On freeing your mind

All day I've been singing "emancipate yourself from mental slavery/none but ourselves can free our minds," and while singing I've reached the conclusion that, while the line works well as an exhortation to people to do what they can to free their minds, it is strictly speaking, not even close to being true.

Start by remembering what a free mind is. A mind is free if it is not bound by an inherited set of ideas, but is able to consider the widest range of possibilities. Most importantly, a free mind is not trapped by beliefs that justify existing unjust power structures, and can conceive of better alternatives. A free mind has imagination and skepticism.

Honestly, you can't just will yourself to have imagination and skepticism. The main source of imagination and skepticism isn't in you at all. It is in the way you were raised. And while it is possible to develop imagination and skepticism later in life, this too will be largely a product of your experience. The main internal cause for increased imagination and skepticism would be a kind of second order disposition. If imagination and skepticism are themselves dispositions to think a certain way, we can also talk about a disposition to cultivate those dispositions. But once you are in a position to have such a disposition, you pretty much have all you need to be imaginative and skeptical.

Once you have the will to free your mind, your mind is already free.

Redemption Song

Joey and I watch videos on youtube after everyone else is asleep. We explored all the versions of "Shrek song" together.

Just now we've been looking at videos of Redemption Song. I'm fond of this one, which seems to be by some random guy. I had been looking forward to hearing the Joe Strummer/Johnny Cash version for some time, but when I heard this user-made slideshow using it, I was let down. Cash seemed to me to have aged much better than Strummer. Hearing Joey S doing the song on his own made me revise my opinion. Really the voices were just mismatched. The Strummer video also features some first rate testifying at the beginning, and is just a nice video (is that Jim Jarmush?)

Then there is the man himself:
(He looks like he is doing all the strumming with his thumbnail, and just moving his thumb, barely flexing the wrist at all. And he can hit double time that way. Is that possible?)

And check out this version:


Well, the important thing is to have no fear for atomic energy. None of them can stop the times.