Freedom in Dependency

Excerpts from Richard Capes’ interview with David Edwards (Medialens co-editor and author of Free to be Human):

To work for a corporation is to be part of a system in which power flows strictly from the top down – it’s a totalitarian power structure. That’s the lot of enormous numbers of people in the world. If you try to opt out in the UK, you are ordered to ‘look for work’, mostly different kinds of corporate bondage.

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Our freedom is undermined by less obviously political forms of social manipulation. For example, we’re propagandised by society to seek freedom in dependency. One of the key purposes of modern schooling is to instill a thirst for ambition and status in the young. The emphasis is on competition, coming first, getting the best grades to get to the best universities to get the best jobs and salaries. This version of freedom chains us to external sources of reward and respect. If we believe we need high status and ‘success’ to be happy, we are chained to the people and organisations with the power to bestow these rewards. So we are trained to actually seek, to willingly embrace, a life of dependence.

Read more: Free to be Human: An Interview with David Edwards

Also well worth a read: Falling by David Edwards