The Parable of the Elephant

 

We are as free as much as we believe to be.

 

 

You know the mahout, or the person who handles and trains an elephant from its early years, uses a light chord attached to the young animal’s hind leg to teach them that they are chained. As the elephants grow and get much larger and stronger, because they are conditioned that they aren't free, they never try to break the chains or run away, even though it wouldn’t require any effort to do so. It is all a mental process 

What happens to populations which have been kept in submission for too long is quite similar. Having no conception, they don’t even know what freedom is. So they prefer ― out of conditioning and out of fear of the unknown ― to remain as they always were... chained to their familiar fetters. 

As such, if there is anything to learn from history, it would be the fact that the most efficient way to control people is to convince them that they are not controlled. Resonating with Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s words: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”.

Why? Simply because without awareness they will never endeavour to free themselves from their shackles, remaining under control possibly throughout their entire existence. And self-perception remains a major component in creating or perhaps aggrandising the actual limitations.

Like the single elephant, the process of conditioning starts on the individual level. And populations are essentially made up of a collective of humans.

Conversely, if we look around us, we’ll realise that those who truly appreciate freedom the most are ones who have experienced not having it. That’s why some emancipated slaves, former addicts, convicts, those who overcame certain serious illnesses, even divorcees can be so full of life. Of course only if they chose to embrace the rebirth.

The experience of overcoming the suffering adds them with a certain appreciation and sensitivity of life, along with a healthy dose of empowerment. And those who have walked through the fire of their own hell and survived it tend to leave sparks of light wherever they go.

People who did not go through such challenging traumatic experiences, and hence did not get the opportunity to take their inner darkness out towards the light, seem to take freedom for granted. Despite the high likelihood that they themselves may not be fully free. Still, however, the everyday individual does not think about the concept much if they never found themselves losing this very freedom, at least for a certain period of time.

This brings us to Eleutheromania / Eleutherophilia: Mania or frantic zeal for freedom. And their antonym Eleutherophobia: The irrational fear of freedom; from the Greek words “eleutheria”, freedom and “phobos”, fear. The afflicted is known as Eleutherophobe. 

 

Such terms lead us to contemplate the fear of freedom. Yes, it exists — at various levels. People tend to be scared from the very thing that illuminates and liberates them.

 

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
― Rosa Luxemburg

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