The Dormant Seeds of Freedom

The final item I want to refer to from Issue 13 is a letter to the editor by a fellow named David Jacobson. The author of the letter is glad he found The Voluntaryist, glad to see the commitment to non-violence and closes his letter on an optimistic note:

Perhaps, just perhaps, there are many more people such as I, and you, who haven't allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into accepting a watered-down definition of freedom. Perhaps, just perhaps, many others also will reject the sordid notion that freedom is conditional upon the state. Perhaps, just perhaps, the dormant seeds of freedom will yet bloom. Perhaps we can live as human beings after all.

At the time this was published, I was still a product of brainwashing. Yet there was obviously a dormant seed of freedom, of an understanding that we don’t need a state, somewhere in my being.

But at the end of 1984, when this issue was published, my husband and I had a 15 month old and I was also 7 months pregnant with our second. We were busy. Surrounded by spit-up and diapers, there was no time to take a shower, let alone stop long enough to re-consider whether what I had learned about the dangers of life without a state were true or not.

But then again, there I was busy living a daily life without the state, a daily life of anarchy. And it worked. Sure, there was what one might call chaos in our lives, but it was good chaos, it was loving chaos, it was life.

We were perfectly fine. We needed no government authority mandating what diapers to use, when to begin solid foods, or explaining to us that our first born was failing the subject of mobility because instead of crawling, she moved about from a sitting position. (She would straighten her legs, dig her heels against the floor, and then slide her butt up to her heels. Repeating this motion over and over, she could go anywhere.)

Can you imagine what a state-licensed government expert would have done if we had a situation where the state controlled the mobility education of babies? They would have deemed her completely crawling disabled and put her on meds or on some program to try and force her to develop her mobility skills in the manner the state deemed proper.

But living in our state of anarchy, we simply watched with fascination and decided she was a genius because her method had lots of advantages. She could move about easily AND hold objects in her hand at the same time. She could hold two things if she wanted because both hands were free. She was fast too! Pure genius I tell you.

The dormant seed of freedom and the desire for independence is born in all of us. Under the right conditions, it will germinate and bloom.