Form and Freedom

[I began writing below on this recently, and it relates to an earlier piece from years ago. So even though there is a crossover and repetition, I’ll just post that earlier piece first, and then, separated by an obedient army of dots, the newer stuff. At times I’ve tried to resist making an essay out of it, instead just shorter, isolated points.]

               

The elements of existence possess an intrinsic compulsion towards order but not towards an absolute order... or actually it’s better to say there is precisely this compulsion towards absolute order, but were it not countered by some contrary force, pulling towards absolute freedom, then life would end in a state of total stasis; everything compelled by this gravitational pull towards total order, and having attained this, all bound in a state of utter and immobile compression, and so no further development possible.

And on the other hand without this ‘gravitational’ force inwards towards structure working against the outward directed force towards freedom - and absolute freedom being freedom from all structure - life would proceed to one uniform, formless chaos, again without any possibility of development, devoid of any evolutionary dynamic. So life is dependent on these two forces in a dynamic relationship of creative tension.

Art through this lens: the tension between the movement towards structure and simultaneously freedom from structure.

So also obviously with an individual human life. For example, if the attraction towards the centre in the form of a society's constraints is excessive and dominant over the individual's contrary drive towards absolute personal freedom, then ignorance of what this freedom constitutes will result, when this drive manifests itself, as a destructive force rather than constructive, bound up neurotically with reacting against some perceived forces which deny his freedom rather than as an independent constructive force leading towards freedom. This explains the various acts of seemingly mindless vandalism.

This seems to be an endlessly helpful lens over all kinds of phenomena, with for instance totalitarianism a manifestation of the the drive towards order at the expense of freedom.

 If anything is made an idol of, the results are going to be the collapse of the false nature of the idol in upon itself, with its faulty logic inevitably working itself out in the field of time.

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The creative force of life is the tension between the yearning for form and the greater yearning for absolute freedom which lies beyond form. 

Freedom without finding new form dissolves towards chaos. Some of the later paintings by Turner seem to embody the drama of this. You could say, but that’s just a painting of a storm. But why is he drawn to such an image in the first place?

On the other hand, form where the drive towards freedom is weakened and virtually absent becomes stagnation. So the two must be in creative tension. So society seeks a stable order, but if this is too stable it loses all creative force, stagnates and even dies - as with formerly great civilisations like the Egyptian. 

Why smugness is experienced as distasteful - some mediocre form, instead of seeking to go beyond this form, utterly pleased with itself. The Rat Pack comes to mind for me! A Hollywood awards ceremony would be a glorious incarnation of this energy also.

Why capitalism, for all its possible misdirections, is so virile: overall there is a very stable structure, but within which is a very open field for innovation and new forms.

Wearing masks, social distancing, pressured vaccinating: all manifestations of constraint over freedom. How long do people accept such constraints? Depends on how strong the instinct for freedom is in them. The weakest would accept it forever. The yearning for form for them is simply for biological existence at whatever cost, including freedom. 

Totalitarianism is where the drive towards form triumphs, however temporarily, over the greater desire for freedom. Such triumphs though are always unstable because of the dynamic of this inbuilt nature of things, and the greatest goal for the totalitarians is to absolutely suppress this drive towards freedom, pushing up from beneath, to the point of quenching it forever. This is the aspiration and essence of The Great Reset at the moment: to achieve a permanent, unthreatened caste system of masters and slaves, despite the overwhelming superiority in numbers of the ‘slaves.’ Its famous slogan is “You will own nothing and be happy.” Yes, mein fuhrer. Its principal known architect, Klaus Schwab, even speaks of changing humanity at the biological level as part of this Great Reset. Without looking into it, in the absence of anything else coming to mind, vaccinations are surely part of this.

Huxley’s Brave New World is a vision of this consciously achieved triumph of stability/form over freedom, through from infancy relentless brain-washing techniques, while through physical compensations like sport and a shallow promiscuity, the drive for freedom is successfully channeled and rendered harmless. Even here though, so innate Huxley felt is that drive, that some rare individuals awaken and internally, if not especially externally, rebel to the point of requiring expelling from society.

Art seeks balanced form, but the more in touch the artist is with the creative force the more ultimately unsatisfactory is any such finished and finite state of balance and completion, as simultaneously the greater pull towards freedom is looking to move beyond and free of it. 

So as soon as the supposed promised land of perfect equilibrium is within sight of realisation, this artist actually rebels and begins to destabilise this very realised state, not to destruction beneath this form but instead constructively beyond it. This is the instinct towards freedom alive within him. So there is always a tension inherent in this deeper soul’s art of seeking to attain perfect form, and immediately seeking to go beyond such limits.

The program of radical politics acts like a parody of this where rather than a moving beyond existing form, it actively seeks destruction of society’s existing form, its values, etc and then from eventually the disorganised chaos, it can then instil its preconceived new form or order. So there is nothing organic or natural. Conscious vandalism - to connect it to the point from the earlier piece.