In the United States on July 4th, we celebrate our Independence from political chains.  In 1776 on this day (or close to it anyway), we began an incredible experiment in political freedom.  For the first 150 years or so we achieved that dream and quite literally changed the world.  Unfortunately we have lost that ideal and now practically trip over ourselves in the race to enslave one another in this country.

In my youth I expended a great deal of stress over the loss of that political ideal and like many idealistic young people I thought I could help do something about it.  My shelves of books on political philosophy are a testament to that time.

At some point, and it was probably gradually over a number of years, I realized that it was futile and I had to stop stressing over it.  Frankly, I just gave up and returned to some ideas from even earlier in my youth around personal freedom.  Even in a state of political freedom, most people do not live free.  Regardless of the political atmosphere you can live free and a major theme of this blog is freedom, even if that is not always made explicit.

One of the books of my youth was a book by Harry Browne called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.  I loved it and still do.  In future articles I’m going to be concentrating more explicitly on how to live free in an unfree world.  I think this is an incredibly important topic.  It is something you have total control over and for which don’t need the cooperation of others. In the meantime you might want to review some of my previous articles on subjects related to personal freedom and things that you can control.

The title of this blog is an explicit reference to freedom from the rat race.  It has actually become much more about personal development and personal freedom than freedom from the rat race.  I’ve written recently about freedom from manipulative relationships, freedom from commitment, and freedom from compromise and control.

There have been article about freedom from the non-essential:

Identify the Essential and Eliminate the Rest
Eliminate the Non-Essential From Your Life

I have written about freedom from slavery to our genes and freedom from our sense of being a victim.  Recently I have discovered living in the now and have published articles on freedom from our past and future:

Living Now – Part I
More About Living in the Now

Even the articles on taking responsibility are about freedom from the blame game.  There have been articles on freedom from choices and freedom from being artificial.  Freedom from TV has even made it into the mix.

What do you think?  Leave a comment below.