Are We Independent?

Saleem Suzah
suzah1@yahoo.com

2011 / 9 / 20


There is no doubt that the independence is one of the most valuable attributes that we all brag and pretend to have. Independence is almost always defined as an alternative to partisanship, and this gives a very narrow meaning for a very complicated term. Most people define independence as a term that refers to those who don’t belong to any political or religious group. Those nonpartisans are always neutral because they’re away from biased beliefs of the parties. This is what most people believe. But in actuality, nobody is independent, even those nonpartisans, because we all have our own ideologies, and believe in pre-existing thoughts. Briefly, independence is an illusive concept, does not even exist

My father tends to Communism, but he is against belonging to the communist party or any other party; he gives me a headache every time he starts talking about his independence. My high school teacher was an Islamic preacher; he used to fight party’s followers, trying to get them out of their imperfect and biased thoughts because he was independent or that’s what he thought since he didn’t belong to any political party, very funny! They do believe that independence is just getting away from political parties. Well, it’s not fair to consider only parties’ members and followers biased and non-independent just because they follow their official opinions; or the non-parties’ members are always independent since they politically represent the opposite views. If we believe that this is the right meaning of independence, then we have a lot of people who are independent, actually billions, but this is completely wrong because it’s not the accurate definition of independence as I believe. Philosophically, independence is getting rid of all ideologies and religions that affect our decisions when we try to do something or even give an opinion. Therefore, in order for a man to be independent, it’s not enough to stay away from political parties only, but he should not believe in any kind of ideologies, religions, pre-existing thoughts, and philosophical doctrines, so he can be neutral in giving his opinions. Do you think this is possible? I don’t think such man does even exist

As human beings, we can’t live without pre-exiting ideologies that already determined our personalities. Believing in certain discourse is also considered against independence because “discourse or language in general, had preceded the existence” as the Structuralists say, "Structuralism is a famous philosophical doctrine, came after the existentialism". Discourse doesn’t structuralistically mean a set of words written to give certain meanings, but it’s a transcendent lingual system that controls and legislates our lives, with or without our awareness, via its instructions and orders. It does because it preceded our existence. This is what was probably meant by the Gospel of John when it says in its first verse: “In the beginning was the word”, which emblematically means: The authority of word did exist before the existence itself. Discourses have power that can push us to do things without even thinking why we are doing that. They are seen to affect our views on all things; so it’s not possible to get rid of the discourse’s authority at all. In other words, we’re all biased to our own discourse even if we pretend to have independence

The existentialists had also deluded the world when they tried to define themselves as independent and free people who don’t believe in any pre-existing ideologies or belong to any advanced groups and religions. They actually characterized themselves as rebels against religions, sects, and all philosophical doctrines, but they’re not since they also fell in the ugliest forms of confinement when they established a set of certain rules and thoughts that instruct people on how to be existentialist. It’s nonsense when the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger says: “I am free, therefore I exist”, because there is no freedom or real independence in existentialism anymore since people have to believe in certain ideologies also. The existentialists have their own discourse which is not different than others’ discourse. Are they really independent? Of course, not

In the media world, bias can be obviously seen by those who are not easily deceived by appearances or discourses. All news media are independent at the level of discourse, at least that what they say all the time, but in fact they can’t hide their bias when it comes to the application. I’d been working for several newspapers before; I saw how hard it was when we twist the truth to conform to our perspective. We had to do that because we didn’t want to break our own rules. The rules that were set strictly to restrict the views at the expense of the truth. To me, this is fully understandable since man is always behind those news media. Man who is controlled by his own ideologies. Man who is dissolved in his pre-existing thoughts, no matter how independent he is. Independence is nothing and nothing

That’s why the structuralism announced the death of humans as the French philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God before. Structuralism realized the fact: “No independent or free people exist in our world”. Yes, there are always religions, ideologies, sects, thoughts, languages, and doctrines, but no free humans. Humans can’t adopt their own opinions without the effects of those terms. Humans are fully buried in those terms and can’t be independent ever. This is the truth that we should believe: We are all non-independent since there is no such thing exists, called independence at all



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