The human choice to be

We quoted Kris Kristofferson’s words previously wailed by Janis Joplin: “Freedom is just another word for nothing else to lose,” a typical Teutonic starting point of the “nothing” perspective. Shakespeare in Hamlet offers the choice: “To be or not to be.” It finally does not matter where one begins or ends. “No-thing” is a creation of the mind, a psychological apparition; “to be” is concrete and material.

Lovers tend to count the petals of a flower: “She loves me, she loves me not.” Or, in private, she does the opposite. “Not” is a leftover of a previous era of idealism, set against an “ought,” an ideal, rather than congruent to what is, the real.

In our time, the preoccupation is with the facticity of “being and becoming” brought about by the scientific understanding that existence requires both narratives of “substance and process.” Nature is seen as both “matter and force, atomic and energy fields.”

Political discourse in a previous generation was about “freedom from,” understood as liberation from an external stranglehold but reflective of an internal desire to be, like the call for liberation from Uncle Sam’s military cuddle, or from ISIS cutthroat methods. “Freedom to” longs to create and innovate one’s path and direction. I’ve called that the “wellness unto life”!

It is in this last sense that we take freedom to be a human choice, a banner for being and becoming, a step further than just be liberated from social limits imposed by the accidents of birth. “Liberation from” in historical telling is usually accompanied by social upheavals told through a loud narrative, thus more noticeable compared to the muted and personal manner that being-and-becoming touches when it hits our soul and the apex of a transformative shift.

This may be too abstract for many who still chase identities away from, or dictated by, societal prescriptions, like those in our geo-neighborhood not yet free until they determine the terms of hosting a U.S. air base. Freedom embraces the facticity of one’s life now, bound by the genesis and terminus of unique cellular life in a specific place, at a particular time, with chosen roles to play, and more importantly, of taking the option to relate and demonstrate the substance and process of one’s existence in all its concrete uniqueness and glory. Uncle Sam does not determine our freedom. We do. Nor does Tokyo do Okinawa’s. Ryukyans do!

In a culture that puts a premium on personal relationship rather than ideology (Mao guarded power personal relations, accused of encouraging a personality cult in his later years), keeping one’s public “face” unblemished before others is an art form. Today, it means that the 3G smartphone has the whole of China talking in the train and on the bus, in the plain and on the plateau, by the river and on the hill, walking on the road and on sidewalks, even vehicle drivers while driving!

The human choice is no longer just negating the forceful and coercive dictates and influence of others. It is taking available assets and plotting out a direction totally of one’s choosing. In China, that means personal connection to influence decisions in the financial health of one’s household and kin.

China goes after abusive powers and unexplained wealth. Bo Xilai, former mayor of nationally administered municipality of Chongqing (the others are Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai) and a charismatic member of the Politburo, was caught abusing power by covering up for his wife’s murder of a British colleague. His high profile case, the first judicial proceeding to go on public display, signaled what was thought to be just a symbolic gesture to pacify drooling laptops and media lapdogs; it turned out to be the new SOP.

Xi Jinping drums up the democratic and egalitarian elements of the China Dream, the CPC on anti-corruption measures, and the bounds of the rule of law, with equal force. The three loci of power in China are the military, energy, and finances. To date, he took down top heads of the military and the energy field. He’s got finance next, even if the current head is protected (might even go down with him) by no less than former president Jiang Zemin.

After orchestrating the conduct and content of APEC 2014, PM Li Keqiang took off for the ASEAN gathering in Myanmar while President Xi Jinping went to the G20 in Australia, drumming up the civilizational refrain reflected in a peoples’ style and profound national understanding of the middle “kingdom” of Zhongguo, of always maintaining a balance of differing forces in partnership and cooperation.

We use China in our narrative but we refer to all humans in the planet, regardless of the circumstances of social milieu. We are born free. It is the exercise of freedom that makes us human. The choice “to be” is not about being safe and secure on top; it is about having the courage to expend one’s being away, investing it with care so others may also be free to be. The option to choose is human.