You’ve likely seen the famous Norman Rockwell quartet from 1943: the freedom series. The work has always affected me—I’m a sucker for realism, how the artist grasps light, the details of fabric fold and skin’s ripple. Note the prominent vein on a knuckle, the crispy glisten of Grandma’s holiday fowl. (Putting aside the obvious lack of racial and socioeconomic diversity—considering the time in which Rockwell painted), here I see a traditional notion of the American Dream. It is a freedom articulated by FDR: warmth, security, fulfillment. In every frame, we see a scene of community: parents with their kids, an extended kin at dinner, town hall, a church service. Freedom does not mean isolation: it means a deeper connection with one’s fellows. Freedom, Rockwell suggests, belongs to—and is dependent upon—all of us.
The Anthropocene has caged us in our own consequences. We are plagued by the results of our negligence, tormented by our gluttony.
So dependent are we on slick oil, we’ve lost our footing. In light of this course, I’ve begun to rethink my own freedoms. I’ve reframed them in terms of the sustainable. Hence: “freedom from want” is not a Thanksgiving feast: it’s saying, “No thank you, I’m full.” Freedom of speech might be: “Let me listen to your side now.” Freedom from fear is choosing not to fear “aliens.” And freedom of worship? Well, who said we can’t worship the sun?
We’ve moved away from the cozy American Dream of midcentury. These paintings, though gorgeous, are outdated. Were I to paint a new freedom (indeed, had I had enough time for an Individual Honors 392 Project), it would be this: a forest scene, abundant and verdant, with no humans in sight. Just trunks and branches, no deleterious loggers or diggers trampling through the idyll.
How radical might it be to remove the humans from the frame: how jarring (or inspiring) might it be to see “freedom” without its standard luxuries? Instead of that dead turkey on a Thanksgiving platter, let’s paint the living creatures with whom we live in harmony. To be human in the Anthropocene is to negotiate a balance between agency and humility—when to step up and when to sacrifice. We’ll achieve true freedom when we acknowledge our symbiosis.
“Independence is a political, not a biological term. Even the ‘individual’ person is host to and utterly dependent upon billions of bacteria. Likewise, human wellbeing depends upon the ceaseless generative and decompositional work of plants, phytoplankton, bacteria, fungus, and earthworms” (Litfin 423-4). Phytoplankton? I’d like to see Rockwell paint THAT picture…!
Litfin, Karen. “Thinking like a planet: Gaian politics and the transformation of the world food system.” Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, Second Edition (ed: Peter Dauvergne). Edward Elgar, 2011.
Image Courtesy: http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wamc/files/201601/four-freedoms-by-norman-rockwell.jpg