The Freedom Manifesto: How to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Fear, Mortgages, Money, Guilt, Debt, Government, Boredom, Supermarkets, Bills, Melancholy, Pain, Depression, and Waste (2006) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Quotes edit see section history

• “We resist interference and we resist interfering with others”

• “Those two dark jailors Health and Safety are used by the interferes to foist ever more stringent attacks on our liberties. - p. 9”

• “How to be free? Well, like it or not, you are free. The real question is whether you choose to exercise that freedom: there is an essential nothingness at the heart of man. We have created our own universe. Life is absurd. God is love. We are free. p.3”

• “Instead of trying to be rich, we might try to be poor, simply by embracing thrift and rejecting consumer gewgaws. Not needing money by reducing our needs can have the same liberating effect as not needing money by making a log of it. Learning ot live within limited means gives a great sense of security because you become free of wanting more and therefore free of struggle. Also, the less money you need, the less you have to work. This way of escaping money has the great advantage over the high-earning route in that it is very much easier to achive. But, with being poor, there is no risk attached and most of us would probably find it a fairly simple process to work less and earn less”

• “The existentialists had a useful approach to desire. For Sartre, desire is not something you could be free from exactly; rather, it is something that you embrace but without necessarily acting on it. This can certainly be true in the case of sexual desire. 'Say a massively fanciable woman walks into your life,' said Penny Rimbaud. "To act on your desire would be to run the risk of completely wrecking your home life. So you act on it and embrace it, but in your mind. You go through the process ...' In the existential world, you invite the desire in, talk to it, allow yourself to be amused by its company, chat with it and then, when it leaves, blow out the candle and go to bed. So, in order to be free from it and for it not to master you, it is important to acknowledge it in the first place and not simply to blank it out and pretend that it doesn't exist."”

• “"There is a charming tale of Tchekov's about a man who tried to teach a kitten to catch mice. When it wouldn't run after them, he beat it, with the result that even as an adult cat, it cowered with terror in the prescence of a mouse. 'This is the man,' Tchekov adds, 'who taught me Latin." Bertrand Russell, 'Freedom versus Authority in Education', 1928”

• “Instead of attacking the status quo - always a foolish idea, as attacking something tends to make it stronger (governments love opposition!) - it might be wiser to create our own societies alongside the current system and simply do our best to ignore the Thing altogether. In order to keep bureaucracy and taxes to a minimum, we will earn small amounts of money and instead do favours for each other. We don't want affordable housing, jobs, and shopping cenres. Those are slave's perks, handed down by authority, which may be more or less lenient according to whichever government fate has installed. What we want is to create our own little aristocracies, as D. H. Lawrence has it.”

• “"It is just as irksome to have a servant as to be a servant" D. H. Lawrence, 'Education of the People' 1918”

• “There is a great Damien Hirst installation called 'Looking forward to the Total and Absolute Suppression of Pain' in which four TV monitors simultaneously and at ear-splitting volume play four different commercials for Nurofen, Salpadeine and other headache tablets. The solutions to pain are precisely the things that cause the pain in the first place. The same system that causes the pain promises to take it away”

• “The commercial world, then, treats us like celebrities - 'Because you're worth it,' it says. It flatters and kowtows to us and keeps on doing so right up until the moment when we hand over our credit-card details. Then we are cast aside and condemned to a purgatory of being held in a queue on a customer service line for all eternity. What fools we are.”

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Tom Hodgkinson (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 158

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Nonfiction › Social Sciences › Sociology
• Books › Nonfiction › Philosophy › Political
• Books › Health, Mind & Body › Self-Help › Personal Transformation
• Books › Entertainment › Humor › Self-Help & Psychology
• Books › Nonfiction › Education