Aug 30, 2021
What For Does a Tiger Want Freedom on the Moon?*
And I’m free and it’s useless, what for does a tiger want freedom on the Moon? It’s useless! And I’m still here just like a hippie in Siberia…
Freedom becomes irrelevant without rules that systematize it. It’s useless! Lawlessness or individualistic absolutism and legalistic overregulation are fictions, distortions of reality. Freedom needs a receptacle, as the seas require continents, as the atmosphere envelops the Earth, as physics is based on laws and as the human spirit has a body.
The more we revere something, the more we surround it with laws^
When natural+ contents are vehemently squeezed by their receptacles with abuse of power, they tend to slowly dissipate, evaporating, fleeing, disappearing, migrating. If personal, family, community, or territorial continents tighten or loosen too much, agency can be lost.
Taking care of containers, be they countries, bodies or even the planet, is essential to continue maintaining the gift of freedom. Otherwise, we will be like tigers on the moon. Free for nothing, dead to everything, victims of a false emancipation.
- *Loved and hated alike in Latin America, the Guatemalan singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona coined the phrase that titles this article.
- +Law is a rule or measure of human acts, whereby a person is induced to act or is restrained from acting (…) a dictate of practical reason emanating from a ruler. At a very general level, then, a law is a precept that serves as a guide to and measure of human action. A human action is good or bad depending on whether it conforms to reason. In other words, reason is the measure by which we evaluate human acts.
- Origin of law: every law is ultimately derived from what he calls the eternal law. It is this participation in the eternal law by the rational creature that is called the natural law (…) the natural law is a fundamental principle that is weaved into the fabric of our nature.
- ^ The Beauty of the Law (R. Barron)
