Liberty is About More Than Masks and Guns
By: Barbara Kerr
Tags: Anthropology, Freedom, Masks, Liberty, Guns

I’ve joined a Facebook group called “Resist the Mandate” made up of about 5000 white people who don’t want to wear masks. Because they want to claim their freedom, they say. Because this is the land of liberty, they say. I joined because I care about them, just as I care about the family I may not see for months or years because failure to wear masks and use social distancing has driven the enormous spike in COVID-19 infections, sickness, and death.

When people are denied true freedom, they grasp whatever tiny liberties they can get. I’m sure that these people, like most Americans, work at difficult jobs for wages that don’t permit them any real human freedom. Real human freedom is not a concealed weapon, a statue of a defeated Confederate hero, or an unmasked face. We all know EXACTLY what it’s like to feel free. It’s the feeling you had when you were young, dancing wild and loose on a summer night with your besties, your people, your squad. Now, maybe it’s the feeling you get when you find the time to make something from an idea you had in your head — a garden, a photograph, a knife-handle— really, anything that you just fooled around with and made just right. It’s the feeling you get when you’re done with work, the kids are in bed, and you have one blessed hour to yourself to relax and listen to a story on a podcast. All of these are human freedoms that are our literal birthright, ways of living we inherited from our ancestors.

Anthropologists tell us that for most of human history, people only worked four to six hours a day, and spend the rest of their time gossiping, talking and laughing with each other, playing with kids and animals, engaging in spiritual life, entertaining each other, making love, and making things. That’s what freedom is — having time to do the things humans like to do.

For most of us overworked Americans, those experiences take place in a few precious hours on Saturday morning, the last hour before falling asleep, or on that longed for vacation day. For a small number of us, who had enough money to stay home comfortably during the quarantine, the pandemic revealed the lie of the American workplace — the lie that we have to work most of our waking hours. Those lucky folks discovered baking, and playing games with kids, and the joy of unscheduled time. Essential workers and people without savings only faced desperation, and didn’t get to experience the liberty that the more privileged people were enjoying.

Most Americans are desperate for that freedom, but don’t see a way out of the grind of low wage jobs and multiple gigs just to stay afloat. We look around in resentment to figure out who isn’t working as hard as we are, and we decide that it’s those other people, the Black people, the immigrants, or the guy on disability you saw barbecuing ribs by his trailer. But it’s not those others who are taking away our freedom. It’s our politicians and corporate leaders — and some misguided libertarian billionaires — who believe that our loss of freedom is the price we have to pay for a healthy economy.

So we settle for little freedoms like sneaking off for a cigarette at work. Or yelling at a store clerk about having to wear a mask. Or buying another gun. What trivial, pathetic liberties. What we should be fighting for is a living wage for every worker; healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us; and the dignity of having time to do what we humans are meant to do.

We need leaders who believe in freedom, and an economy that no longer requires that the majority of our citizens work until they are spent to protect the profits of the few. This isn’t “communism”. This is just real liberty, as practiced by every prosperous, democratic nation. So I’ll keep joining these Facebook groups, to hint, and cajole, and persuade those who are settling for tiny liberties that they can have so much more.