The Framework of Freedom

Rules are not truth but without them, truth is impossible.

Man, left without rules, does not soar into freedom; he falls into chaos. Lawless people are not free, but rather enslaved to fear, appetite, accident. They can’t seek truth but merely survive.

Rules are the invisible stage on which freedom can play. They hold chaos at bay long enough for us to think, to speak, to contradict, to create. We should not mistake them for truth but they are the scaffolding, the rope, the net, the mask and without them, truth cannot even be asked.

Rules are a place of rest. They give the weary mind a ground to stand on, a pause from the terror of endless possibility. They offer us enough safety to gather strength to leap again without clinging to thought.

They both bind and free. They chain our hands so that our minds can move.

The herd worships rules as if they were holy. The anarchist smashes them as if chaos were liberty.

Both are fools.

Rules are neither gods nor enemies. They are means. They are the discipline that allows the dance, the still point that allows movement.

To live without rules is to drown in nothingness. To mistake rules for truth is to worship your own cage.

To walk the rope between the two, to rest without worship, to leap without falling, this is the art of being human.