The way the question is asked triggers my alarm already.
I am a bit over-allergic to collectivism as it has no respect for the individual, and individual, subjective experience of the reality is why consciousness chooses to be this path of the fractal and be aware of these subjective experiences, from fly, through dog, retard, to enlightened being... and beyond, which human mind cannot understand.
But let's focus on the "speakable" dimension for the purpose of answering this question.
I think communism is one of most ingenious tricks of slave-masters, therefore "we" already required some clarification, in my view.
I can only speak for myself, from the perspective of an individual.
Me myself, yes I am free. I will be free no matter what.
Some time ago I faced death. I was flying in the air when my lights switched off. I never expected them to turn on again.
To my surprise, I came back.
I could not move, went through hell and back, but this completely changed my life.
This experience set me free.
There is nothing that can undo it. I found out who or what I am.
The new "I", which is not set of thoughts, memories and conditionings of a mere meat on bones.
Once you become friends with death, you become free.
If death makes you more free, then what kind of earthly play could possibly make you less free?
Not everyone is so lucky to die, come back to go through hell of unimaginable suffering, to realise suffering is just a program. ;)
Before I get carried away... the question was: are WE truly free? I will treat "we" as the majority of individuals.
If we look at the humanity as whole, there is a small, yet rapidly growing minority of people who awoken to the fact that we are being farmed by sociopaths. It has been like this ever since they gave us "history".
We are being indoctrinated since infancy, that the world is a constant struggle of power-groups and bad people only waiting to control us... and this is why we need to give control to people who want to control us. We are being taught We need priests to "protect" us from the sociopathic God, who loves us...
We are being told the threats are really laws and they are not a promise of hurting anyone who dares to know how to be a good person.
This is why we need these priests, pharaohs, kings, presidents and other sociopaths, to protect us from hypothetical bogeymen.
"You need to give us control over your lives, because we are the people you are afraid might control you".
Does this seem like freedom? Freedom is a state of mind and spirit. This is the opposite of freedom.
We are being programmed from birth to perceive the opposite of the reality as benevolent, spiritual civilization, while in fact huge majority of people are manipulated into praising a dark occult.
Yes, it is highly likely that your momma, papa, nana and huge majority of people you meet, are actually Satanists and have no idea about it. This is how this trick works.
The high priests were never really chosen by us. They were always given to us and simple mind-tricks have been used to make us hallucinate it was our choice.
The way they do it, is through the knowledge of human psyche. They know what spirituality is from technical perspective and work hard for millenia, to keep this knowledge out of human reach.
They killed Jesus, burnt all other "witches", burnt library or Alexandria and keep the lost human knowledge locked up in Vatican.
Our masters know human attention span goes barely couple of generations back.
They know how to easily manipulate people who identify themselves with thoughts, with fear and emotion.
They think of themselves as superior specie, as they do not waste time on trivialities, like feelings, they do not develop.
This is why today, even after so many lessons of the past, we still fall for the same, only a little more sophisticated tricks.
The rulers plan these things in advance of hundreds of years. They learn on their mistakes. This is why today so few think or (r)evolution. Today it is so well designed, we cannot even see the cage we are born into.
We are like a fish that only knows its glass jar.
Today golden statues are to obvious. Today we have new spiritual brainwashing, called New Age, where people are programmed to think, that if they hum and put on hippy clothes, it means they are meditating, which makes them uberspiritual and so much better than anyone else. What a tragically comic ego trap!
Again, real spirituality has been distorted with a twist of the Natural Law and turned into greed of "The Secret".
But we are getting closer. There is so much truth in New Age. Now just change the perspective and we are there.
At least the catholic trick is almost over. The notion we should be praising a sociopathic cosmic retard that burns people for eternity if they even question HIS methods... even if you can't help yourself but think your neighbour's wife is sexy and don't ask a priest for forgiveness... but no guarantees if you don't pay enough, because god could not figure out how to not need money... while HE impregnates other people's wives, for some sociopathic kick out of it, as then Mary gives birth to him, so he can commit a suicide in sacrifice to himself, for sins of inferior humans he created... and planned it all?
At least we stopped believing a retarded sociopath is the omnipotent, best thing that can be... there is a chance we will stop following this example.
How could our spirit ever be free if we would like to be as terrible as our "god"... but know we could never even dream of being as good... it would be a blasphemy... so we were programmed to believe in being worse than a sociopathic retard... how could we get lower than that?
Today we do not worship pharaohs as gods. Today we have actors, hired by the rulers, we call presidents.
And even though not one politician in human history ever delivered what promised, we still prefer to praise untrustworthy master of life and death, but we would fire a toilet cleaner if they did not do their job well a couple of times.
But it is changing rapidly. They cannot stop the real force that creates, pushes this universe forward, "telling" the evolution to unfold and melt down the entropy.
The sociopaths will soon be left behind, due for extinction as there is nothing left to experience through such a narrow view.
Love is what evolutionary impulse is all about. They stopped learning, therefore started dying.
Today we connected our minds with internet and we have access to all the discoveries of "Jesuses" of our time; people who awakened from the hypnosis of human ape.
Now we are also about to set ourselves free from their control of our wealth with Blockchain.
The dark cult that brainfucks the shit out of spirituality is loosing ground. It takes time, but we are on the edge of paradigm shift.
This is the most exciting time in known human history.
People still get "rather offended" whenever you question their taboos, but they were programmed to be full of dogma, so they cannot think for themselves quite yet.
Meditation is the gateway. Land a shroom in pure nature and try to stay ignorant.
Try to keep your ego in control and you will get such a slap, you will wake up straight away.
To not turn this post into a book, let me stop here and just summarise and use a shorter answer to the question.
Your time is your capital, it is being taken from you by a cult. Your spirit is the real you. It is being taken from you by a cult. Your freedom is taken from you by a cult if you dare to disobey.
It is all called "western civilization". It has nothing to do with being civilized.
It is still slavery, just very well designed and tailored to our current level of awareness.
Whatever the herd tells you what civilization, spirituality and freedom is, straight away wonder if the opposite is true.
Almost always it is. We are taught the exact opposite of reality.
Therefore we are still far from freedom, but getting closer every day.
And all thanks to awakened people, like the ones in @ecotrain and @tribesteemup and many more.
Freedom will prevail. Humanity is waking up to it. It is exponential like an avalanche.
They are loosing and they know it.
Straight from the horse's mouth:
If you are interested in off-grid living, homesteading and alternative lifestyle, check out my other blog @lostambores, which is about my every day life in nature; growing, farming and becoming self-sufficient.
My blog @evolutionnow is about Voluntaryism; mainly my critique of ideas that threaten freedom and respect for each individual.
I believe that every interaction between humans should be voluntary. I want for each individual to be the only controller of their lives and their property.
I am an individual. I want to create stuff for myself and others. I want to be rewarded according to how my time is useful to others. My life is mine. I own myself. What I create is extension of me. My time is my currency. I can exchange it or keep it. It is my capital. I do not believe in imposed authority.
Labels that fit to my individual choices make me an anarchist, a capitalist, a voluntaryist, but most of all, I AM AN INDIVIDUAL, who does not judge your value by the status you achieved in an imposed, imaginary collective. No matter who you are; if you respect others, respect me, I will always respect you.
I know I am the only owner of my life, my time, my capital.
This is what I want. It is the best for me. I don't care what the collective wants me to do. I choose to interact if I wish. I am the owner of me.
I do not want to harm others in ANY way.
Please do not impose your rule on me.
Tread on me or others and I will feel morally obligated to stop you.
PEACE AND LOVE IN ANARCHY
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
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Hello to you @smokeymcpot!
I just found you and I am so glad that I did!
I relate to your story and I have followed you. ;)