3 Fundamental Freedoms
- To Move
- To Disobey
- To Imagine
These freedoms are cumulative. They build on each other.
It's hard to require obedience when folks can walk away. And disobedience promotes the practice free-thinking, which cultivates imagination.
Freedom to Move
The very earliest recorded word for freedom is the Sumerian "ama(r)-gi," which literally translates to "return to mother." This word comes from the periodic Sumerian decrees of debt freedom, aka jubilee, which allowed debt peons to return home.
Freedom of movement is sustained by both letting folks leave and welcoming visitors.
Freedom to Disobey
Indigenous Americans took the freedom to disobey seriously.
In 1642, a Jesuit Missionary criticized the Innu for being “wild ass colts” who didn’t fear their leaders:
All of the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s ends for he is only powerful in so far as he is eloquent.
In 1644, another Jesuit criticized the Wendat. He claimed that no people on earth were freer. They only obeyed the laws and authority that pleased them.
More: Everyone agreed the Americans were more free
Freedom to Imagine
For Graeber and Wengrow the freedom to imagine is "the freedom to reorganize social relations."
In other words, this is the freedom to self-govern. Or you might call it the freedom to make (and break) promises. Since both promises and imagination look into the future.
One of the most dehumanizing aspects of slavery is that the master's total control prevents slaves from keeping their commitments to themselves and others.