In my book, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All, I talk a lot about how I believe the beauty of freedom is the diversity and free-spirited creativity it engenders.
So, you might ask, what is the opposite of freedom? In other words, you might ask, what is the opposite of the peaceful loving non-violent principle of live and let live?
Sometimes I like to think of that freedom-rejecting thing as Agent-Smithism.
Or, to blend fictions, perhaps we can call it, Orwellian Agent-Smithism.
Whatever you call it, it is indeed the opposite of free-spirited creativity and beautiful diversity. It's hard to sufficiently describe it succinctly even with appropriate words like "violent nanny statism" or "god complex" or "control freak".
So I really like the label Orwellian Agent-Smithism.
In my other earlier topic, Whether you are looking for a savior or someone to save, or both, look into a mirror, I wrote, in part, "There's no shortage of unhappy people wanting to give you advice, if not put a literal or metaphorical gun to your head and force you to take their literally miserable advice and live by their literally miserable standards. Many would rule the world because they cannot rule themselves, at least not in a way that lets them be truly happy with inner peace."
Like a naturally evolved computer virus, or really any kind of destructive self-copying runaway process, Agent Smith is a cancerous emotional wreak, a miserable robot lacking true free-spiritedness, and arguably lacking a true spirit at all. He is a cancerous control freak who is himself unfree. He is the opposite of a free-spirited self-disciplined stoic. He is not someone who appreciates the beauty of free-spirited creativity and the diversity that freedom engenders. He is a miserable self-copying cancerous thing that destroys diversity. Misery loves company. Miserable people find comfort in blaming the world for their misery and then seeking to conquer it and make it conform to their miserable standards.
Miserably violent Orwellian nanny-staters would likely say they are saving the world, making it better, and doing good. And they would likely say they are unhappy because the world is not yet saved, not yet made good enough, and not yet conformed enough to their literally miserable unaccepting standards. Instead of addressing the state of their own proverbial backyard as a cause of their misery, they seek to copy their backyard-style to everyone else's by imposition or outright violent force. Somehow the miserable seem to convince themselves that they would finally be happy if only through world domination they could get the outer world to be more like them and follow their rules. It's not their own rules making them unhappy, they think, but instead they think they'd finally be happy if only they got the outer world to conform enough to their literally miserable standards. Even Hitler thought he himself was the good guy. Ironically, miserable people tend to most think that the world would be a better happier place if everyone was more like them, so miserably so that they tend to want to make such conformity to their standard happen by force. Violent power makes tyrants of all humans charged with wielding it, but those most willing to rule--most convinced by their own misery that they or those like them could uniquely be the benevolent dictator the world allegedly needs--are definitely most prone to using that violent power to spread misery and destruction.
In contrast, those with the loving true happiness of inner peace and spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) find beauty in diversity, in freedom, and in free-spirited creativity. It's much easier for them to turn the other cheek, or to at least live and let live. Those with happy spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) don't feel compelled to dominate the world and imposingly trespass on everyone else's proverbial backyards.
But the miserable make a false idol of conformity. Those who lack self-discipline (a.k.a. spiritual freedom) overcompensate with a god complex, meaning an Orwellian desire to control and discipline the whole world instead of themselves. When they can't manage to find the self-responsibility to clean their own proverbial backyard, they instead trespass on everyone else's backyards, blaming their own misery on the fact that every other yard in the entire world doesn't yet blandly conform to their miserable diversity-hating standards.
Long story short, I choose to not be like Agent Smith. I choose to live and let live. I choose freedom. I choose to support freedom and peace, and oppose all non-consensual non-defensive violence, even when it's done legally by some giant Orwellian nanny state and even when it's done by violent utilitarians allegedly doing the violence "for the greater good". When it comes to non-defensive violence (e.g. murder, rape, slavery, etc.), you will never ever hear me say anything like the ends 'justify' the means. I don't trust the alleged ends of a miserable person who claims they want to save the world with violence, but that's moot because no matter how glorious the ends I would never endorse or use the means of non-defensive violence (e.g. murder, rape, slavery, etc.). In narrow little politics, and more importantly in the much broader and more meaningful sense of spirituality and life itself, I embrace free-spirited creativity and freedom of all kinds, and I love the beautiful diversity that emerges from freedom.
I choose the opposite of a control freak's god complex: I choose self-discipline, a.k.a. free-spiritedness.
What do you choose?
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.