On Freedom Traps

of the more insidious devices used by some folks to control people is the nonsense known as tradition or heritage or cultural imperative.

They’re insidious because they require the individual to submerge his or her uniqueness to the imaginary requirements of an imaginary entity.

Which means the voluntary giving up of one’s freedom to satisfy the needs of something that doesn’t even exist except in people’s heads.

Let me support what I just said.

According to Webster’s, a tradition is something handed down from the past, such as a culture or an attitude.

A heritage is something that’s passed on to succeeding generations. And I might add that that something is always nonmaterial or abstract. Never concrete.

And a culture comprises the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. And if the culture involved is held to be imperative, that makes it obligatory, binding, or compulsory. In other words, you’ve got to adhere to its requirements no matter what.

You know, it wasn’t long ago when it was traditional to burn witches, when anti-Semitism was part of the heritage of millions, and when lynching was a cultural imperative.

Now the bad guys who got the good guys to do all those horrible things probably never used the terms tradition, heritage, or cultural imperative. What they probably talked about instead was the need to protect the public from black magic, to purify the race, and to keep the so-called uppity blacks in their place, all as their forebears had done for centuries.

As Edmund Burke once put it: "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." So all I’ve got to say is if the shoe fits, etc. etc. etc.