, even of utter elimination. The technological superiority of man has no match among the beasts. Our technology has enabled us to endanger the greater realm of the earth. Not even the remote King Penguins of Antarctica, nor the Polar Bears of the Arctic regions–what to speak of the aquatics and avians of the Gulf of Mexico–remain outside man’s reach, and thus outside the threat of his present environmentally damaging behaviors. Man himself is quickly becoming a cataclysm. Those “freedoms” which are now in man’s hands, given through the cultivation of technologies, have now become a prison for our brethren creatures, and our Mother, Nature, is convulsing, spewing poisonous liquids into her own children’s playground, on account of us. Man sometimes amuses himself in the idea that nature is a cruel mother. Yet man has proven far crueler a force to life in this world as of now. What are her hurricanes, and forest fires, by comparison with man’s ambitions, his will to power?
Man is now freer than ever to pursue his unprecedented ambitions, because of the state of his technologies, but does he see fully the consequences of his actions? The Bhagavad-gita suggests that men, overcome by lust, engage in activities bent on destroying the world. Now, are we to suppose that, like the Joker of DC’s Batman comics, the CEOs of BP, or the Ship’s captain of the Exxon Valdez–or name any other major man-made disaster you like–they desired to see the world destroyed? This is of course to transform the complex human character into an oversimplified myth. But this is not, I think, what the Bhagavad-gita is trying to say. It suggests rather that, in their impatient struggle for power, they destroy incidentally, because that which they must move through blockades their grasp of power. They seek freedom-to, but also attempt to maintain themselves in a freedom-from-responsibility that attends this freedom. They want the milk without maintaining the cow.
The language of the Srimad Bhagavatam confirms this sort of view of the Earth in the fourth Canto, Chapter 18, whose title is translated by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami as, “King Prithu Milks the Earth Planet”. The comparison of the Earth to a cow is repeated elsewhere in the same work, such as at the beginning of the 10th Canto, in which the Earth goddess, Bhumi, takes the form of a cow in order to approach the Grandfather of all beings, Brahma. This idea of the Earth as a Goddess is not simply a crude, pagan fantasy, but is deeply significant, perhaps now more so than ever before. How we treat our cows in the West, how we treat our women, how we treat the Earth, all fall along the same set of values: We want the milk without maintaining the cow. This is the essentially demonic idea of freedom. It is a freedom-to-do-as-pleases-us which does not take into mind the responsibilities that attend such freedoms. Thus, destruction and failure is bound to occur, as much as in the Pancha-ratra tale of the man who tried to increase the economic efficiency of the goose that laid the golden egg came to an abrupt and disastrous end when he cut its head off so as to eliminate its own need for food. This sort of laissez faire view of natural resources is fantastically problematic, and in my view, deeply suspect in terms of the legitimizable range of its motives (though, to a growing number, I am speaking the obvious). Perhaps in one’s own space, and insofar as one’s activities are clearly not producing any negative impact on others, we can say that one is free to do as pleases one. But beyond this, when such fantastic risks are taken for short-term profit, with a minimal view of personal liability and responsibility to such damages as one enacts, this moves in the direction of a demonic enterprise, and has no legitimate or sustainable place in this world. Such action must be revolted against with all our human energy.
The critical point is that we seek freedom, not for its own sake, but rather because freedom itself seeks satisfaction. In Sanskrit, this satis-faction (from Lat., “making full”) is called ‘prasadam’. Prasadam is an ideal state, something to be legitimately striven for by legitimate means, a clarity in which the world is seen as good in itself, and anxious longing disappears. Such is the most complete and authentic freedom, a freedom to be sought for its own sake. But this requires that we practice self-restraint in the direction dictated by a mature understanding of self-satisfaction. To be tranquil is to be blessed with a freedom that is rarely attained in this world, and whose worth is beyond comparison. But to attain this, we must become free first from those activities which only produce further dis-satis-faction, further longing, desire, addiction, and angst. The Bhagavad-gita, in sum, describes the “methods”, the practices, by which, prasadam, or “satisfaction”, becomes established. And such an establishment of freedom is joyfully unbreakable once it is achieved. What freedom can one imagine which outstrips that?
