As you may recall, I’ve decided to use Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots to unearth some basic thoughts in our tumultuous moment.
The last chapter examined order; turning the page this morning, I was hoping for a reasonably contained topic that would help jumpstart my thinking and prepare me for the rest of my day’s projects. Alas: LIBERTY does not particularly fit that description, but I’m feeling the pressure to keep my commitment to this project (is that self-imposed “rule” an expression of my personal freedom or a hindrance to it?), so here we go.
Weil first defines “liberty” as “the ability to choose,” which is all well and good, and then recognizes the fact that any time people live in community — almost always, of course — limits will naturally arise in the form of rules.
That’s unarguably true, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but my first question — about self-imposed “rules” — really has me thinking. I’ve struggled for my entire adult life to discern my own limits, and I will admit to having constructed an elaborate and often exhausting set of parameters within which I attempt to operate, every day, as a coherent human being who has given a great deal of thought to such things. I cannot even remotely tell whether these rules lie at the root of my personal flourishing or are, in fact, a prison that must be dismantled (the feedback I get from “the world” and from those who know and love me is mixed and contradictory at best).
Anyone who dredges up the energy to attend a yoga class and then leaves radiant, revitalized, and wondering why this choice doesn’t come naturally and without resistance after nearly thirty years of practice knows exactly what I mean. Extrapolating that choice and its consequences to an entire day/week/life, one could fill her years with choices that benefit self and others (yoga, purposeful work, caring for family, volunteering), but when does so much “choosing” become its own problem? When do you put down the “educational reading” and pick up some crappy romance novel, or just go walk the dogs, and how do you keep from telling yourself “putting down the educational book and picking up the crappy romance novel (ok, I’ve only read ten pages and I’m not even sure it’s a romance or, for that matter, crappy; this wonderful newsletter convinced me to buy it, and it’s now adding to the un-fun pressure of my nightstand) is ‘good for you,’ and walking the dogs makes you a ‘good dog mom,’” which is really just self-imposed-rule-following in disguise?
Yet while the erosion of personal liberty through self-imposed rules is fascinating and personally relevant, it is not the focus of Weil’s chapter and is certainly not the #1 burning question as we face down the possibility of a second Trump term and its accompanying New World Order horror show Project 2025. So back to the text.
Interestingly, Weil focuses not on the width or narrowness of rules to recognize their impacts on liberty, but rather on the conditions within which those rules are made. She writes, “They should emanate from a source of authority which is not looked upon as strange or hostile, but loved as something belonging to those placed under its direction.” Rules properly instituted, she argues, are understood and internalized and do not have to be endlessly re-adjudicated, just as “the habit, formed by education, of not eating disgusting or dangerous things is not felt by the normal man to be any limitation of his liberty in the domain of food. Only a child feels such a limitation.”
Our Deep Canvassing program officially launched this Sunday, and I spent the entire day talking to low-propensity left-leaning and unaffiliated (independent) voters in Thornton, CO. My canvassing partner and I had some wildly profound conversations that day, and my one overarching takeaway is this: people are amazing, thoughtful, nuanced beings who respond to their lives and their world in ways that directly reflect their experience of that world. This sounds obvious to the point of absurdity, but I’ve re-learned it again and again, out in neighborhoods and talking to people I’d have never known existed but for the bizarre and life-changing act of knocking on doors: if I was that person and I had lived that exact life, how can I possibly presume to think I’d have reached different conclusions about things?
These wonderful, open-hearted people made it clear to me — if it wasn’t already abundantly clear, which it is — that it has been a long time since ordinary Americans have felt a sense of reciprocal relationship with the authorities entrusted to guide and shape our lives. It is no wonder, then, that we have such an incoherent cultural relationship with freedom. The goodwill has been squandered, and our society is full of people who, as Weil puts it, “either seek refuge in irresponsibility, puerility [childishness] and indifference — a refuge where the most they can find is boredom — or feel themselves weighed down by responsibility at all times for fear of causing harm to others.” To that, and based on these conversations and many others, I’ll presumptuously add a third category: those whose circumstances preclude both of those choices, and are just trying to get by and do the best they can.
Reading endless articles, as I do, about the “state of democracy,” one can have the experience of occupying an increasingly airless room. That “airless room” is a lot like a prison, and — I think we can all agree — a prison is the physical incarnation of the antithesis of liberty.
So even though the prospect of “spending Sunday knocking on doors in Thornton, CO” was kind of like that yoga class, so was the effect of having gone: invigorating.
And, I mean, really: if I didn’t have dogs to walk, would I walk as much? Feeling responsible for others is actually, perhaps, a key to true freedom.
Also maybe just reading a crappy romance novel every once in a while and not making a big freaking deal about it.
A parallel thought from Ian Bassin: "Democracy, as a form of government, isn’t just a set of laws. As De Tocqueville described, it’s the 'habits of the heart' that we carry with us each day, the belief that we have the agency to chart our own future."
You gave definition to a lot that has been undefinable in my life as of late. Thank you, Allison.