The Brooklyn Rail

 “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
–Henry David Thoreau​

“No one outside ourselves can rule us inwardly. When we know this, we become free.”
–Buddha

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have we already forgotten what it means to be free? Have we forgotten that any time in history when an institution begins to weaken, it quickly succumbs to any form of ambition that would replace principle, and that fear can turn respectable individuals into eager followers? This applies to where we are now with the Senate, the Department of Justice, and the Supreme Court. As they accommodate whatever President Trump desires to do impulsively, they become consequentially irrelevant. How can freedom mean anything when it does not concern people and the lawful context that we have created ever since the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Bill of Rights (1789), which have been applied to our past as well as our present and future?

As our world has become increasingly more mechanized by technological speed and its inherent coldness, we can easily be subjected to behavior in response to algorithms, and so we urgently need to consider the essential differences between freedom being negative and positive. As many of us realize, it’s very seductive to live in a self-contained, self-regulated bubble, from which fear as a governing factor can be kept at arm’s length. But the more we fantasize about defending our own criteria of pleasure, prolonging life against death, the greater fragility we gain, as we are no longer in touch with our own physical bodies in relation to other communal bodies. When Walt Whitman, for example, lent his consolation to nearly one hundred thousand wounded Civil War soldiers between 1862 and 1865—writing letters home on behalf of those who were illiterate or bedridden, reading various texts, bringing them small comforts such as clothing, brandy, tobacco, and food—he was exercising his own habit of empathy.

This brings us now to the most urgent question: what indeed is empathy, and why do we human beings need it? Why should we ever care about what makes other human beings happy or free besides our own selves? Are we so sure to declare that we’re working against evil without ever having the need to define good, and vice versa? However, in knowing how one can’t exist without the other, the essential differences between negative freedom and positive freedom still are eminent. While the former depended on us conforming to the most extreme measure without being aware of our own action—the predictably comfortable idea of me vs. you, us vs. them—the latter thrives on collective work, on having the capacity for change, and on creating conditions where everyone can be free.

Negative and positive freedom in fact evoke Robert D. Putnam’s two opposing concepts: “bonding social capital,” in which homogenous inward leaning with close friends is a presiding requirement, and “bridging social capital,” which values diversity that expands outwardly, bringing different tissues of larger communities together. I do not mean to elevate or favor one over the other, since either can always be subjected to exploitation and reinterpretation and lead to unintended, perverse consequences. In each case, minute or monumental asymmetries that occur at the edges of things can have tremendous effects at the center. For example, however certain President Trump once was of his relationship with Vladimir Putin being far more favorable than his relation to Xi Jinping, we can surmise that he wasn’t aware of the history of China being once a junior partner of Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), whereas China now holds the upper hand as senior partner, especially since the outbreak of the Russia/Ukraine war. In fact, they’ve been forming their own autocratic incorporation as means to protect their amassed power and wealth with impunity. Such circumstances radiate far and wide. For example, Poland is now rapidly strengthening its military capacity to deter Russia’s aggression, and Japan—which has been insistently pacifist since WWII—is now remilitarizing as a defense against China and North Korea. Meanwhile, the issues of power (and natural resources such as oil and minerals) in Venezuela and Greenland pose a real threat to our European and Latin American allies.

As the Trump administration floods the zone in an increasingly predictable way, we must embrace our capacity to be fearless of uncertainty, and to anticipate desirable future actions—acting in ways that are not dictated by mechanical precepts, rigid societal constraints, and so on. As we all know, at the very heart of freedom is unpredictability. We can only be free when we follow our own values and principles, which don’t always conform to others' expectations. Freedom is our counter-friction against any form of the tyranny of certainty—namely, to resist political dogma that deploys technology’s inherent coldness, speed, and algorithmic predictability. We must not be afraid of the things we love, for they define who we are. And to love something means to appreciate whatever comes with it—contingencies, even failures. As Timothy Snyder once remarked, “Free people are predictable to themselves but unpredictable to authorities and machines. Unfree people are unpredictable to themselves and predictable to rulers.” Self-governance is based on reason, virtue, and responsibility, all at once.

Upward, onward with love, courage, and cosmic optimism as ever,

Phong H. Bui

P.S. This issue is dedicated to our mentors, friends, and fellow human beings: We’re profoundly grateful to Janet Fish (1938–2025), and Beatriz González (1932–2026) both of whom brought invention and monumentality in their respective pictorial representations of still life and historical painting to unforeseen heights; Ceal Floyer’s (1968–2025) exploration of wit, humor, and visual acuity through her conceptual work has widened our awareness of visual perception; Frank Gehry (1929–2025) whose radical thinking of fluidity of form had changed architecture forever; and to Marian Goodman (1928–2026) and Robert Mnuchin (1933–2025) whose two exceptional platforms of showing artists’ work are legendary. As for film and theater, we’re in debt to Béla Tarr (1955–2026), Christine Choy (1952–2025), Robert Heide (1934–2025), and Amos Poe (1949–2025) for their visions of how time-based media can be direct, unfiltered products of their art as truth. On our social front, we’re in deep gratitude to Michael Parenti (1933–2026) for his unrelenting critical voice of the US’s imperial ambition, while the lives of Alex Pretti (1988–2026) and Renee Good (1988–2026) were the most courageous acts of human freedom. We at the Rail are in deep meditation on these losses in knowing their spirits will forever live in the world of human consciousness. We send our deepest condolences to all members of their immediate families, friends, and admirers here and across the universe.