Stephen Cocconi lives and works in the southern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California near Yosemite National Park. As a cordial hermit type, I enjoy the quiet of the forest while liking being part of an active small town and virtually of a larger community of Pioneers for Planetary and Personal Plenitude I call: Humane Beings.
My living is outside the norm of modern, conformed, religious or sociological definitions. I live simply (frugally with only few necessities and creature comforts) so that my footprint on Earth is light, and my contribution to life and my experience of living it, is one of joy and sharing rather than despair and taking.
I feel alive that way. And less dependent on technology.
My definitions of freedom and liberty have occupied my mind and emotions all of my conscious days. Freedom is the willingness to think for myself and equally the responsibility and duty to all to engage in rigorous understanding; not letting another define reality for me but learning from each what they perceive reality to be. Then synthesize it for myself and implement the standards and behaviors to attempt to achieve it.
Liberty is what I appreciate about being an American. I define it as: the permission to move unobstructed in within and between states. Whatever I define state to be, but without oppressive restriction from another person or institution. I actually worry less about “big government” than I do from those who are big economic power holders, the Plutocratic 1%, to manipulate desires with fear or seduction and limit our abilities by paying goons to suppress us. So, my basic assessment is that I/we actually have more individual liberties than ever before! Including, unfortunately, the permission through inequality of power to abuse those who are in weaker or disadvantaged conditions. All my simple principles and behaviors and basically barely heard pleas to my fellow human-sapiens, are formulated from these definitions and positions thereof. I think critically as best I know how, (I push for learning) I am not an intellectual. I am wholistic feeler with emotional literacy and compassion for all living things. That is not the same as pity or indulgence for their behavior.
So, I exercise the First Commendment – THE FREE EXERCISE OF PERSONAL EXPRESSION – as a duty, not as an entitlement. But I am aware of the growing tendency of the fearfully manipulated and willingly deceived to be enflamed into believing the the 2nd Defensement will somehow save them against the words of others. Bullets kill. Words may wound but only in your mind. Stupidity is the greatest enemy we face. I can have Compassion for everyone’s fears or tender emotions. But I have little tolerance with the ‘cruel and unethical’ ways people justify their hurtful behaviors upon others. The assertion that “they made me do it” is that from the mentality of a spoiled child. The other assertion that “they had it coming” is the assertion of an arrogant entitled asshole or punitive parent. Many have an unmitigated gall to act in the most egregious impiety by asserting: “God told me to do it.” These types of delusional paranoids, having lost their human willingness to reason, resort to the ultimate escape from accountability and equal justice. All over the world and in every religion, this pathogen has existed. Unfortunately it is spreading. Closemindedness, conservatism, and COVID made is worse.
We need, and I aspire to, mature-adulthood (an ongoing process) which simply believes in my and your right to feel or believe what we may, but also will stand against others acting out in violence, especially instigating it simply because one feels insulted or has “taken offense.” Time to heal our fearful and wounded Psyches. That is what I am all about: healing those wounds.
BTW, I will probably fail but I will contribute what I have. Are you?
So, whatever kind of human being, person, man, or jerk you judge me to be, so be it. That is your “right” or at least a mental faculty to exercise. Just know, I don’t have to agree, accept, or believe your characterization of me. That is my/our only inalienable right: self-determination. It is also my ultimate duty as well. What is yours?