Archived News Item

Freedom through Oppression

... It is partially because of this very problem that I took my CHSPE and am now a full time student at Vista. It’s not that I was getting bad grades. It’s just that BHS makes people so anonymous. You can just feel that everyone wants to spill over and open up… but something is holding them back. It both sickens me and gives me hope.

When I still attended over a year ago I tried really hard to “tap in” to the community. I searched for the “underground” of BHS, the hidden voices that would just rip open in creative energy, if given the chance. Being a musician I tried to create a “Musicians Network.” I wanted to unite all the other musicians at BHS together into a community that could plan events. So I did the only thing I could think of, and asked to have my announcement in the bulletin. Only two people showed up for the meeting. Yet I refuse to believe that there are only two other musicians at BHS who would like to be part of a community of musicians. There is some missing link here. Maybe it’s the bulletin. Maybe it’s the way I advertised it.

Or maybe it’s something deeper. Maybe it’s something that we as Californians have much to learn about Brotherhood. We don’t stare each other in the eye. We don’t ask questions. We don’t approach strangers with love. We approach them with fear. Especially in Berkeley, we have entirely lost all the values our parents fought to preserve: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and love for one’s community.

We have lost freedom of speech because we fear. We fear that anything that isn’t “correct” and “liberal” will get a violent, passionate response. We would rather not be challenged, and so we take the easy path of being mindless. Yet those who fought for freedom of speech would not have us believe that there is only one voice worth hearing. Today, nearly every college and high school student in Berkeley will tell you they oppose George Bush. Yet none of them know why. It has become a “fad” to be liberal, to go with the crowd, to be a sheep. And it has also become thin and weightless. I rather have a community of right-wing conservatives that can think as individuals then a community of left-wing liberals that don’t have a clue about their own values.

We have lost our freedom of expression because we have become slaves to fear. I look at the students at BHS and I don’t see playfulness, restlessness, creativity… I see dullness, boredom, a culture of “cool”. We have chosen style over substance. Outsiders may look at students sitting in the park and think, “There is a community of free-thinkers.” But we know better. We know that none of those students belong to any community. They are entirely enslaved and fearful. I’ve gone into the depths of these student circles, and I know the truth: there is nothing behind the pretty faces and fake smiles. The girl with her head in the boy’s lap? She is more concerned about staying stoned then she is about love. The student with the “Stop the War” button? He cares more about showing off to his would-be elitist friends then what really happens outside his small life. The “intellectual” sitting in the park reading Shakespeare? She is trying to show off the other faker reading Hemingway. We are fearful, but we try and hide that by acting secure. This makes it easier for us to ignore the simple truth: we have no student community. In fact most of us have no community at all.

We have lost our love for liberty. I am not spouting some right—wing rhetoric, though going to BHS some might believe this. “Education is the pathway to freedom,” said Frederick Douglass. Not just freedom from physical slavery, as was his case in the 1840s. He is talking about a spiritual slavery. A slavery so inherent in today’s society that one marvels at the fact that we call ourselves a democracy. A community that centers around education must respect that very education. Thomas Jefferson said that without an educated society there can be no liberty. It is no wonder then that the students at BHS are so spiritually oppressed. They don’t care about education, and thus don’t care about freedom. We are free in all the temporary and material ways, and enslaved in all the ways that matter. A free individual is free whether he lives in a mansion or whether he sleeps in jail. His freedom is in his soul, and thus it does not matter what physical opression he goes through. But we aren’t free. We are merely tricked into thinking we are. Our bodies are free to move as we please. But our souls are entirely opressed.

For myself, I sensed this when I was in 9th grade. I tried Independent Studies in 10th grade, but by my junior year realized that there was nothing left in BHS to ponder. I left. I have never been happier before in my life. Every time I now encounter students in the park or elsewhere I am just shocked at how oppressed they look. To quote Holden. they are complete “phonies”. We in Berkeley should be doing better then that.

— Tal Atid

— Brandon