Homo liber

 

(…)

 

Here, where we are reviewing the “types” of men with whom we deal in the world, we finally see the real product of all the revolutions, all the transformations of human thought in recent centuries.

This type of man, already seen as the bearer of absolute despair, of a meaningless, empty, absurd existence after the “death of God,” will, in fact, appear more as someone who has learned not to take things as seriously as religious men, philosophers, and scientists do. Literature, beginning in the 19th century with Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and, very strongly, in the 20th century, will explore this “human type” to exhaustion. Its most perfect model will certainly be Mersault, a character in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger.

Mersault is the man who sees all things in life in a natural, direct way. He has a relationship with things and people that is not tied to artifice. He does not know how to play a character. If he does not feel any affection for his mother, he does not pretend to be saddened by her death. If he does not understand how he could have killed a man for a trifle, he is not in the least shocked by his conviction by a court that reveals the insensitive and immoral man that he is.

The homo liber is a natural and inevitable product of an era, of revolutions and discoveries that have changed man, in the sense that they have made him acquire a totally new perspective on himself. He is not, as Mersault’s conviction and imprisonment suggests, a bad, depraved or insensitive man by his own nature. This is a man who lives in the world in a natural way; he was born, as he could not have been born, so he has to live. Suicide may even seem like a possibility to him, but he will hardly commit it as a result of being obsessed with some “cause”, as a religious fanatic or a man in love would do, but simply because he no longer has any desire for life, because he has already used up all his strength, all his vital energy.

He is the result of the discovery, of the perception that we exist individually, that we are not naturally “tied” to this world, and not to our family, to our country, to God, to whatever. Thus, recognizing in him instincts, the will to live (that is, egoism), the sexual desire, he deals with things, with sensations, in a practical way, in a reactive way. “This is coming to me, so I have to give it an answer!”

If we analyze the other “types” of men, what do we see in common? They all want, in their own way, to find the truth, to become owners of truth, to be truth’s only possessors. And each one is refuted by the force of the egoism of other men, who appear in their path and also want the same thing, as all the ones who came before them: a minimal portion of the Truth, which then will be transformed into his personal truth. The exception is the homo naturalis, whose exchange with the world is closer to the homo liber, with the difference that the latter may not find any fascination in the ideal of a simple, “primitive” life that attracts the former.

The free man is, in short, the “problem” that religious people, artists, philosophers, scientists and politicians have to deal with today. After millennia of an idealized, unrealistic vision of the human being, certain things were revealed that took man from an inaccessible place and “threw” him into the world, along with all the other animals. Even after such a revolution, the religious man will try to appropriate the “soul” of the “absurd” man, but this one will reject it cynically or use it for purposes that have nothing to do with religion. The philosophical man will try to carry out the work of deconstruction even further: for some philosophers, man is not free because he does not even exist, for others he has not yet completely freed himself from anything. The scientist, of course, will dissect every single aspect of this man, except the essential, the key point. He will not be able to penetrate the “core” of the problem. The free man perceives his singularity, his uniqueness. What makes each of his actions and characteristics unique. The scientist, however, will persist in seeing him as a laboratory rat, what the homo liber will see as an advantage, knowing that science brings many advantages for him to make the most of his singularity. For the politician, the aim will be to use him as a pawn, but in truth the awareness of this will not escape the homo liber’s perception. He will only be “used” to the extent that he deems it useful for himself. The only one who will come closest to understanding this “new” man is the artist. For the artist, singularity, the desire to differentiate oneself, comes naturally. Then he will see in the free man a constant theme and also a reflection of himself, even though he may be just “one more in the crowd”, with nothing that seems to differentiate him from all the others.

The free man is not an ideal. In fact, idealizing him would be impossible, because there is no way to control him or predict his actions within a logical system. As in the case of Mersault, where all his actions appear to him as equally natural, but to the external observer, the narrator, as equally absurd. The result of so much time spent on pure and simple theorizing was this: we learned to always count on a version of the human being that is 100% predictable, and that is exactly what the homo liber is not, because he is the product of the most fierce struggle that has ever been waged, the struggle for freedom, and he lives exactly at the heart of this freedom.

Thus, a theorist of determinism will say: “all of a man’s actions will be predictable if you know his environment and his internal motivations”. This is true if we take into account man in the traditional view. Now, if millennia have passed instilling in man’s head that he was this and that a priori, the best that could be expected is that he would act in this or that way, right? The thing is that even living in the “natural” world, a man’s internal motivations can take on so many and varied forms that it becomes impossible to even predict what each person will do in the next minute, let alone at each moment of life. Yes, we are determined by external and internal factors, but the absolute predictability that some claim exists is as chimerical as the old religious free will. “Subject A is now going to the restaurant. He will eat, pay the bill, digest his food, and return to work.” Or: he will get sick after eating the restaurant food, he will fight with the waiter, or he will not be able to return home because he will be run over on the way.

The desire for predictability is exactly what will motivate the interaction of the religious person, the philosopher, the scientist, and especially the politician with the homo liber. Because a predictable man is easy to control. We are instinctively horrified by arbitrariness, by the individual acting according to the whim of the moment, according to his mood of the moment, and this is precisely what makes a man free. He is the person who reacts to your stimulus in the most unpredictable way. Thus, if you are religious and you try to convince him of the truth of some religious dogma, he may even listen to you, but he will only extract from your words the little that is convenient for him. If you are a philosopher, he will prevent your alleged study of the human condition ab initio. Because he will force you to accept that there is no longer humanity in the classical sense, there are only human beings. And the fact that a large part of these human beings are absolutely singular is a fact that will prevent the systematization that you adore. Unless you want to create a “system” for each man you meet. If you are a politician, you will only count on the basics that you know about him: he is a selfish animal like you. But that will not be enough. The enthusiasm you so desperately need will not be there. He will be the dissenting voice that could ruin your plans.

The “liberators of man could not imagine, and perhaps did not want to imagine, what the outcome of their work would be. Perhaps they could not imagine that freedom also has the effect of freeing the individual from the need for reverence and gratitude. In other words: “You freed me? Well, now face the consequences!” In any case, the homo liber is there, and his freedom is his power, not a possibility of "doing whatever he pleases”, but the complete perception of his power.

To be free, in the traditional sense, is to be free from ties, from any ties. But behold, in the “great revolution”, the concept of freedom became synonymous with power. What am I free to do? What I can do, what I am capable of doing. Even if factors that I do not fully understand, the internal inclinations that constitute what I label my ego, my “I”, determine my behavior, what matters to me is that these inclinations lead me to fight for my preservation, my interests, before anything else. So I do not need a complete understanding of such motivations. Likewise, external pressures, from the environment, that force me to act in this or that way- as long as they serve to my preservation, I will not fight against them.

Thus, the homo liber is, therefore, the consciously egoistic man. He does not care whether some people think his ego is a chimera. He feels the will to live, to stay alive, as his first and main concern. And he also knows that his separation from others is total, what constitutes the principle of his uniqueness. Thus, it is clear that both his egoism and his individualism differ from the normal meaning of these terms, because it is not at all thoughtless, nothing that serves first and foremost for “others”, like a label or a pose. No, the free man knows that others will naturally look at him as “just one more”, like a… number. He is the one who is aware of his uniqueness. This is what prevents his total adherence to religions, philosophical systems, political movements. Even though he recognizes the validity of certain aspects of such things. His adherence to things only occurs in a natural, and therefore selfish, way, but he does not confuse himself with the simple ideal of the homo naturalis. No, his egoism and individuality give him such a sense of independence that he cannot even adhere to the ideal of the “simple life”.

No system, no matter how “libertarian” it may be, can foresee the homo liber. Much less control him. And that is precisely what each and every system wants. A predictable, controlled existence. All systems will present themselves as proponents of freedom in the fullest sense, and will end up enslaving man to the limited, partial, imperfect vision… of another man, of other men. But the perception of the non-existence of a natural hierarchy among the members of the human race is already the starting point for the rejection of such a possibility. Because basically I will be adhering to the worldview of an individual, even of a whole people, without this necessarily reflecting me in any aspect. My adhesion, evidently, will be on the level of sheer convenience, that is, it will only theoretically be a real adhesion.

Let us think of anarchism, for example, which will have in the homo liber an important focus of its Weltanschauung. In fact, the anarchist also starts from the principle that the hierarchy among men is not based on nature, but on the power that some exercise, manage to exercise, over the majority. When man wakes up from the “sleep of millennia” and realizes how much he has been deceived, what is his most natural reaction? To seek to destroy the structures that have kept him imprisoned for so long. Among them are the titles of nobility, the State, the Church. The anarchist will call the homo liber to action, wanting to transform him into a revolutionary, into “one of us”, since “one of us cannot be wrong” [thanks, Cohen]. And if he refuses this “call” he will be labeled a reactionary, a “traitor to the cause”.

But for him, the question will arise: traitor to which cause? Didn’t we fight so hard for exactly that, to free ourselves from “causes”? Didn’t we fight so hard to free ourselves from this obligation to belong, to be owned by “others”? Your anarchist movement can arise from a sincere and honest will to help your fellow man, but you need to accept that every humanitarian action has another side, a petty, selfish side. To what extent does your help to others constitute an act that will directly benefit these others, this “otherness” you dimly see, and to what extent will it respond to the yearnings of your ego, of your desire to be good, to be just, to be true, to be… right? To be, therefore, a new spokesperson for Truth? The labeling of the free man as a reactionary will be inevitable, and it is a sign that not even the most “libertarian” of men, the anarchist, can fully understand him. The anarachist does not understand him in his own terms, does not understand his need to be free in the world, in this world qua it is.

Because he will exist, he can exist, anywhere, in any system. In the most democratic as in the most oppressive. The difference between one system and another will be external, while internally the situation will be the same. Of course, in a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, woe betide anyone who opposes it! And in a “liberal” system, freedom of expression is sovereign in principle. But depending on the power you have in the socialist dictatorship, your level of freedom will be great, because your power is your freedom. And it may be that your slightest sign of discontent, your slightest show of an opposing opinion, will get you into trouble in the “democratic” world, where expression is free, but not that free. But if the individual has a free spirit, and that is what we are talking about here, a free spirit, a free mind, he will have to come to terms with one situation or another, which will, after all, be beyond his control.

In a dictatorship, “Big Brother” seems to be watching everywhere. In a democracy, it is the “people”, it is the “others” who seem to be always watching our every step, to see if we do not fall into the temptation of becoming dictators. The two systems will resemble each other in some points, while differing vitally in others. In both, freedom is either within you or it is nowhere. Asking the “people” to free you is like asking a Stalin for mercy. The “people” want you for themselves, they want you to be their property, to do everything they do, to say everything they say, to eat everything they eat, to laugh at their jokes, to pass on their history to your children.And the dictatorship follows you everywhere, in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in intimate conversations, it wants to keep you in sight at all times. Both are external forces that seek to control you, but as a homo liber, your weapon against them is the same: your mind, that “space” where they cannot penetrate.

For, anticipating criticism, even if I am brainwashed, “Big Brother” will still not have access to my mind. At most, He will keep it buried under the automatic commands that He installs in part of it. And one day He may have to deal with drastic consequences when my true mind is freed. This division between me and all the “others” cannot be overcome even with my death, because then “I” will no longer exist. It is the key to my individuality, it is the detail that the homo liber discovered and will never forget.

He is the man who lives in the present, in the here and now. That is why religion is of no use to him, not even in the midst of the confinement of a dictatorship. Religion promises eternal joy as a reward for the “pains of the world”. The practical man, however, has to deal with the present moment, what does it matter if, in a few years, he will be floating with the angels in paradise, if in the here and now he has to deal with the very likeable figure of Stalin? Nor will the circumlocutions of politics or the discussions ad argumentandum tantum of philosophy be of any use. The forces he will have to gather to deal with the situation will be within him or they will not be anywhere.

Because the most that religion will do is exchange one prison for another. The prison of the body for the prison of the mind. Man leaves hell on earth to immerse himself in a limiting and suffocating way of thinking that reduces his simplest instincts to “sins” against a plenipotentiary being who… instilled such instincts in him in the first place. In other words, Stalin leaves the Earth and settles in Heaven. Politics will use the “liberation” of this man as an instrument for the liberator to later assume the position of dictator. Trotsky versus Stalin. Fight for true socialism, for the true interpretation of Marxism? No, fight for… Trotskyism. For Trotsky to supplant Stalin. For the sin against “father” Stalin to become the sin against “father” Trotsky. As for philosophy, what can we say? If it was “appropriated” by religion, why wouldn’t it be by the “powers that be”? Just think of Jean-Paul Sartre, an apostle of freedom turned into a defender of dictators, a defender of those who would annihilate him at the first opportunity.

Once again, it will be the homo artisticus, especially painters, filmmakers and writers who will seem to understand the situation better and truly offer real help to man in such a situation, not because they have a “manual” for him to follow at every moment, but because they reflect the homo liber in his entirety in their works.

Maxim Gorky, the greatest of all socialist writers, is the best example that comes to mind. A rustic man of humble origins, which earned him the nickname “Bitter” (горький), he was perfectly aware of the effect that the revolution had on ordinary Russian men, men whom he knew intimately because he was one of them. In his books, Gorky manages the feat of describing the revolution and the post-revolutionary period without any trace of sentimentality or idealization. No, his stories are about ordinary men, men of flesh and blood who did not become saints or selfless angels overnight; far from it, they continued to have to fight for survival at the most basic and brutal level, because now, with “dialectical materialism” en vogue, life had been unveiled, and behind the beautiful images and lucubrations of religion nothing had been discovered but… words. In other words, the raw struggle for survival was not a revolutionary invention; in fact, it was simply what life has always been, without its disguises. And Gorky works with this “unveiled” life and the consequences of such a revelation in the minds of the humble, rustic and courageous Russian people.

One of his most frankly poignant works is Mother (Мать), where, in addition to the situation of Russian men during the revolutionary period, we have a raw discussion about the role of women in those “new times”. And Gorky realizes how it had also become imperative for women to see themselves as independent beings, as homo liber, therefore. The “mother” of the story, beyond her social and “biological” role, sees the revolutionary “élan” emerge within herself. Aren’t we all equal now? Why do most men refuse to treat me equally? Because the old view that women are inferior beings is convenient for them, even though this has no basis in “scientific materialism”.

Cleverly, Gorky uses the issue of women, thus, to demonstrate how the “revolution” could not remove certain prejudices from men’s minds ex abrupto. And how, in a certain way, everything remained as before. Only perception, lucidity, and honesty had increased. However, man was the same animal he had always been.

Gorky is a good representation of the literary world’s acceptance of the common man, the man on the street. In the 19th century, the classic hero began to die in literature; realism and naturalism committed themselves to bringing “life as it is” to the sacred terrain of belles-lettres. In this sense, we owe much to Balzac, Émile Zola, Maupassant, and others. Man is no longer a fountain of determination and virtues who faces any and all dangers with stoic impassivity. No, man fails, man lies, man bleeds, man stinks. He does not want to save the “girl” so much to safeguard the “glory of love,” but to have someone to have sex with regularly, and to have someone to boss around. Someone to take out his frustrations on. This raw vision will be seen by some (“the last romantics”) as a sign of extreme mauvais goût.

But it was a necessary step. Zola’s concern seems to be, at first, only to “shock” (and, of course, to gain fame, after all, we are still talking about egoism, right?), but if we know how to read his texts with the attention they deserve, what he really seeks is to portray life as faithfully as possible. His “father” Balzac wanted the same thing with his wonderful Human Comedy, but he was still wary of going too far, he tried not to violate certain social nec plus ultras. Zola, on the other hand, did not limit himself so much, he went to the extreme and created a work as powerful as his “father’s”, perfectly fitting it into his time and period. Reading Germinal today, we might even get bored, after all, men who have seen a little bit of everything and read the most “shocking” things cannot be easily impressed. But Germinal impresses all the same. The faithful reproduction of the language and customs of a part of the human population that always seemed forbidden from participating in literature (miners, rustic men) will never lose its power to fascinate us, because those men and women really seem real, they all seem to have really lived, not to be mere literary creations.

In Germinal, Zola creates one of the most fascinating characters in the history of literature. Étienne Lantier is the idealist who has to deal with the shocking, with the devastating power of reality. His worldviews are put to the test in his daily life, when he has to live with men and women of flesh and blood who barely have enough to eat, let alone dream of the “better days” of the revolution. And he enters and is dragged into that “savage” world, where feelings and emotions are always on the surface, and any little thing, any slightest disagreement serves as an excuse for the man to vent his frustration for living in the midst of so much misery. Étienne has a sincere concern for those people, because he knows them personally, and although Zola is criticized for his apparently nihilistic view of reality, he understands perfectly that the concern of some men for others is real, it is sincere, the problem is that he also knows that selfishness is always present in each and every human action too, so there is no point in trying to idealize man, or humanity itself, because of a few men like Étienne.

So much so that in Germinal the ruin of the ideal is caused not by the “system” that wants to oppress and enslave those men and women, but by one of them, who does not suffer there, in that environment, because he is like everyone else, but because he wants to be one of the “oppressors” too and is unable to do so.

For Marx, the oppressed become oppressors for a while, right? Until there are no more oppressors or oppressed. Zola, however, does not present this idealizing vision of suffering. No, my suffering is mine, and there is no point in knowing that my grandchildren will live in an ideal world if I have to spend my life in misery, or, in other words, if I have to live under Stalin.

The homo liber works and exists precisely in this here and now that prevents the realization of the ideal; his suffering or joy is in the present moment, which is the only thing that matters to him. Therefore, the promises of religion, the musings of philosophy, the lies of politicians or even the promising future promised by science, all of this seems like chimeras in his eyes. If something does not exist for me now, what guarantee do I have that it will exist tomorrow, and what does it matter to me that it will exist in my post mortem? The same reasoning can be reversed, mutatis mutandis. Thus, you define me as a new type of idealist, an egomaniac. I am telling you that I am not an idealist, nor do I make my “self” an ideal. But you have learned to see the world like this, 7 billion people in search of a god to call their own. And you apply the same reasoning to me. You do not respect my word, you do not trust my word, but you pretend to respect the human being in me. My right to choose, my freedom, which you deny when you do not recognize my right to exist in the now, without believing in the “future”, nor in any alternative version of your god. In short, you will want to sell me your ideal, your belief, at all costs, to stroke your ego, taking one more “stray sheep” into your flock, and to ensure your dominion over me.

But I have already established ab initio that neither you nor anyone else can dominate me any longer, not as long as I believe myself to be only my property. Then you will see that either we have nothing more to talk about or we will have to talk on my terms.

The “death” of the past and the future is thus vital for the homo liber to exist in the present and feel satisfied with what he has. The idealist will always sell one of two things: the idyllic past of humanity, the “good old days,” or the promising or catastrophic future of humanity, for which or against which I must fight. Thus, the three images, the idealized past, the perfect future, and the apocalyptic future, will exist first and foremost as products of the imagination. None of the three have any substance. They do have enormous market utility in the capitalist world. How much of our current culture depends on this? A glorious past of humanity that not a single one has lived!

However, anything that takes me too far into the past or too far into the future will tend to alienate me from the “eternal present,” and so my appreciation for old things and my appreciation for futuristic science fiction are always measured by my attachment to the now, the only moment that seems real to me. I cannot actually relive the past, nor will I be here in any conceivable future, so I stick to what I have at hand, to the present that calls me “back” at every moment.

This does not mean that I am going to burn my history books or condemn science fiction, far from it, I just understand that both things are not situated in the present, this moment that is the only one of vital importance to me.

Nostalgia for the past, the eternal recurrence of phrases like “Everything used to be different”, “Ah, back then…”, “The good old days”, “Ah, the 90s, ah, ah, the 80s, ah, the 70s, ah the 40s”, etc, etc, this perennial nostalgia, a kind of universal fetish of the human species, as YouTube exists to prove, reflects a kind of attitude of ours, of the human being, which at the same time symbolizes a desire to return to the innocent years of childhood, of youth, where there were fewer worries, fewer annoyances (or we were not aware of them) and at the same time helps us to encapsulate the present in a convenient definition, without taking the trouble to analyze it in detail: that is, everything currently, today, is bad, everything in the past was better, based on this principle, we satisfy our intrinsic need to let off steam and feel relieved by the oppression of the moment and at the same time we feed an entire industry, very real and very materialistic, that feeds exclusively on nostalgia and the “good old days”. It feeds on the “good old days” with the intention of making the present days of a few fully satisfactory.

Now the daydreaming about the future, this future that never comes, because for us there is only the present, that bright tomorrow of humanity, or, why not, that Apocalypse that is always about to happen but never does, that “one day” that we are always imagining as the day when all our problems will be solved as if by magic, paradise at last, on earth, or beyond it, this daydreaming ultimately necessarily and always reflects a discontent, I would even say organic, with our current situation. A dream future, or an apocalyptic future. Two sides of the same illusion.

Look out your window, if you live in an apartment building. What do you see? Thousands of people busy with the most diverse things, running, driving, working, taking their children to school, etc, etc, but ultimately focused on the now, busy with the present moment. What will the future be like for these people? You can answer in an abstract way, saying that they will all be dead in 40, 50 years. This information, however, has no relevance to them at the moment when they are busy actually living, not theorizing about life. But the moment they start theorizing again, there will be “tomorrow” again, terrifying them with the prospect of everything that the limitations of their present existence prohibit. Again, whether on earth or outside it.

So, in any case, it seems that the present is never enough, there is a whole industry feeding us with a supposedly glorious past and a whole future that promises to come but never does, that promises to begin but never does, and it seems that all the glory of the human race is beyond us, that is, beyond the human race! And what happens when we take a “peek” into humanity’s glorious past or the magnificent futures that lie ahead of us?

The only way to have access to both is through culture, right, books, cinema, folklore, etc. And what these things show us: that in all ages humanity has always complained that the present was terrible and the past, glorious. If you read even books written during times of great revolutions in human existence, such as the French Revolution, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, etc., you will see that people there also complained that nothing was the same it was before. Then comes the question, when did this “before” occur, when did this glorious era of humanity occur? Try in vain to find out and you will realize that, if it ever existed, no human being was there to tell about it, because everyone, in all times and places, always seems to have the same adoring speech about the idyllic past on their lips, from Plato’s Greece to the present day. And as for our promising future, even if there were a day when all of humanity’s ills were truly resolved, what does that future matter to us? None of us will be there. And even if all of the present problems were resolved, new ones would arise, if not naturally, then artificially, created by men bored with perfection. So technically, the future as we dream of it will never come. Of course the earth will be here 2022 years from now. But then there will also be those who are discontented, saying that we, in 2022, live in paradise on earth and that they, poor men of 4044, can only dream of a better future.

The concentration on the present moment, characteristic of the homo liber, will thus be an antidote to idealization, whether of the past or of the future.

The antidote to the past is provided by the fact that men are seen as essentially the same everywhere and at any time, although of course the different conceptions of the world change in each historical period and in the different races, but the essence, so to speak, is the same, based on the struggle for survival on the animal level itself. So, if all men have always sought basically the same thing, since they continue to seek it, what do we have to envy of the men of the past, when we place ourselves on the same level as all of them?

The antidote against the future is provided by the fact that the individual arms himself with the need to guard himself against the egoism of others, against the tyranny of ideas, which means that you have to keep your eyes open and focused on the present almost all the time, although you allow yourself to wander as much as you like now and then.

In fact, when a man understands himself as an egoist, both the past and the future matter little to him, because he is trapped in his “flesh”, in his materiality, and he needs to guarantee his selfishness, guarantee its prevalence, in the here and now.

This crystallizes a very logical way of getting out of the crossroads in which we are apparently stuck, with a brilliant past and a dream future always on one of the paths that we are unable to follow. Because in the present we have to concentrate on what we can do, on what is within our power to do, to live and survive. And if we look around, face the world in this right moment, we see that all the tools we need to live and survive are here. In fact, these tools, especially the technological ones, are the only things that really improve in the human sphere. So, to give an example: today we lament how music is rubbish and the great artists, the great bands, are all in the glorious past of humanity. However, today we can have access to ALL the artists and ALL the bands simultaneously, thanks to the advancement of technology, that is real. This would never have been possible 40 years ago, supposedly a dream time for human beings.

So, the pleasure of being nostalgic and dreaming of a perfect future will not seem like a very rational choice to someone who wants to focus on living a fruitful, enjoyable here and now. My here and now, so tragic, would be heaven on earth for a human being that is a victim of a nuclear holocaust. And it is no different, in essence, from any other era of humanity. In fact, it is different because it is the only era I have. The other eras belong to my great-grandparents or my great-grandchildren, people close to me only from the most basic possible point of view, because they cannot even afford to look through a window and contemplate the paradoxical miracle of life, which renews itself every day, making each one worth living as the first and the last.

 

So then, the homo liber is the man without a past or a future, without religion, without a philosophical system, without a political party, without faith in science, without reverence for art or for the idols of humanity. This disconcertingly indiscreet and unpredictable creature that they insist on putting in literature and cinema just to laugh at his supposed independence, when everything about him indicates that “he is dust and to dust he shall return”, an adjustable machine like any other, this Mersault, this man on the street that we all meet and are pleased to judge as just a number, “another repetition of an eternal zero” (Søren Kirkegaard), part of the human herd, part of the “cattle”, behold because this tiny creature has truly discovered the secret of existence, and lives, at every moment, in the heart of freedom.

For he is what ancient man, what the Christian, what the socialist, what the artist, what the science fiction writer, wanted to be and could not be, because each one lives postponing the enjoyment of life ad eternum. He does not need to idealize life and postpone its enjoyment, he lives, and in this he exhausts life, all of life. Every system that man creates has the aim of freeing man from every system, that is, Christianity has the aim of freeing the Christian from Christianity, just as Marxism frees the Marxist from Marx, but neither one realizes this, so they will continue trying to convert the homo liber until the end, usque ad finem dierum, when in truth they can offer him nothing that he has not already naturally taken for himself.

There is no point in trying to take “possession” of him or speak on his behalf, since he is the one that speaks for himself. Then you must learn to, after all, deal with the ultimate consequences of the freedom that you talk so much about. Isn’t freedom the main concern of politics, religion and philosophy? Because, now, freedom is embodied before you, you bump into it everywhere, and there is no point in closing your eyes and pretending that you don’t see it. After so long, the long-awaited moment has arrived. The individual is now able to have full knowledge, full consciousness of himself and be “in charge of his own destiny”, be “responsible” for himself… on his own terms.

So, no, you can no longer speak on my behalf, and when I am no longer here, claim to be my heir or my official interpreter. Learn to speak only for yourself. Learn to face the literal meaning of “each to his own”. Learn once and for all that your ideal means nothing to others if it does not mean something to you. You say that you see your god as the most important thing in the universe, but you want to sell him to me for the lowest price I am willing to pay.

Here you are, wanting to “free” me, but without consulting me about it, without knowing what I think about freedom, without knowing what kind of freedom I want. Here you see in me just another receptacle for your ideal, for your god, but I didn’t ask you for anything, it was you who misinterpreted my words and intentions. Here you are, promising me paradise, but I don’t want it, it’s boring, too placid for me, I prefer this little world here that you reject. And in your hatred for me, because I enjoy life and you limit yourself to waiting for the day when it will actually begin, you take pleasure in imagining that in the end “he who laughs last will laugh best”, when I have already laughed as much as I could, and, in the end, I will no longer be “me”, but just a corpse.

And if you are there, do with the corpse what you want!

 

(…)

 By Maxx (Homo liber).

NOTE: This is a chapter of a book I wrote called Man and Number.