I’m not the first to question this basic American postulate. And I’m also not the first to share the impact of perceptual shifts gained from travel abroad. For context, my wife and I just returned from our first trip to Europe: Portugal. So while it’s clichéd and unoriginal to feel some profound personal alteration gained from such travel, it would defeat the whole purpose of travel not to. And let me start with a positive remark, as this post ends with the opposite sentiment. It was refreshing to experience a different, (in my opinion) better way of being in the world. I had hoped I wasn’t over-romanticizing the cultural differences. And while I’m sure there was some of that at play, I had constant reminders that, no, you can function well without the inherent baggage of your own cultural beliefs and habits. And perhaps the idea of freedom, so coveted and exploited in America, is an over-romanticized concept.
Some additional background: Perhaps due to the book I just finished, Eric Fromm’s To Have or To Be, which offers a great distinction between the having mode and the being mode, I was struck by my internal questioning of something I’ve always held as a basic cultural belief: that America is the home of the free, er, homeland of the free, home of the brave? Well, regardless, ‘Merica is where freedom rings! Right?
Let’s consider. Freedom has, at its most basic, the quality of being alive vs. dead.
Fromm clarifies this when discussing the work of Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx. Aliveness being, at essence, an active engagement in the world characterized by a mindset of curiosity manifested by actually doing. Deadness is quite the opposite: a going through the motions, thoughtless routines, machine-like behavior.
Ok, here comes the bridge (literally) between how freedom manifests on a daily-lived-life kind of level. Our first day walking in northern Portugal, we found ourselves crossing over a bridge that was part of a seawall of sorts, dropping a good 10 feet to the river below (which, in fact, led to the sea).
The odd thing both my wife and I noticed: the bridge and surrounding seawall had no railing, no curbs, no bright markings of warning; no barrier of any kind to prevent either of us from tumbling over the edge.
Don’t they have any kind of regulations here?! I mean, how am I supposed to not hurt myself? How dangerous!
The next realized “oddity” came from walking along that same seawall path and having to constantly gauge on which side of the walkway to pass oncoming others. Initially, I thought this must just be a cultural thing to figure out, as surely there is a preferred side for passing others. Nope. I tried both sides in multiple situations in multiple locations throughout the trip (and we covered Portugal top to bottom). Turns out there is no rhyme or reason to passing others. Once back in the good ol’ U.S.A., my good friend ChatGPT helped educate me that this is rather common in European countries and is due in large part to the close proximity of buildings and other objects near the walkways (damn practicality showing its truthful prowess).
I just had to be on “uptime” and be paying attention to the world around me in order to figure it out case by case. How inefficient!
A third instance of daily-life consternation: that of street parking. Apparently in Portugal you can park your car front bumper to front bumper with another car. Meaning if you are on the opposite side of the road and there’s a spot, just pull in (facing the opposite direction of traffic). Whoa—who’s in control here? And yet, while driving over 600 km, including in the two largest cities in Portugal, we did not see a single accident.
Must be the winds of chance. How unreliable!
All this danger, inefficiency, and unreliability, yet life was observed as going well. How is this possible? What about the measuring of metrics and rigorous analysis to figure out the “best” way? Turns out naturally adapting to an environment proves successful. I’d go so far as to say operating this way puts us in touch with what is actually true.
Oh shit, maybe things can work without our incessant optimizing, tweaking, and praising efficiency.
It then struck me that efficiency can only be determined in closed, consistent systems. This is probably why we have so many “right” ways to do things here. We’re constantly guided by signs, symbols, and physical barriers—the variables all need to be controlled. Hence the placement and maintenance of guardrails (literal and figurative) that allow efficiency to flourish, BUT also all to limit our freedoms. We give up quite a bit at the altar of efficiency. Here I’m reminded of a great quote from Steven West of Philosophize This! podcast fame:
“I give up efficiency for meaning.”
YES! Efficiency itself is not meaningful despite how much we act as if it is. So what then is meaningful? Short answer: truth. Paying attention to the natural order of things, with the least amount of contrivance and intermediary-ness.
Back to the point here, would it be efficient if the variables changed? And how easily can the variables change? Throw up a sidewalk-closed sign and sit back to watch the humor that ensues. And gee, let’s look to the actual environment that governs us—nature. Sure seems chaotic at times and not beholden to our precious “guardrails.” So perhaps we should give some credence to what actually is and work with that.
A larger, more true system would more truly define efficiency.
Let’s experience the freedom to act in harmony with the actual natural world. Shit, let’s at least stop this daylight-saving bullshit!
Ok, now the bad news: we have to actually pay attention to the world around us. Wait, what? I have my Tesla to drive me around on autopilot so I can get more done. I wake up every morning and look at my phone to see how I slept the night before, so I don’t need to waste effort considering how I factually feel. I program my house to know when I’m home and away so I traverse from home to work and work to home as efficiently as possible—gotta save all that time adjusting thermostats and flicking light switches.
Well, I couldn’t possibly navigate even walking in Portugal while looking at my phone (and neither can anyone else). Without the rigid cultural guardrails there is inherent chaos and danger—yes. But that’s the point. We actually do live in that world, regardless of how many flashing lights we erect or how many lines and symbols we plaster on our streets.
And if we give focus to operating with freedom in the actual world, we accept the responsibility to pay attention, thereby acting in harmony with that world—including others within it. Unfortunately, we get away with pretending the cultural world, the electronic world, matters, but that trust is one busted wire away from being recognized as grossly misplaced.
And so the point is we don’t have the freedom we think we do—or at least not in a meaningful way.
The benefits of recognizing this are huge and have been talked about with so much lip service from our capitalized-influencer culture that it’s probably lost all credibility. This is sad. But the recognition is a meager step to take. The step that actually matters is acting differently. We all joke about the misplaced trust, recognizing it on some level (as, ironically, mockery abounds in the actual world that is being mocked), yet it persists. This is sadder.