Of Kings, Gods, and Organic Freedom

Once upon a time, a new king was crowned. The new king wanted to do right by his people, so he went to see God, to ask him how he should run his kingdom.

Upon arriving at God's house, the king launched into his request:

"Oh Great and glorious God! I am your humble servant, and I wish to do what is right and good. So please tell me the correct way to arrange and run my kingdom, so that you may be greatly pleased."

God thought for a second, and then gleefully replied, "However you want!"

The king thought about that answer all the way home. When he returned, he went about establishing a kingdom where people could live pretty much however they wanted.

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If there's anything we can say about God, it's that he likes freedom. Just look at the world around you. In fact, the biggest argument ever raised against God is that he allows us too much freedom. Sometimes we wish he would take away our freedom to do terrible things.

But he doesn't. The world we live in is a world where everyone is pretty much free to do whatever they want.

One thing you can do with your freedom is implement rigid systems for controlling other people. We are so free, we are free to destroy freedom.

But I think that there must be something to this freedom thing, if God is so keen on it. And so it seems to me that the best thing I could do with freedom is to follow God's lead.

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I call this approach "organic freedom". It's looking out at the world, and then following the example we see there.

We see a world of diverse people with widely different interests and values. So we try to build things that allow for wide differences, and encourage people to pursue their own ends.

We see the scruffy, tangled mess of the natural world, and try to respect that messiness.

We recognize our own spastic disconcerting thought processes, and try to "ride the beast" rather than force ourselves into a confining system.

Mostly, we recognize and appreciate those things that fall outside of our systems as the beautiful bits of originality they are.

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We are the kings, and once we recognize the immense freedom we've been given, we're going to set about smashing our castles.