True Freedom Is Impossible Without Self-Control and Inner Peace
The still center in the eye of the storm depends on what you know is right, not who has the prettier argument or feels more deeply.
This series on freedom has become extensive, readers. It started with temperance, moved on to the root words for “freedom,” explicated how freedom necessitates self-awareness, went on to discuss why selling one’s freedom is a bad idea, and the previous installment pointed out that no freedom means no heroes. Now we come to another aspect of freedom rarely considered in the modern day: Freedom comes from self-control and provides the free man with inner peace.
If your mind saw “inner peace” and jumped to Kung Fu Panda 2, congratulations. Mine did as well when I began contemplating this article, and that film is one which I think helps to firm the point. Po is told that he must gain inner peace in order to proceed in his training but what inner peace is Shifu does not quite explain. As any good teacher trying to encourage his student would do, he gives Po the basics with which to work and discover his own path forward. He does not hand him the answer(s) to the question - nor does he actually name the question.
Shifu explains that inner peace is only found in two ways: Through radical self-discipline, or through “pain and suffering.” Ascetics throughout history have demonstrated a “Power of No” as Crossover Queen calls it that borders on a superpower in itself. But that path does not work for everyone, not even everyone who chooses a life (extreme or otherwise) of asceticism.
More people gain inner peace the same way that Po does - through suffering. Po must learn that whatever Lord Shen throws at him, he needs to persist in that “firm, unconquerable no” when fighting him. That well-trained willpower is what gives Po the “inner peace” or emotional stability to catch and hurl cannon balls fired from Shen’s ships with growing accuracy, until he can fling them back at his enemy to stop him.
So what is this “inner peace” and how does one acquire it? How about we look at Po practicing “inner peace” for a moment and dissect the scene before we continue:
Kung Fu Panda 2 - Po Finds Inner Peace ● (8/10)
There are two important and related things going on in this scene, a subtext that I have seen reflected in a similar manner in only one other franchise. First and foremost is the amount of self-control and thus physical control which Po demonstrates here: His movements are fluid but also sharp, strong, and fast. All of his physical power and prowess, which allows him to commit feats of force to knock down opponents or break doors, is present in his motions here.
Yet not once does he damage the raindrop. It doesn’t fly off into the wind or splatter, and he does not lose it or let it rest long enough to be absorbed by fur or skin. He keeps the droplet in constant motion so that it remains spherical and passes along the track he wants it to follow.
I do not know if such control is possible in reality with a real raindrop. However, this kind of physical, mental, and spiritual mastery is possible in a myriad of ways. To an extent, as I type this, I am exhibiting an imitation of Po’s motions. I’m a bit excited and my hands are jittery, but when I “go into a zone” while writing I can demonstrate a similar physical mastery between mind, spirit, and body as I type.
Now, the second thing going on in this scene with Po is that he is identifying and controlling the direction or “flow” of his emotions. This is what the Soothsayer means when she gives him the direction: “Stop fighting. Let it flow.” She wants him to stop blocking the memories and their attendant emotions, since his refusal to face and understand them only doubles the pain they cause, but to let himself feel them. And Po, as a free panda, must feel them in a controlled manner. Otherwise, he is not free.
This is in sharp contrast to his earlier attempt at achieving “inner peace” on the boat headed to Gongmen City, scene of the majority of Kung Fu Panda 2’s action:
Kung Fu Panda 2 Inner Peace Scene HD (bluray)
In this scene, Po lets his emotions out in an uncontrolled manner. While it is played for laughs, Tigress knows this is not healthy for him. It is why she comes out of the boat and offers to spar with him; she is giving him a target with which he can converse, someone with whom he can work out whatever he is feeling rather than simply scatter his pain everywhere (and thus, run the risk of hurting an innocent or himself). As she says, “The mast is an unworthy opponent.” It cannot offer advice, a warm hug, or silent commiseration.
She can, and she does her best to do all of that in this scene. Later, after they fail to stop Shen the first time, she does an even better job helping Po face his feelings when she duels with him in the Gongmen Prison.
More to the point, in each case, she gives Po a reason to remain in control. Granted, Po’s movements here and in their battle aren’t as disciplined as they could or should be. But without Tigress’ help, he would not have been able to capture, manipulate, and then release the raindrop unharmed.
He also would never have been able to do this:
KUNG FU PANDA 2 Clip - "Final Fight With Shen" (2011)
Shen may appear to be more graceful compared to the clumsy panda, but in point of fact, he is far less self-disciplined than his movements suggest. We know this in part because Master Rhino is able to defeat him with a few simple moves early in the film, yet the constant battles he has with Po further drive home the point. Shen is emotionally disturbed and, rather than feel those emotions and direct them to a good end in a controlled manner, he lets them fester.
That, to paraphrase a favorite character of mine, is not freedom. It is license. A license to misbehave and hurt others because Shen wants what he wants, and to hell with whatever or whoever stands in his way. He is the important one in the equation and therefore he has no need to control his emotions or direct them in a responsible manner.
This is not a healthy, sane, or good attitude to have and it is why the peacock’s downfall is assured before he sets out to destroy the panda village. Shen is too enamored of his own will and desires to care about petty little things like right and wrong when they are standing in his way. Once his parents enforce the punishment for murder and massacre, he redoubles his determination to have what he wants at any cost, blaming his good parents for the consequences of his own choice.
Po could do this, too, but he decides not to. As he says in his final confrontation with Shen, what matters most is what the sovereign individual chooses to do in the moment before him. The one in which he simply is and wherein must decide how to act. The past isn’t coming back and there is no getting even with it or altering it. One can either let the pain of the past consume him or he can let it go and choose to be someone else in the present. Someone better than the person he was in the past.
By letting go of the past and exerting self-control so he can channel his emotions in a directed manner to a good end, Po achieves “inner peace.” Initially, this good end is gaining further self-possession and finding healing through processing his feelings. Later, he finds the “inner peace” to face Shen’s cannons by realizing he is the only one who can protect his friends (and, by extension, all of China).
When the cannon falls on him, Shen “finds peace” by allowing his emotions to consume and destroy him. Rather than possess himself, he lets his feelings devour him from the inside out. The expression on his face as the cannon falls is an obeisance to futility, a paean to despair, and an agonized acceptance of oblivion.
This does not seem to have much to do with freedom, you might say? Yet without self-awareness, we could not choose anything of our own free will or even realize we had the capacity to choose at all. If we give in to seeming temperate voices or sell our freedom, we put a price on our sense of internal peace by giving away our birthright to another to do with as they see fit. Nothing rated so cheaply can ever give us either freedom or “inner peace,” and it certainly will not take us down the path to heroism.
Remember, freedom means “free to choose one’s doom.” “Doom” has its root in words that mean “a law, statute, decree; administration of justice, judgment; justice, equity, righteousness; judgment, decree,” and “a decision determining fate or fortune, irrevocable destiny.” To choose one’s doom, as Po does in this scene, is to decide to adhere to what he knows is right and to act in a right manner to achieve a good goal. By remaining chained to his selfish desires and the pain of his parents’ rejection due to his own actions, Shen doubles his defiance against what is right and just.
Shen wiping out the panda village for something they had not done yet and might never do was a crime against the natural law engraved on men’s hearts. Holding a grudge against his parents for justly punishing him for his transgression only made matters worse for the peacock. He went home “filled with pride” in the deed he had done, but his mother and father stared at him in utter horror to discover that he had murdered innocent villagers on the mere chance that one of them might stop him, some day.
It is a good explication of “Chesterton’s Fence,” the argument that just because you do not know why a fence was built in a certain place, that does not mean the builder had no reason for putting it there or put it up because he was insane (or stupid). The point is to teach one secondary-thinking skills - i.e., to consider the consequences of potential actions. Every action has results and whether they are good or bad depends on the state of the will of the person making those decisions.
For Shen, secondary-thinking does not come into play. The peacock never asked why the rule against murder existed, why it would be wrong to kill pandas who had done nothing to him and may never do anything to him at all. He also never stopped to think through the consequences of his decision to transgress either his father’s law as ruler of Gongmen City or the natural law against murder. In this way, he sold his freedom to his passions not once, but twice, and he remains those passions’ tortured slave even at the moment he dies and his will becomes fixed. In the end, Shen could never find peace because he refused to do what Po did: Take control of himself and adhere to natural law.
Now, what about that other character I said showed similar restraint in his separate franchise? I think the first picture in this post rather gave it away. Steve Rogers is, for my money, one of the most self-controlled characters in cinema (and comics, but we will focus on the MCU for now). The moments when he temporarily loses control - and those moments are always, always short and small - stand out all the more for that reason.
Granted, Steve’s early fights in The First Avenger are not perfect examples of finesse. But given what we see him do, the amount of physical direction he does exhibit is amazing. This picture should help elaborate my point.
Like the commenter in this picture I, too, noticed the way that Evans’ did the side-vault to get onto the roof. It gives me a thrill as well, particularly in how he turns his foot before he takes off running. I always watch for it. This scene increased my respect for Evans’ acting skill not because of his “unique way of moving” but because he could communicate just how much control Steve had over his movements and healthier body. This is in part thanks to the serum yet it also relies on the person inhabiting the enhanced body to be effective both as a movement in itself and as a scene in a film.
As an example of how controlled Steve’s way of maneuvering is when compared with others’, here is someone noting the difference between how he and a brainwashed Bucky Barnes move:
Steve could very easily move in the manner that the Winter Soldier does (until Bucky Barnes regains control of his mind and body and starts trying to alter his fighting style to be less brutal). The super soldier serum heals him at a very rapid rate, and we see him purposefully take a lot of physical punishment, such as when he jumps out of the elevator at the Triskelion and lands in the concrete floor several stories below. Moving in a less refined manner would not (necessarily) kill, maim, or cripple Steve Rogers.
Yet he chooses to fight and maneuver in a far more directed and smooth manner. It is what makes his battles with a brainwashed Bucky so visceral and frightening, since he is all grace and fine lines while Barnes is savage, brutal, and forceful - to his own detriment as well as to the detriment of others. Part of that might have been due to the fact that not only was the Winter Soldier trained to be brutal, but it might have been a tacit hint at how fiercely Bucky was fighting to stay alive within a body and mind ripped from his control continually for seventy years. Steve has, from the outset of his history, emphatically insisted on remaining in control of himself.
It was that insistence that led to all his fights with bullies when he was a boy and then an adult in Brooklyn. As I said in this post here:
…not everyone is “broken” by their own choices or outside events. Some are broken purposely by other people for specific ends, and that means they have a long road back to mental more often than physical health. The posts here and here will be of some help with this topic, but the main point to remember now is that there is a certain breed of human being that enjoys breaking other human beings. You have heard the saying that some people just want to watch the world burn, yes? Well, sadly, some people just want to hear others scream.
It is an unfortunate fact of our fallen existence but one to be recalled by authors. Writers also ought to remember that those who live to cause others pain target any vulnerable party that cannot get away. Abusers of any and every kind choose targets weaker than themselves – or those whom they can isolate and weaken. They then prevent them from escaping and do their best to mold them into something that serves their purposes. It does not matter whether this purpose is to die by inches or to fulfill some type of role; as we shall see, the end result is the same. The abuser gets to gloat, inflict his or her will on the victim, and watch them writhe.
Jay Richards and Jonathan Witt go into this in The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot*. They point out that all the villains, from the Orcs on up to Sauron, gloat and take pleasure in the pain of their victims. One reason, they hypothesize, why the villains do this is because they have no other way to confirm that their victims are submitting to their will.
When we see Steve fight with the bully from the theater in The First Avenger, he is physically manifesting his internal refusal to be pressured - mentally, corporeally, or morally. He is putting his body on the line to refuse to be subjugated to someone else’s will. He will neither bend nor break when others put pressure on him to change, something it seems Bucky learned from him, since he survived all of HYDRA’s torture and best efforts to kill him in his mind, if not physically. HYDRA spent seventy years literally making Barnes scream to ensure his wounded mind and scattered will submitted to theirs. The only reason he screamed but did not break and die is because he had a strong example in Steve Rogers to cling to no matter how bad the pain became.
It is this “firm, unconquerable no” that simultaneously makes Steve attractive to some and unattractive to others. It is also what makes him a thorn in the side of the powerful or would-be powerful, like Thunderbolt Ross, who desire to force others to adhere to their will in some form or other. Steve emphatically refuses to be forced to do, think, or say anything of which he does not approve. He is firmly attuned to natural law and will not break it nor bend it for his own benefit or to make others “feel better” about themselves.
But does Steve control his emotions? Yes, for the most part he does. Exhibit A:
I guarantee you, reading that meme, you either smiled or outright laughed. Perhaps some of you giggled, either into your hand or without concern for who heard you. When I watched the movie, I giggled in part at Steve’s expression. Why not? It’s funny.
Yet it also shows Steve’s control of himself. He is standing there, a lightly amused expression on his face which he can easily switch from “Do not laugh, do not laugh” to a gentle, “Yes, Thor, that was very good. You elided over your misstep well there.” (And considering this is Thor, yes, he did course correct quite neatly.) He does not laugh. He does not giggle. He does, in short, nothing to hurt Thor, Natasha, or Bruce.
But neither does he hide or suppress his amusement. He exhibits it in a controlled manner and directs it away from the person who would be embarrassed or hurt by it. Like Po with the raindrop he handles it with force, speed - and kindness.
This is how Steve behaves in general: Calm, quiet, friendly, and usually with an eye to avoid frightening or hurting people. Because as we see time and time again in his feats of physical prowess, he is very fast, strong, and SCARY. He has far too much power to just sling it around carelessly.
So when he does lose his temper, as he does at 2:53 in this clip, it’s frightening:
Hydra is still active. Arnim Zola Captain America : The Winter Soldier (2014)
We see Steve hold a helicopter in place with his bare hands in Civil War. We watch him go toe-to-toe with the Winter Soldier in this film. We watch him survive jumping out of an elevator several stories above ground level, diving out of a plane without a parachute, and executing great feats in World War II. Yet this is one of the only times we see him physically lose his temper, something he did not do even while arguing with Tony Stark aboard the Helicarrier in Marvel’s The Avengers.
And even here, Steve pulled his punch. He simply broke Zola’s computer face rather than knock the entire computer off it’s pedestal. He could have done the latter but he CHOSE to restrain himself despite the fact that he had found his world stolen from him once again.
Steve’s entire life has been one of loss. His father died before he was born, his mother died when he was eighteen, his best friend “died” during World War II, and the entire world he knew is gone by the time he is awakened at the end of The First Avenger. Here, Zola takes the world he saved from him again: “We won, Captain. Your ‘death’ amounts to the same as your life. A zero sum.”
If Tony had been told that, the computer “head” Zola was using to talk to him would have been melted to slag, and at least half the underground bunker with it. Tony does not control himself to the same degree that Steve does. Hearing that his legacy, his friends’ lives and legacies, and everything they fought for had been subtly stolen from them all made Steve’s control crack just a little. Yet after that, he was back in possession of himself and all business to try to stop HYDRA.
Ah, that reminds me. By this point, Steve does not know the Winter Soldier is Bucky. He won’t know until he removes the mask later. Given the juxtaposition between the pictures in the above clip, Howard’s obituary picture doesn’t line up with the earlier shots of the Winter Soldier being deployed on missions. There is no obvious or direct connection here between Barnes and the Starks’ murders….
But there is the reveal that HYDRA murdered Howard and Maria Stark. That they stole more from Steve by stealing from his friend, Tony Stark, a man who would have been adopted family to him. Steve wasn’t trying to protect Bucky from Tony.
He was trying to protect Tony from HYDRA.
This is why the final fight in Captain America: Civil War is so frightening and hard to watch. Both Steve and Bucky - the latter for the first time he has appeared onscreen as the Winter Soldier - are demonstrating a lot of control in their fight with Iron Man. Tony is not. He is doing what Shen does in Kung Fu Panda 2: Letting emotions he has kept festering in the back of his mind have free reign and expression as he goes for near or even lethal strikes and hits on both of his opponents.
Steve and Bucky, in contrast, are fighting like Po: With control, direction, and a desire to stop Tony before he kills either of them and thereby stains his own soul with murder. As someone I know puts it, they are taking apart the suit while Tony is wearing it. While Tony is actively doing his best to kill one or both of them.
That requires an ENORMOUS amount of self-control, of physical dexterity and direction that very, very few people can claim to possess, let alone pull off. And the two super soldiers are making it look easy.
Because for both of them, but particularly Steve, it is as natural as breathing.
Steve’s moral compass never wavers. He may be confused as to who to trust or which course of action is the best in a given situation, yet amidst this outer sturm und drang he possesses the same “inner peace” that allows Po to throw cannon balls at Shen’s ships. He possesses himself, directing his emotions into controlled, careful actions calculated either to make the most of his empowerment in a healthy way or to avoid unnecessarily hurting someone emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Every little movement he makes is calculated to either do requisite damage to stop an opponent or to make certain he does not “break a bruised reed.”
These are the first fruits of freedom: Self-Control and Inner Peace. For as long as you are free - that is, as long as you possess yourself, whole and entire - the storms of life are but “sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.” They may hurt, as they hurt both Po and Steve, but they can never consume you or destroy you unless you let them.
That is what true freedom is and what you need to safeguard. Because the minute you give up your “right to choose” to someone or something else - such as a government, another individual, an addiction, or an emotion - you are giving up your ability to control yourself. You are surrendering your capacity for self-control and inner peace to an entity, person, or thing and you may never get it back. Not without paying a very steep price.
Self-control is the first step on the road to heroism; inner peace completes the journey. If you want inner peace, as you want heroes, you need to have self-control. For that, you need freedom. Otherwise, you have neither peace nor control, but remain a slave to things or people who will use and discard you without a second thought. So do not give up your freedom, readers, as you strive for self-possession and inner peace.
You may indeed regain your freedom if you give it up. But you will have to fight far harder to achieve that liberty than even someone who is forcibly enslaved against his will. At least the person stolen into slavery can still possess himself and remain peaceful in his heart.
The man who sells his freedom will not even be able to manage that small act.
The article made me think of another vid, analyzing the original animated Disney’s Aladdin, specifically Jaffar’s character, And how basically when a character’s actions are dictated by the plot, and you have to invent reasons he would act this way, you can craft a pretty interesting character.
Specifically, with Jaffa they needed an otherwise-competent villain who nevertheless would keep screwing up at key moments.
How this applies to the post: for much of the movie Jaffa’s is portrayed as having a great deal of self-control. You notice it in the straight lines he’s drawn in, and how the top half of his face is almost a mask, and that self-control has done well for him: he controls the guards and practically runs the kingdom.
But it’s a self-control that he intensely resents. Maybe because he presumably had to work his way up by merit while the royals are permanently over him just by an accident of birth, and could take away everything he’s worked for at a whim (“when I’m queen I’ll have the power to get rid of you”, that had to sting).
So as soon as Jaffa gets what he wants or is about to get what he wants, he drops his self-control immediately, and it always backfires on him.
We get the first glimpse when he’s too impatient and wants to take the lamp right away rather than wait for Aladdin to get out - otherwise he would have won right then and there. And as soon as he gets the lamp he abandons self-control altogether, he indulges in every impulse without thinking, culminating in making his last wish without considering the consequences and getting himself stuck in a lamp himself.
Ironic (iron, get it?) that the guy who has the least self control ends up on the side of putting the heroes under the government’s thumb, while the one with the most self control is on the side of freedom.