Inés Mencos
BA (Hons) Design for Art Direction There is a phrase that my father used to say. It’s one of those phrases that stay in your head and mark you but you never fully understand. Like when your mother punished you and when you complained she responded by saying; “you will understand when you have children” and indeed, since you have no kids, you do not understand. The phrase I am referring to is; ‘there is freedom in compromise'. These days I have been able to reconsider and think about freedom and what it entails. Firstly, I think we have a misconception of what the word means. We think to be free means to live without ties, without responsibilities. That no one or nothing can stop us. Being able to pack your bags and get on the first train without a destination. Ergo, we know that the term ‘compromise’ enjoys little prestige, we imagine commitment as a life sentence that gives no possibility of change or advance. However, commitment is one of the most mature attitudes that we can assume. To commit, you first have to educate yourself, know about the one and the other within the possibilities available to us and make that knowledge through an intelligent way of comparison. Therefore, without commitment it will result impossible to live to your full potential as commitment sets goals for you, creates unions, and bestows the virtue of fidelity. What I thought I believed is an immature, naive and privileged notion of freedom. This false idea of freedom is invalid when speaking about repressed individuals. A couple of months ago I read ‘Dispara, yo ya estoy muerto’ (‘shoot, I'm already dead’) a novel by Julia Navarro that in a way spoke about freedom, or the lack thereof. It was about a Russian Jewish family at the time of the Tsar, and of the constant expulsion of their community that led them to Palestine and France; perpetually having to flee from the parties that were persecuting them. I don’t remember it well but there was a conversation in the book that left an impression on me, and which I still think about. When the main character was asked why did he not simply say that he was not a Jew — that in this way he could begin to live in peace — he responds that it is not his decision to be one, that as much as he does not believe, go to the synagogue or read the Koran, he could never give up what he is. His family had fought for his freedom and beliefs, and to reject that would be to negate himself. This conversation made me think, and realize, that it is not a question of beliefs but of repression, that as much as you do not believe in the values, religions or beliefs that have been instilled in you, the moment of having to reject them due to political ideology it is the moment that you stop being free. It is not easy to give up your culture. And if by renouncing them we can reach a promised ‘freedom’, that which they are referring to is false, since it is not you who is free. When your beliefs are being compromised you cannot stand indifferent. Milan Kundera writes in ‘The Unbearable Lightness of being’ about repression in the Czech Republic. “When society is rich, people do not have to work with their hands and are engaged in intellectual activity […] Culture succumbs to the volume of production, the avalanche of letters, the madness of quantity. For this reason I tell you that a book banned in your country means infinitely more than millions of words that vomit our universities.” There is a commitment to your own beliefs. When an idea, whatever it is, wins the opinion market, it is almost impossible to go against it. On the other hand, for those who by false freedom have not developed their own criteria, it is very difficult for them to notice when they think for themselves or when they are being pushed by a hand on their back. And it is that in Spain we are living not only a sanitary crisis but one of freedom of expression. A government that, under the false pretext of wanting to limit the spread of hoaxes, has managed to muzzle its people, by limiting through social media, the messages that are being sent. For example, if you now share an article or video demonstrating the similarities of the Venezuelan government and the one we have now in Spain, you will not be able to send it to more than one person. So not only do they ask us to stay home, but to renounce our beliefs? The book ‘Dispara, yo ya estoy muerto’ also talks about the Kibbutz, the communal farms that were established by the Jews in Palestine when fleeing Russia. With them they brought communist and socialist ideas. No one was forced to be there and share everything with everyone. One could stay in a Kibbutz forever or, if he concluded that this collectivism was too much for him, one could leave without receiving any reproach. This, I believe, would be the most accurate expression of socialism since it was based on the freedom in which nobody was forced to remain in that place. Commitment develops the will because it helps us to stay firm in what we choose. Yet, it is also flexible if we are able to make conscious decisions. A conscious commitment is better than an unconscious pseudo-freedom. The second, sooner or later, becomes a prison from which one cannot escape. This, I believe is what it means to be confined in Spain; a government that has restricted our freedoms for fear that, if we have them, we will go out and unconsciously spread the virus. An autocratic government that decides that we do not have the capacity or enjoy the social commitment to live consciously. Because instead of raising awareness when it had to; they encouraged us to go outside. We could say, in short, that it is as if you have a boyfriend whom you are going to marry and for no apparent reason you decide to leave him for fear that he will cheat on you, ending up alone; no cheating but no boyfriend. In short, it is the story of a country indoctrinated, dogmatic and convinced that the curtailment of our fundamental rights will lead us to our freedom. But what have you to lose, when you are not free? I’d say: Shoot, I’m already dead.
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March 2022
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