FR
Taking at face value. Taking for granted. Both idiomatic expressions pretty well capture the human paradox that sustains the alternative current of cognitive dissonance.
We want it all, but when we get it for free, we don't want it because free means cheap and has no value.
Whether it's manufactured goods, services, information, entertainment, support, or even time and attention, if it's free and offered without any strings attached, we just shamelessly take it as a given without even saying thanks. Unconsciously, we are led to assume that if something is free, it's because it is unmarketable and therefore of lesser value. It's only a small step from there to suspiciously questioning the motives behind such generosity, and many people readily take that step. And rightly so, since nothing comes for free in this world.
Worse still: not only do some feel entitled to get it all for free, but they also have the nerve to complain, whereas they would be less demanding if they were paying for a low-quality service. Their foolproof argument is: “Nobody is forcing you to do this for free” or “We didn’t ask for it”.
Virtue signalers at their finest. As French screenwriter Michel Audiard would put it... you know the line. And if you don't, it'll cost you 100 quid for a valuable answer!
Ultimately, free stuff is a bit unsettling for it acts as a mirror. It reflects the ease of the taker and the effort of the giver.
In this saturation of everything — for there's also an overabundance of deprivation, poverty, violence, abuse and ‘Evil’, due to the interplay of polarities this matrix world relies on — and in this culture of minimal effort, we have lost the ability to tell the difference between a conscious approach and automatic regurgitation. This is the basis of the art of noise: making authenticity inaudible.
This world reverses everything: it values the superficial, discards authenticity, and questions the motives behind kindness.
Iso V. Sinclair
What is rare is more expensive, and therefore more valuable. But what if something is both rare AND free? It's mind-boggling because we've been conditioned to believe that everything has a cost and that every gift means we owe something in return.
A good friend of mine (you know who you are) recently confided he felt hesitant to share a video I had just released, wanting to make his online presence rare to keep his audience engaged. And he's right: constant posting kills engagement. Too much presence means less impact.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves whether attention itself has become the new currency. And consequently, the end value is more about the audience than the service or information provided... for free.
This extends to availability at large. There are those who are never available, yet take offence when they are no longer invited. And there are the loyal companions whose presence is as self-evident as if set in stone... until the day they are no longer there. And that's when everything falls apart. They're being blamed for having changed. They probably have. Or perhaps they weren't really looked at properly.
Just because you're available doesn't mean you're less important.
Ultimately, it's not so much the gratuitousness that bothers us... but the fact that some people give without asking for anything in return other than being heard and listened to. Truly. As a token of awareness. Not as something owed, but as a chance.
In English, ‘free’ has another meaning besides gratuity. It also stands for freedom. However, that which is free does not fit into any system; it eludes the logic of bartering, debt, accountability... and therefore control.
Unconditional giving does not produce loosh — a form of energy generated by our emotions and harvested by the matrix. It serves no agenda. It is liberating.
Ultimately, this may be the reason why it is met with such distrust.
© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.
