About Two Freedoms, smarts, and home.
From The Geoffrey Letter: October 1, 2024
Everyone longs for freedom
But without a qualifier the word freedom is ambiguous.
Because millions of people long for freedom politicians exploit the ambiguity in the word. It’s not that freedom can’t be qualified; it’s more that the qualifier is assumed to be “understood” depending on everyone’s specific bias.
This always begs the question: what type of freedom are we talking about?
My three novels in The Trilogy for Freedom examine many types of freedom and so the title is deliberately ambiguous. But let me be specific here. Follow me as I connect the dots scattered throughout the concept of freedom.
Borrowing Artificial Intelligence
First, to assist me in this endeavor I chose the free plan in Anthropic’s Claude3 AI search engine which produces contextual retrieval to answer questions. This is offset by a ranking function that matches the words and phrases in the question, but disregards its context. This combination predisposes the search engine to produce unbiased results that I, as a writer want. I have to remind myself however, that the intelligence I borrow from Claude would be artificial, but the intelligence I draw from the information would emerge organically and be authentic; ergo, the opposite of artificial is authentic.
Two freedoms
I started by asking Claude to tabulate and categorize types of freedom and got back a fine breakdown. There were bullet points related to governance and public discourse; economic activities and decisions; freedom of expression; treatment in the legal system; social and identity expression; and digital freedoms.
However, what caught my interest as a writer of fiction was an item on freedom pertaining to individual beliefs, actions and personal life. I was compelled to drill down.
Emotional freedom
So, I typed something like, I saw personal freedom listed but that is not emotional freedom. Please elaborate…
Claude3 politely responded. “You’re absolutely right, and I appreciate you pointing that out. Emotional freedom is indeed an important type of personal freedom that I overlooked in the initial categorization. Emotional freedom refers to the ability to experience, express, and manage one’s emotions in a healthy and authentic way, without undue external control or internal constraints. Here are some key aspects of emotional freedom:
- Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand one’s own emotions.
- Expression: The freedom to express emotions openly and appropriately.
- Regulation: The capacity to manage and modulate emotional responses
- Resilience: The ability to bounce back from emotional setbacks
- Autonomy: Freedom from emotional manipulation or coercion by others”
How this matters in
A Fado for the River.
With this in mind, how does my character Raf deal with his own emotional freedom? It took him decades to become aware that he wasn’t free emotionally. He did not like to discuss his personal life. He thought he could, but when he was blackmailed, he couldn’t regulate his own emotional responses. Raf had mastered his resilience but it didn’t free him. And yes, Raf fought hard for his autonomy, but he would only feel free when he dealt with his past. This was his hardest internal battle and is the arc of his character development in the story. |
The two branches of freedom:
Extrinsic and Intrinsic
Throughout A Fado for the River emotional freedom intersects with both intrinsic and extrinsic freedom.
The more I thought about these emotionally-oriented freedoms I realized that ALL freedoms come with emotional energy, so it might be true that there are really two branches of freedom that people strive to achieve: Intrinsic (emotional), and extrinsic; all the others, which Claude calls cognitive freedom. One branch affects the other.
Claude agreed with me, calling my observation excellent and insightful. (I reminded myself that compliments from an AI engine should be taken with a large dose of salt.) This conceptualization of the two branches provides a holistic and interconnected view of freedom. Personal circumstances, cultural background, and individual needs might prioritize emotional freedom over “outside”, cognitive influences. And of course, if widely accepted, there would be societal implications. (To see my blog on revolution click below)
Intelligence: Borrow first, then build
I wondered, could there be a parallel to how we view intelligence? (By the way I do not place a value judgement on intelligence.)
The characters in my novels make intelligent choices that are sometimes both bad and good, but regardless, these characters succeed or fail to balance intelligent extrinsic choices (commonly called IQ) against the impact of intrinsic choices (commonly known emotional intelligence, EQ)
I wonder if people are aware that striving for a work-life balance requires both IQ and EQ.
The Interplay of Freedom, Intelligence, and Societal Functioning
Claude agreed that harmonizing both types of intelligence facilitates effective navigation of both intrinsic and extrinsic freedoms resulting in governments functioning better, making better decisions, and being more responsive to citizens’ needs (both emotional and practical). Increased empathy and understanding in international relations could lead to better conflict resolution strategies and more sustainable and mutually beneficial agreements.
That was not the case before or after the independence of Mozambique. Therein lies the story…
This interplay of intelligences would theoretically promote a culture that values both personal growth and societal progress. Of course, full adoption of these values would have its challenges, among them developing educational systems that nurture both types of intelligence and overcoming cultural and institutional biases that may favor one type of intelligence over the other.
Authenticity in the balance
But it’s not a balancing act. It is a state of being. Managing the interconnectedness between the two branches of freedom and striking an IQ/EQ balance amounts to a quest for authenticity.
Claude responded to this idea with the usual flattery: “Your suggestion is insightful and potentially transformative. The principle of authenticity indeed serves as a powerful bridge between IQ, EQ, and the two branches of freedom.”
I could not have said it better. I wanted to find out if the concept of authenticity might help people get their heads around the interconnectedness of freedom and intelligence.
Authenticity as a Guiding Principle
My paper on Authenticity (you can download it here), which I offer to parents and middle grade kids strives to define authenticity in a friendly and accessible way.
The problem is that, like freedom, authenticity is vague and difficult to define.
To tell an adult or a middle school child to be authentic is not helpful. I asked Claude to confirm a correlation I had made between authenticity and the concept of a home.
I had tested my theory of authenticity at a middle school in Brooklyn when I presented my middle grade thriller, Never Less.
Home is a universally understood concept
Home is a powerful metaphor that can be extended to elaborate on freedom and could include common attributes such as:
- The Authentic Self: Just as each home is unique, each person’s authentic self is distinct.
- The interior of the Home, which resonates with Intrinsic Freedom & EQ, has private spaces representing our inner emotional landscape. The comfort we feel at home mirrors the sense of peace that comes with emotional freedom.
- The exterior of the Home can be compared to Extrinsic Freedom & IQ. The home has façades that show how we present ourselves to the world. Navigating building codes and neighborhood norms parallels how we use our cognitive intelligence to engage with external freedoms and societal structures.
- By welcoming others into our home, thereby balancing individual and societal needs we set boundaries. In maintaining our home, we keep up the constant work of balancing EQ and IQ.
- We all have unique ideas of our ideal home. Recognizing this is an acceptance of cultural diversity. Appreciating different homes respects various authentic expressions in society. After all home is where you make it…regardless of what it looks like to others.
In my novels my protagonists come home—literally and/or figuratively.
