Freedom has always been a double-edged sword. It is hedged in by responsibilities--to Truth, to Justice, to Morality. Freedom without wisdom is a tree without roots. And wisdom is nourished by inquiry, dialogue, and dialectic.
Growing up half Sicilian-Catholic and half Ukrainian-Jew in a secular home, as a child, teen and twenty-something, I sought the wisdom of the great books of the East and West. I did not think of Jesus as my personal savior, nor as the son of God, but I did think he was a great teacher who asked: "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but don't notice the log in your own eye?" It seemed that one of Christ's most uttered words of execration was "hypocrite!" Hypocrites would sit in the front of the temple and shout hosannas--just to be seen and heard. But, Christ said, when giving to the needy, "Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing."
Lao Tzu and Confucius both spoke about the "Middle Way," the Tao, the balancing act between light and dark, what we know and what we think we know. And all the great books, and all the great teachers--from Solomon's books to Khalil Gibran's--have exhorted us to humility in the face of great mysteries.
Decades ago, as one who had taught in Japan, I lamented the fate of Yoshihiro Hattori, a 16-year-old Japanese exchange student shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in October, 1992. It was Halloween, and Yoshi had been out with friends "grinning and skipping" when he was or dered to "freeze" by a nervous white man with a gun. (Yoshi had no idea what "freeze" meant, continued to skip and jump and grin and was shot dead.)
A couple of years ago, it was Travon Martin--a black kid against whom a very unsure-of-himself George Zimmerman needed to test his manhood. Last year, it's another black kid who is playing his "thug" music too loudly for one middle-aged white thug named Michael Dunne.
The media makes much of these two cases, reaches for easy conclusions about "racism" in America; but makes very little of a more recent case in which a black girl is killed by a black man because she and her friends are "pranking"--throwing a bag of leaves and garbage on the man's property.
Gun-crazy, violent America preaches "freedom" to the world, but doesn't begin to understand the word. We worship idiot celebrities and ignore the great teachers--Martin Luther King, Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Socrates, et al. We choke on the polluted air spewing from politicians, corporate criminals and media pimps; freeze in the "polar vectors" of our hearts. In freedom's name, we kill the freedom to think, to question, to contextualize, to challenge the absurd.
Dr. Gary Corseri has published novels, poetry books, and the e-book literary anthology, Manifestations (editor). PBS-Atlanta has produced his dramatic work, and he has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Center. He has taught in US prisons and public schools, and at US and Japanese universities, and his work has appeared at OpEdNews, The Greanville Post, Village Voice, The New York Times and hundreds of periodicals and websites worldwide. Contact: Email address removed .
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