ON FREEDOM: An Evening with Timothy Snyder
Reflections on Timothy Snyder's "positive freedom" and George Lakoff's emphasis on empathy based freedom.
Welcome back, subscribers to the Substack of Empathy Surplus Network USA. The embodied human brain is cognitively biased through experience and language toward conservatism in some areas of our lives and progressivism toward others. This cognitive bias is called biconceptualism. Empathy Surplus is a nonpartisan, membership, science-based communication education 501c3 collective to strengthen our progressive biases toward empathy and mutual responsibility to expand our freedoms. We want to know what’s most important to our members. We use interactive Zoom forums to apply and share what we learn from the books of cognitive scientist, linguist, and progressive activist George Lakoff to our individual goals.
Our mission is to make empathy central to constant public discourse in our mutual centers of influence. Join us at https://proempathy.us/join.
This post is in preparation for the Empathy Surplus Network USA Zoom Forum. We will discuss The Little Blue Book and use our Pro-Empathy Freedom Framing Toolkit.
Empathy Surplus Network USA sponsors On Freedom: An Evening with Timothy Snyder
Empathy Surplus proudly announces its sponsorship of On Freedom: An Evening with Timothy Snyder, 7 pm, Friday, October 18, at The Murphy Theatre, Wilmington, Ohio. Dr. Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, will discuss his new book On Freedom. “We hear of freedom, but do we grasp it?” asks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi on the book’s back cover. “We are all fortunate that Timothy Snyder has shown us the way.” Tickets are on sale now and will benefit Wilmington’s Ukrainian Sister City of Merefa, Kharkiv.
Our Duty to Care
Humanity’s duty to care for each other’s freedom has been an English legal concept since 1760. Empathy Surplus is proud to cosponsor this fundraising event because Dr. Snyder takes his duty to care seriously. He cares about humanity and the reversal of the carbon pollution heating of our planet, which has caused the worst Ohio drought in three decades. “American democracy is built on the ethic of citizens caring about other citizens - empathizing with each other,” writes our mentor and cognitive scientist George Lakoff. 1
Likewise, Dr. Snyder writes, “Those who care about a republic would never hinder democratic practice.”2 Dr. Snyder seems to channel Dr. Lakoff, who describes effective government as “The Public” writing, “No individual can build the infrastructure of possibility alone; we need government to build the architecture of the American dream. Free adults will have to support the institutions that helped them, with their voices, votes, and time.”3
Wilmington, Ohio’s cruel wing city council makes homelessness and helping the homeless a crime.
Our On Freedom event comes at a time when the Wilmington, Ohio, City Council is dominated by cruel wing members led by a soft spoken cruel wing mayor. They have managed to steal local government’s moral mission to protect and empower everyone and sold it to the local cruel and self-righteous. Instead of declaring a climate emergency, these non-progressive legislators are implementing a mini-version of Project 20254 early by passing a local ordinance to enslave the homeless in detention.5 In addition, they made gifting a blanket or tent to the homeless a crime.
Freedom voters care. Consider joining our witness to “positive freedom.”
Dismantling local democracy in Wilmington, which this local human rights violation does, destroys the sanctity and safety of American private life and the basis of most ethical businesses. Snyder’s On Freedom is a call to “positive freedom” for all. In contrast, the cruel wing’s limited government means limited empathy - a government that cares only for billionaires and the dismantling of our nation as we know it, love it, and need it to be. Freedom voters care. I hope you will join us and other freedom voters on Friday, October 18 at 7 pm at The Murphy Theatre for On Freedom: An Evening with Tim Snyder.
Lakoff and Wehling, The Little Blue Book, Ch 10, The Public, p. 64, Simon and Shuster, NY 2012
Snyder, Timothy, On Freedom, Conclusion: Government, p. 242, Penguin Random House, NY 2024
IBID., p. 233.
Cuccinelli, Ken, The Department of Homeland Security, Project 2025
Smith, Stephanie, City Addresses Homelessness Challenges, Wilmington News Journal, 09/10/2024, https://www.wnewsj.com/2024/09/10/city-addresses-homelessness-challenges/