Welcome to Freerlove.org  
A place to explore
the meaning of
Love and Freedom


My Site

My name is Josh Putnam and I originally created this site to host my writing, mostly poetry, memoirs and occasional philosophical explorations in furtherance my goal of living an examined life.


 In the years since this site was born, I have updated the content from time to time, but have done little to promote it.   During that time, I have also broadened my interests and deepened my investigations.
           

 I chose the name freerlove.org for my site because I believe that love and freedom are the essential elements that determine the nature and quality of our existence and because, for this reason, love and freedom are things that are frequently misrepresented and misunderstood.   This site is a place for exploring what love and freedom are and what they can grow into and for combatting the pervasive re-branding of manufactured alternatives as "love" and "freedom" in the attempt to pass them off as the real things.


Consumer culture would have us believe that love is just like other products, processes or choices.  We are encouraged to shop for relationships the way we shop for cars or clothes, and to discard them just as easily when they begin to break down or go out of fashion.  Decision theory also claims that the optimal selection in all choices, including matters of the heart, can be deduced rationally.    I am conviced that these ideas are dangerously wrong.


Real love and real freedom are not incompatible with commitment; they depend on commitment.  Rules, routines and attitudes that are imposed upon us constrain our actions and hobble our imaginations.  But the responsibilities and commitments that we freely enter into are the very things that define us as women and men.   A truly free human being follows her heart until if finds its dream and then commits herself completely to making the dream real.  When we are deeply commited, we are free from fear, because even in failure we have given fully of ourselves. 

I disagree with those who feel that love is a form of bondage.  I also disagree with those who feel that freedom and love can only be real or only be reconcilled in "free love."  Deep love grows from deep commitments--personal, communal and ideological commitments.  The throw-away culture that is continuously being sold, consumed and discarded--like a snake swallowing its own tail--is an assault on our basic humanity.   Used consumer goods are thrown away so causally that the accumulating mountains of our own garbage threaten to bury us and our descendants.  Ideological commitments are discarded with equal ease--if we even bother to form them any more--until our interests and attitudes are as shallow an superficial as our participation.  Friendship and intimacy are traded as freely and openly as shares of stock and are evaluated in much the same way, based on dividends and level of risk.  In such a society, is it any wonder that so many people feel lost, alienated and depressed?


Freerlove.org promotes the alternative view that love is inseparable from commitment and that responsibities, when freely accepted, are distinct from restrictions.  Contrary to what many people have been led to believe, we Anarchists do not seek to create lawless chaos, in which the only law is the law of the jungle.  We seek to create a world based on freedom and equality in which every person is empowered to take responsibility for themeselves and their choices and encouged and inspired to freely imagine alternatives that have never been presented.   Such a world is only possible when we grow up enough to be deeply, passionately committed to our relationships and to our ideals.




"To become strong, a man’s life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted.
The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding himself with these limitations and by determining for himself what his duty is."
I-Ching Commentary, Wilhelm-Baines Translation


Latest News


May 2012: I have decided, after some time, that this site is overdue for a complete re-design.   This is an ongoing work-in-progress.  Please stay tuned for further developments and feel free to use the link to my blog below to send me feedback.  The content from the old site is linked below.





Essays

__________________

Salvador Allende and Me

Flowers of Choice

Calmly Into Fear

A Trip to the Woods

Wise Words of Everyone

On Anger

Eulogy for the Rainbow Cattle Company

Moral Sentiments and Choice

Soul Retrieval

Do You Believe in Magic?

_________________

Poems

_________________

Desires

What Remains

River Washed Stones

Safety

Death

Artemis

The River

This Too

Winter Night

Suicide

Who am I?

On the Horizon

Love Charm

Unconditional Love

Questions

Returning

Phoenixology

Metaphor

Gift

A New Road

The Divine Feminine