ABSTRACT
This chapter describes alterism, individual freedom, and "exclusion" systems. One can best explain alter-centered inclusion by contrasting the Hasidic contraction methods with the intrusion-exclusion "helping" method practiced in total institutions for deviants in the West. The paradox of freedom becomes entangled with another sacred referent of the Western view of liberty, namely, forced independence and freedom of choice and its consequent legitimization of social indifference. The literature of freedom has encouraged escape from or attack upon all controllers. In contemporary Western society, freedom is derived mainly from the proclamation in the Declaration of Independence that people are endowed with inherent, inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The two intertwined key concepts that explain the functionality of the inclusion community are the alter-centered horizontal interdependence between the "people of matter" and the "people of form" and the concomitant principle of descent for the purpose of uplifting others.
