These days, it greatly behooves one to be an expert player of the blame game because it is so often played, no longer exclusively by pros, but by novices, amateurs and aficionados alike who engage in the often high-stakes dodging of responsibility for fault and pinning it on others. Whenever the assignment of accountability for wrongdoing or failure comes into question, no matter how slightly, you’d better be ready to play a match or a set or a tournament—whatever it takes to win. And by win I of course mean come out bearing as little liability as possible. Continue reading →

V.

After completing my next shift at the mill, I casually amble over to that spout, and once I’ve made sure there’s no one around, I pull a small gob of deposited crude freedom off the spout. I quickly pocket it and hastily head out. I bicycle to a region of the riverbank seldom frequented by my fellow townsfolk. Being close by, the place doesn’t take long to reach. I unmount my bicycle, and standing there in solitude by the languid currents, beneath an overcast sky, I remove the small clump of crude freedom from my pocket. I take a deep breath. Continue reading →

I.

Overindulging in the exhilaration it affords, Jozine becomes addicted to crude freedom, the raw, unrefined stuff of individual independence containing a concentrated overabundance of freedoms-to—in some cases even the freedom to impose on other people’s freedom. Coarse and untempered, this kind of freedom is intoxicating with the sheer intensity of emancipation it renders and toxic with its suppression of empathy. With her, I have tried this liberty-altering substance on a few occasions (in limited extents) and all too rapidly became enthralled in heady moments of utter disinhibition, stunning unrestriction and startlingly amplified agency. My perceptions of causation were transmogrified radically, and exciting possibilities abounded; it was as if I could see and, if desired, act upon a range of choices previously indiscernible—those that had seemed ordinarily hidden in the interstices of readily apparent choices but were suddenly all at once billowing out into the forefront of my awareness. Essentially, my volition was dramatically expanded. The episodes of empowerment were immediately so engrossing and intuitively familiar but retrospectively frightening and completely alien.

Unlike me, Jozine quickly lost any vestige of the fear and inquietude crude freedom initially left her with and rapidly began to crave the substance. Continue reading →

My friend Ruod has been a successful and jolly civil liberties broker, until lately when he lost his job in the collapse of the freedom market, a disastrous crisis for institutions in that sector.

Due to the recent rapid inflation of prices, the cost of purchasing individual freedoms had become surprisingly, distressingly high, only payable by most people through the avenue of high-interest loans. And for a while, an ever increasing fraction of the population teetered precariously at the edge of being able to make their loan payments. Then, the whole system hit its breaking point as the growth of other economic sectors faltered; the performance of long-prosperous industries wavered, companies with ambitious plans scrambled, struggled and foundered, salaries dropped, people tumbled out of employment. Now the majority of people with these loans are defaulting, losing their financed liberties, flooding the market with a staggering glut of personal freedoms—fantastic deals with hardly any buyers. Facing an utter dearth of prospective clients as well as clienteles reneging on closing and closed deals, brokers like my friend quickly lost their livelihoods, their businesses collapsing. Continue reading →