Independence Day gets celebrated in many countries and for good reason. Oppression sucks. Freedom, as they say, rings. In the US, we take Independence Day celebrations to extraordinary extremes. Other countries too. Copiosis asks, do such celebrations really deserve such fan fare?
As already stated, many such celebrations include over-the-top homages to battlefield victories. Celebrating death and destruction through Costco-sized firework displays mar nearly every major US city come July 4.
Smaller neighborhood versions dominate. Here millions of Americans pop off mini-celebrations. Along with these come thousands of Americans – usually teenagers – who get to close to the show, then wind up in America’s hospitals.
It seems such celebrations might better serve if focused on benefits of winning independence. Maybe that’s why hot dogs, days off an picnics happen too. Such gatherings of families and friends might not happen under dictatorships.
But do those benefits, the ones we elevate in our seminal documents, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, really deserve celebrating?
You have to answer that question for yourself. Think a bit before you do.
From a Copiosis perspective, freedom and independence look vastly different from that which we celebrate. Freedom and independence offered through our evolutionary economic framework make current “freedoms” anywhere in the world look terrible. For where debt, money, markets, and government exist, no one lives free. Or independent.
We say this a lot: our freedom concept radically differs from what many believe freedom includes. You won’t find our freedom in any modern nation today.
America’s Freedom Tyranny
In America, we celebrate “freedom“ out the Ying Yang. Here “freedom”, also offers a rallying cry for those out to reduce already restrictive freedoms Americans enjoy.
I don’t fault their attempts. Curtailing democracy, aka rule by the popular vote, makes sense from their perspective. When the writing on the wall tells you your opinion ranks as the minority opinion, in a country where majority vote wins or at least should win, the minority, if it’s smart, must dismantle democracy.
That’s what we see in countries where nationalism is on the rise. In these democratic countries, democracy is the enemy, according to these nationalist minorities.
We are seeing similar ire in the United States today. Not only from the right. Nearly everyone in the country wants others to think the way they do.
We say, let’s push “freedom“ and “independence“ to the lowest possible unit of expression: the individual. Free people from their ability to curtail other’s freedoms, either through violence, discrimination, finance or force of law, and humanity will be much better off.
The peacock dance of “independence”
I recently watched a YouTube video of military fanfare and pomp and circumstance that occurs every evening on the Indian and Pakistani border. There, nationalist fans cheer while uniformed men and women strut their stuff like peacocks, glorifying their national symbols.
Certainly having such a ceremony is preferable over the alternative: both Pakistan and India both possess nuclear weapons and are political enemies. And yet, the militaristic, bombastic ceremonial fervor each evening overshadows the cooperative partnership on display during the celebration. It’s good then this pageantry happens compared to potential alternatives.
But I wonder what could happen were people not so nationalistic. Or religiously fervent. How about Pakistan and India celebrating what they share in common? How about the same with US citizens?
Nations and religions both get identity from conglomerate ideologies which often distinguish – or discriminate – between humans. The inevitability of that discrimination is turning the non-nationalist, the non religious or otherwise the “other” into “enemy“.
Democracies sorely tested
This plays out today in Germany. There, some of the 30,000 member strong neo-Nazi NPD party, a party which prefers a Germany under Nazi rule, have successfully infiltrated nearly every aspect of that country’s democracy. Recall that Germany’s people voted in the Nazi party through democratic elections before World War II. Then the party abolished democracy.
Germany’s far right ideology is so extreme, members of the NPD party have routinely assassinated not only immigrants. They’ve also plotted and in some cases implemented plans to assassinate left leaning political figures as well.
Right now, several criminal trials in German courts highlight a return of extreme far right domestic terror plots which resulted in several murders and violent attacks including mass shootings. The attackers intent: sparking “Day X”, a revolution in which Germany’s government falls.
These are no isolated incidents.
Before our own US Capitol insurrection on January 6, the same thing happened in Germany in August 2020. Back then, demonstrators stormed the steps of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building. Several of them brandished flags from the country’s imperial era and symbols of the extreme-right.
Another democratic country saw similar events too. In 2006, a far-right mob stormed the Hungarian parliament. Street battles lasted many weeks later. These events ultimately saw an increase in support for right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
A one-two punch for post-political peace
Many people say an economic framework alone offers an insufficient solution. They say a mind set shift must also happen. Humans, they say, must open their minds to realize every human being represents the divine spark of All That Is, however you define it. And until every human being realizes this perspective, the world we know is possible isn’t.
It’s likely the world where everyone sees or interprets reality in the same way remains beyond the horizon. We have a ways to go before that sort of shift occurs.
The good thing about the Copiosis framework is, we don’t need everyone seeing the world the same way so that greater freedom as we define it gets enshrined, elevated, and allowed for everyone.
And still, we offer a companion to our framework, a kind of spiritual approach, proven to create such mind set shifts in those ready for it.
Because of this one-two punch, we are excited about Independence Day this year. We’re excited because we are creating a post-political independence era. An era where no one forces anyone else to do things they don’t want to do.
And we are doing it through peaceful means.
As that era emerges, humanity will have something truly worth celebrating. When that era becomes our every day, let’s not celebrate with pyrotechnics glamorizing past military might. Instead, let’s celebrate each other.
Let’s find in each other, individuals worthy of freedoms inherent in the world upon which we walk and the lives in which we live. Then we’ll have something worth truly celebrating.
Ourselves.