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Freedom? Liberty? |  |
  We
surely do like the sound of those words!But what do they mean, really? To all too many people I suspect that all they mean is marching up and down and waving a flag: and, this is something they will fight for! This is something that needs fighting for! And by fighting, they mean with their fist or a gun, preferably in some sort of military uniform. That there might be other ways to fight for freedom, or anything else, totally escapes them. Nothing else has their respect. And, by inference, no one who has not, or cannot, fight in their approved manner has their respect. Now don't get me wrong. I respect the American military. I respect it enough to know that the things they have to do, and which some of them die for, are more complicated than a wave of the flag along with a side dish of rhetoric. Our freedom and liberty are among those things; and, I respect them enough to know that they are complex and complicated things; and, that a big part of fighting for them is defining and trying to understand what they both are as well as reinterpreting them for each generation as times and conditions change. Liberty has a slightly more legal connotation than freedom, I think; but, for my purposes I shall consider them as one and the same thing which is what they really are. And what are they? Doing what you want to do when you want to do it, is that freedom? Do you know of anyone who has the freedom to do exactly what he wants to do when he wants to do it? If everyone had that kind of freedom, exactly what kind of world would we have and how free would we really be then? There have to be rules; and, there have to be some kind of effective enforcement of those rules!  There are very few people who actually want to go to work in the morning, or whenever they have to. Most of us would much rather laze around the house doing our own thing or hang out with our friends. But what would actually happen if most of us actually did this and didn't bother to go to work? Well, it might be fun for a while until we got hungry and there was nothing in the 'fridge; and, we went to the store and the store was closed because no one bothered to open it up, not that it mattered because there would be no food on the shelves anyway because no one had bothered to put it there, not that it mattered because no one had bothered to bring it to the store, not that it mattered because no one had bothered to raise any kind of food to begin with! Of course, that doesn't happen because most of us do go to work and not just so that everyone can have food and clothes and shelter. We are generally far too selfish for that. We go to work so that we can earn money to buy food and clothes and shelter and whatever else we might need or want! Through our need for money to get the things we want, society enforces the rule that we must somehow make a contribution in the production of goods to get any back. It isn't perfect; but, it works for the most part. If we try to take something which isn't ours, we get put in jail! If we park in the wrong place, our car is towed away! There are definitely limits on our freedom to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it. Freedom is not absolute! So we can't all just "do our own thing!" 'Fraid not! 'Cause the moment you start to do anything, you will inevitably impact somebody somewhere! If not immediately, through chain reaction, eventually! It is your right to walk versus the other guy's right not to have his toes stepped. Inevitably conflicts will arise. Your right to swing your arm ends at the other guy's nose, so they say! To which I will add that, thanks to our greater population density, the other guy's nose is a lot closer than it used to be! Your right to have as many children as you please versus others' rights, including the rights of unborn generations, not to face the problems that overpopulation brings. Your right to make decisions for yourself versus other's right not to have your decisions forced upon them! This is all complicated by the fact that human beings are social creatures simply because there are some things that we cannot do by ourselves and as individuals; and, so we must do them together. This calls for some kind of decision making process for the group. Notice that I said "for the group" and not "as a group" or "by the group." This is because the group seldom, if ever, makes a decision. Powerful subgroups and individuals do. The most common given reason for this is just that people don't speak up. They let things go because it is just too much trouble to disagree; and, because they fear, even if that fear is unjustified, some kind of reprisal. Sadly, that fear is often too much justified! Make no mistake, right here in the United States, people lose jobs or just don't get them because they hold an unpopular political or social opinion! A lot of Americans understand that sad fact only too well and keep things to themselves! What is really sad though is that many people don't seem to even bother to have an honest opinion of their own. They let others tell them what to think because its easier, and because they like being fashionable and part of the "in-crowd." I have lived long enough to see how ideas can become fashionable! And the sad thing about it is how the people following those fashionable ideas somehow think that they are being "rebels" and "politically incorrect" because they hold different ideas from whatever "bogeyman" they choose to demonize. In the sixties,* it was long-haired hippies and radicals who didn't like some vague entity called "the establishment." This "establishment" was understood to be conservative. Now it is this strange concoction of various political, social, and religious conservatives who choose to demonize something they call "the left-wing liberal establishment." Then as now, these so-called "politically incorrect free-thinkers" almost always parrot the exact same set of ideas; word for word, phrase for phrase! I wonder how we can be free if we don't know how to think freely. I am not saying that we should not consider what others think; but, still it would seem that freedom, like so many other things, first begins at home and within our own being. *And, Yes, I know the terms "politically correct" and "politically incorrect" were not used during the sixties; but, the concept existed! And bet I didn't go with my chain of thought where you thought I would be going when you first began reading this page. Ever notice there are a lot of butterflies on this website? Well... that's because "the butterflies are free!" |
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