Liberty, Passover and the ‘devil’ inside all of us

Liberty, Passover and the ‘devil’ inside all of us

Ron Bassilian

Well, as many of you know, this week commemorates Passover for
us Jews. And for those of you who don’t know, this holiday
commemorates our emancipation from slavery in Egypt.

The main focus of the holiday is to pass on this message of
emancipation and the meaning of liberty. Every year, we sit down at
a table while the elders tell the younger ones how God strong-armed
us out of the hands of the Egyptian Pharaohs. As we mature, we are
to relay this message to the younger ones.

Every year, without fail, this has been going on, since the Jews
left Egypt. And now, after my 20th time at the Passover dinner
table, I’m finally beginning to understand why we do it.

The thing that got to me all these years was reading about how
celestial the idea of liberty is, what a fundamental human right it
is and having some nagging doubts in my head. I mean, wait a
minute. We’re celebrating our freedom and talking about what a holy
festival it is and I don’t feel the least bit holy or festive. Why
is that?

I’m not completely sure yet, but I think I warped into some
parallel dimension in elementary school when my teachers actually
put things like the Boston tea-party or tarring and feathering tax
collectors in a positive light, as demonstrations of defiance by
the libertine colonists.

I say that because ever since then my teachers have talked about
these events in a rather downward tone. "Oh, look at these boors
­ going around destroying property and raising hell. Don’t
they know that England was simply trying to enforce the same taxes
on them as their own citizens?"

I mean, just imagine if such events happened today. Imagine if a
hundred people stormed Murphy Hall, yanked Chancellor Young from
his office, tarred and feathered him and dragged him out to the
Bruin Bear. Let’s just try to imagine how many riot police would be
here bashing skulls. And you know the entire university community
would line up behind them, denouncing the perpetrators as
naïve and uncultured.

I don’t care how much you’re trying to denounce these atrocious
acts. It’s because I know that every one of you, deep down inside,
has that little devil, that little Beavis or Butthead going "that
would be cool. (Huh huh)"

Let’s think about that little "devil" inside all of us. The
question is, is it really a devil? When our lives have become so
humdrum and routine that any kind of gathering could break out into
a potential revolt, are we really as free as we think? When people
band together in defiance of authority, are they merely fighting
for an economic increase in the standard of living or does the
defiance in itself bring them together?

It really is rather interesting how the meaning of liberty has
been warped into some abstract meaninglessness by the vast majority
of our teachers. I don’t know about you, but I think when Patrick
Henry cried "Give me liberty or give me death!" he didn’t mean "I
want the freedom to do this and do that, so please let me have them
because they really do mean a lot to me." He meant liberty ­
pwah, plain in your face LI-BER-TY. Period. And what we need to ask
ourselves is, what was he talking about?

We as human beings, as you might want to call it, are
hell-raisers. Or, to put things in a more acceptable light, we as
people need to aspire. Life aspires. Going through the daily
humdrum of school, work and homework, do any of us truly understand
the celebration life is supposed to be? Do any of understand as we
prepare for a world of work, a world spinning ever out of our
control, as more and more of us simply try to stay above the
cracks?

This is the meaning of liberty. It is the absence of a group
alien from you imposing their will on you. Life is so miraculous,
so amazing that our hearts want to leap forth and sprout wings. And
when we’re disciplined to perform other peoples’ bidding, this
holiness is gone and in its place a festering pool of resentment.
The holy celebration of life and liberty becomes only some vague
ritual of old times, while life itself seems like some meaningless
struggle to exist.

Let’s all think of the liberty we have today. It seems the only
two freedoms we have left are making money and spending it and
everything else falls under that vague category of riot. Look
around you, and tell me where you can go where there isn’t either a
show of police or security guards or an imminent threat of them.
Look around, see all the locks, chains and walls, everywhere you
go. Everywhere you go, everything you do, you’re on private
property. We are the eternal trespassers and in a world devoted to
property, that means we are nothing.

But if I haven’t yet made myself clear, defiance is only a minor
glimpse at the beauty of liberty. Every time we defy authority, it
feels great because we declare our own lives. And that little
"devil" inside of us which enjoys defying authority would be light
as an angel if we were truly free.

Such talk has always been heresy. It was back then, it is now
and as long as there’s a group of people in control of our lives,
it always will be. But that’s why the fight for liberty is such a
fundamental theme in the human condition. You’d think that when
revolutionaries the world over say that freedom is based on respect
which requires violent or forceful action, they’d have a valid
argument based on real experience. And maybe if we understood that
we’re not exempt from the currents of history, we could learn from
them.

The final irony of liberty is that no matter how intellectual
currents might massacre its meaning, the rabble, dregs and trash of
society seem to instinctively understand liberty. It is so
instinctive, so fundamental and inseparable from the miracle of
human life that attempting to explain it in detached rational terms
is impossible. And attaining it requires an all-out battle on
intellectual, spiritual and physical fronts.

And that’s why relaying the message is so important.

Bassilian is a junior majoring in mathematics and political
science. His column appears on alternate Fridays.