Freedom of Choice, or Freedom to Obey?

I love the ocean because it is untameable. That's not to say that someday, some billionaire financier won't look for a way to box it in, gate it off, drain the resources for profit, all for the loudly proclaimed sake of improving people's lives and building the planet back better.

But for now, the ocean, for the most part, takes up a huge portion of the planet, and has absolutely no need or compulsion to ask permission of the billionaires, the world governments, and the many many agencies of two to four (generally three) letters in their names to flow over the globe, to exist, to be. It has freedom of choice to be the ocean, act like the ocean, and exist as the ocean.

But what about us? What about each human being on the planet, all supposedly equal and deserving of dignity, humanity, compassion, the right to earn a living, the right to eat, to stay warm and clothed and safe from marauders? What freedom of choice do we actually have? (And by the way, do we need a piece of paper to inform us that we are equals, to bestow that equality upon us as governmental decree, or are we really, truly, intrinsically BORN as equals of each other? If the latter, then why do we suffer kings?)

Due to the aggressive and harassing voice of the mainstream media, the word choice has become solely associated with abortion, or not. As recent and disturbing coercive governmental edicts show these days, My Body My Choice does not mean you have a general and all encompassing choice to refuse "medical" "treatment" "options," but rather, may choose one of two or three concoctions hastily put together by profit-making pharmaceutical companies, or, if you're disobedient, uncaring, selfish, and stupid, may "choose" to do what you're told or lose your job. Or be locked in your home. Or escorted to a re-education camp. The "choices" for choosing to say No to Drugs get increasingly draconian, and one wonders, how far will people -- normally good, decent people who would never kick a stray dog -- let this travesty of illogic, meanness, unscientific and irrational non-thought, and totalitarianism go on?

We do have a choice, one that supersedes government, emperors, and kings: We can choose to do good. We can choose to treat others with dignity. We can choose to question what we're told. We can choose to NOT call an idiot someone with whom we disagree. We can choose to put the TV in the garbage can. We can choose to listen to dissenting voices. We can choose to say, "What are you Rulers doing? How is it you are separating a section of people from another, and saying it is fine to treat them as sub-humans? And what right do you have to make these decisions?"

We can choose to live free.