Our freedom, what a shy thing. No sooner do we seize it than it disappears again. In my youth, Bobby McGee described my feeling of freedom: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" sung wildly and passionately by Janis Joplin. "Nothin', it ain't nothin' honey, if it ain't free".
And we were free. We had nothing to lose. No possessions, no knowledge of the connections. Nothing but two feet, a head full of dreams and a courageous heart. What we found was pitiful, dishonest, pathetic. The fading Nazi era still left its shadows behind.
We agreed with Herbert Marcuse: people only recognize themselves in their goods, they find their soul in their car, their kitchen appliance, etc. There was a comfortable, democratic lack of freedom. Freedom could not unfold because people were subject to constraints, material constraints, the economy and the false needs imposed on people. And into this conditionality of all of us burst the ecstatic cry: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Our dreams, our ideas of a world worth living in, of a coexistence worth living in, were determined by this.
And the community, i.e. all of us, where does that leave us?
A little earlier still, Prometheus was my hero. Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to us humans, Prometheus, the cornerstone of our civilization. He made huge sacrifices to give us humans freedom.
Before Prometheus, it was the stories from the Old Testament that encouraged us to break new ground. "I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slavery." Once and for all, we were to be freed from every kind of slavery. And this existential liberation went hand in hand with the promise of the promised land flowing with milk and honey.
For me, this was a promise of reconciliation with nature, which has been maltreated on all sides and constantly gives us gifts.
The earth, the caring one
Despite all our shenanigans, it is still the case that the earth nourishes us, the caring one! In the Garden of Eden, our eyes were opened. With our freedom, we were also given the ability to recognize good from evil.
Freedom as a choice
If we are free, we no longer have to struggle with the given, we are then able to choose the path we recognize as the right one.
In this way, we move from freedom to commitment, to action, to humanity, to the freedom to act out of ethical responsibility.
From our knowledge to good action, to moral freedom, to moral self-determination.
Freedom thus becomes a recognized necessity. And Novalis says: freedom grows with the education and skill of thinking - and further: "Freedom and love are ONE."
If we look at our situation, we need a great, never-ending commitment and a great love for the need to do what is morally right.
Doing the morally right thing
If we look around us, we recognize the need. The oceans are polluted, overfished. There are hardly any fish left without microplastics. We have turned the oceans into plastic hells. Global warming is already well advanced. The two poles are beginning to melt, the temperature on our beautiful blue planet is rising and affecting life on our planet. The diversity of plants and animals is being diminished and destroyed day by day.
The humus on our fields is systematically removed, the soil is contaminated with artificial fertilizers and pesticides, our surface waters are victims of the excess of poison that is applied to the fields. Our treatment of our fellow creatures, the animals, is pure torture.
Politicians are incapable of acting. Just don't offend anywhere. It is not the polis that determines the path, but PR and pressure groups that are primarily concerned with their capital interests and their sinecures.
And the community, i.e. all of us, where does that leave us?
We should seize our freedom and face up to the necessities. Freedom through solidarity for the disenfranchised, for the exploited, devastated nature.
There is still time, we can still act. Out of our freedom and moral awareness for the common good, we should commit ourselves and out of love for life, for all our lives and the lives of our descendants.
Freedom is part of the dignity of the person. Let us restore dignity wherever the dignity of people, nature, animals and the environment has been destroyed - out of care for those entrusted to us, out of responsibility for our neighbor, for the environment, for nature and animals.
Thus our freedom becomes the doing of recognized necessity - the moral, right, good doing!
It is time to grow up, to stand up for what we destroy, for the disasters we cause and to take responsibility, to look closely at the consequences and side effects of our actions and decisions.
In our social interaction, in our consumer behavior, in our treatment of nature and animals, this is the only way we can live up to our freedom.
About Werner Lampert
Werner Lampert (born 1946 in Vorarlberg/Austria) is one of the pioneers in the field of sustainable products and their development in Europe. The organic pioneer has been intensively involved in organic farming since the 1970s. With Back to the origin (Hofer) and Ja! Natürlich, he developed two of the most successful organic brands in the German-speaking world.
