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
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Eulogy for the Rainbow Cattle Company
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