Freedom

I'm fond of Giacometti sculptures. Man pointing, man walking, what's not to love with these svelt little guys? We're lucky so many of his figures survived. This driven artist would often destroy his days work at night, unhappy with the results. Today of course, they're works of art. and priceless. He kept sculpting many figures down to match box size, thinner and thinner. He said they were one more touch away from vanishing altogether in his hands. What was he trying to capture? Obviously something very inner and essential in man.

So these figures aren't just anorexic, they may represent feeling spiritually isolated from your fellow man depending on what kind of an individual you are? They do represent a personal truth about man in each figure without all of the superfluous space of our everyday lives that is usually important for us to feel comfortable and secure. There was a closeness between Sartre and Giacometti, so most see his sculptures as an existential man.
Is no man an island unto himself? In existential thought you most certainly are alone in your unique subjectivity. In existentialism you are responsible to find or make your own values and choices in life, not the lazy inauthentic strategy of borrowing other peoples beliefs and values, usually one's father and mother's. This is the angst of freedom for those who constantly think about who they are, what they are, what must they do and for what can they hope. Our lives in the west aren't tumultuous enough to be forced to ponder these questions daily, unless we're dying or in a desperate situation, say in a hurricane with no relief.

So how would Sartre view Bush's freedom in Iraq? As they become more terrified daily, more are exercising a dangerous freedom. Not the kind Bush wants. They exercise their freedom to say no to authority, to kill or take one's own life for a cause they believe in. In Iraq people are being discouraged from acting on their freedoms. They're encouraged to remain peaceful while the U.S. Airforce flys in and out at will because they're not really a sovereign country, while people are detained and killled without charges, while people are murdered randomly for their ethnicity, everyone waiting for the next bomb to go off. Iraqis would probably relate to Giacometti's man, as their lives are stripped down to life and death choices everyday, without the superfluous space filling up their day to day that we have . We live our full space lives avoiding thoughts of our own mortality and apparently theirs as well. Bringing real freedom to Iraq, which has been a slogan anyway, would obviously require leaving them alone .