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6FREEDOM
Freedom may be defined as the lack of externally imposed restraints on the will . These restraints may be imposed by other people, social systems or the laws of nature. Freedom is not simply present or absent but a question of degree and it is essentially meaningless unless it is qualified by 'to, from and for whom', thus freedom is relative rather than absolute. However, the total amount of freedom in a more general sense is also meaningful.
Types of Freedom
Positive freedom or 'freedom to' focuses on objectives which a person wishes to achieve or preserve. Negative freedom or 'freedom from' focuses on obstacles (to objectives) which a person wishes to avoid. In both contexts, freedom exists to the extent that the will is not frustrated or restrained with respect to objectives. In the sense that ' problems ' essentially consist of a combination of obstacles to a set of objectives, freedom is the degree of absence of problems. Whilst distinct in terms of their perspectives, positive and negative freedom are inseparable, for every positive freedom to achieve objectives eventually implies the freedom from insurmountable obstacles and every negative freedom 'from' presupposes a reason that entails some objective.
Relativity
Freedom is both relative and general. It is relative to each specific objective, as the will may be less restrained with respect to one objective than to another. For example, a paraplegic may be freer to speak than to move. Freedom is 'general' in that it increases with the total number of objectives that are simultaneously or alternatively attainable.
Freedom and Power
Positive freedom necessitates the possession of power (abilities, resources, information/knowledge). Where no power exists, no such freedom can in fact be exercised regardless of the number of options and the availability of unlimited legal or moral sanction.
Negative freedom concerns obstacles (to objectives) that may or may not be related to the power exercised by other people. For example, freedom from pain is the absence of one obstacle to the objective of comfort. As such, it is a negative freedom that is not necessarily connected with someone else's use of power. However, freedom from the threat of arbitrary arrest implies limits to the powers of police. When goods are 'free of charge', the term 'free' has a specialised commercial definition and like many scientific and mathematical usages has no connection with personal freedom.
Our freedom is related to the power of other people to control (install, enforce, remove) obstacles to our objectives. In most cases, our freedom is increased when they use their power benevolently and reduced when they use it malevolently. Restraint and negligence in their use of power likewise can affect our freedom. Threat reduces freedom in that another person uses his power to introduce a conditional obstacle to one of our objectives. The result is a conflict where two objectives are now seen as incompatible where previously they were not, and thus the total potential for achievement has been reduced.
Freedom and Suffering
If suffering lies in the frustration of the will, a major part of the feeling of freedom lies in the absence of suffering. It follows that the feeling of freedom and the intensity of suffering can be altered by controlling the will. The Buddhists achieve this through avoiding craving [attachment to objectives]. Other religions teach patience [limiting the will or sense of urgency to remove obstacles and achieve objectives]. In this way, the person who is imprisoned or handicapped can potentially have as great a sense of freedom as anyone else. It is also true that factors that form obstacles to one objective may open up possibilities that might otherwise be closed, so they do not necessarily reduce the total amount of freedom present. For example, the handicapped person might avoid being drafted for military service, retaining more control over his own life. Beethoven composed his greatest symphonies when he was totally deaf because his loss of hearing also 'freed' him of the distractions of external sounds.
Feeling and Reality
Although a strong relationship exists, the feeling of freedom is distinct from the reality of freedom. The person who has no desires can have a feeling of complete freedom without having any power, but he is in reality less free than the person who has some power and a feeling of frustration.
Truth
A biblical quotation states that 'The truth will make you free'. Falsity, error, deception, inconsistency, contradiction and ignorance may have power and potential in a limited sphere, but nothing lasting or dependable can be built on them. Their possibilities are shallow, narrow and short term and tend to destroy themselves or be destroyed when extensively tested. Truth tends to be more subtle, but more comprehensive and opens up vastly greater possibilities. There will always be fewer truths than possible falsities in much the same way as there will generally be fewer correct answers than possible 'wrong' ones, but they open up infinitely more avenues for further development.
Fear
Freedom is related to fear. Fear is generally focused on real or imagined obstacles to objectives. Fear increases with the perceived possibility of the obstacles occurring and is reduced by confidence that we will have the power to overcome them. This fear is enhanced or diminished by how much we are attached to the objective in question. Fear can have several crippling effects, one of which comes about as a result of devoting too much of our limited power to insuring against some anticipated possibilities leaving little power to achieve anything else, sometimes even the focal objective itself. For example, a person could spend so much on safety equipment for an adventure holiday that he can no longer afford the fare!
Need and Strength
Your perceived need is another person's power to the extent that he is able to satisfy that need and you are not. In this way, the magnitude and variety of your needs (fixed objectives, requirements) reduces your freedom. This is also evident from another perspective: The extent to which your fixed commitments consume your limited resources (power) directly affects the flexibility you retain.
Strength and power are connected, but distinct. Power is the ability to achieve or avoid and tends to be outwardly oriented. Strength, on the other hand, is the ability to preserve and tends to be inwardly oriented. Your freedom increases with your strength because it reduces the ability of external forces to affect you. A stronger person is and feels more 'secure' and therefore needs less power to control the behaviour of others because he is less affected by their actions. He therefore also has more surplus power to direct towards objectives other than self-preservation.
Between people, their powers and strengths can combine to increase or reduce freedom depending on whether the relationship between them is cooperative or competitive.
The Existence of Freedom
There is an ongoing philosophical debate regarding whether real freedom actually exists at all. Some argue that it is an illusion and that actions are pre-destined or pre-determined by genetic factors or social conditioning. While these have been shown to alter the probability of certain choices being made, they are not sufficient to offer a complete explanation. The existence or absence of fundamental freedom as yet remains unresolved. What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is the difference between the freedom of choosing between known available options and the ability to create ones own options with true originality. Rational choice can only be made with reference to values, objectives and criteria. To this extent, it could be argued that the choice itself has been pre-determined. However, this only shifts the question of freedom to the next level but does not resolve the problem. Here education, experience and a host of other factors play their part, but cannot predict the adoption of values (etc.) with certainty. Once again, while attempts are made to penetrate deeper and deeper, there are only theories and arguments but little solid evidence.
The ability to create original options may be regarded as a higher level of freedom than choosing from what is offered. Nevertheless, the same types of problems tend to arise. If the created option is rational, then one might argue that it was essentially predetermined. One could hypothetically try to work back through a long chain of causation hoping to find the point at which true freedom existed, only to have to explain an 'original cause'. Alternatively, one could reject the idea of causation and attribute the creation of the option to pure chance or some kinds of random processes along the lines of evolution. Can we then suggest that the person is actually the free creator of the idea or the slave of some natural process? Either way, we are stuck again.
Whether the existence of freedom can ever be proven or is destined forever to remain an article of faith, the concept is intellectually and emotionally attractive and socially both useful and expedient. Without the concept of freedom, the principles of democracy would lose most of their credibility and without the assumption of freedom the notion of responsibility becomes severely weakened if not crippled, and the entire legal system threatens to break down. Initiative, creativity, voluntary cooperation and a sense of responsibility are among the idealistic cornerstones of much of civilisation. All of these hinge on the concept of freedom.
If one assumes that true freedom does exist, a reasonable question to ask is how much freedom is possible, where and of what kind? Other than to assert that total freedom cannot exist in the universe or in any part of it, there is no fixed answer. However, the issue will be given further consideration later.
Personal Freedom in Society
Many people are critical of the explosive growth of legislation , even in ostensibly democratic countries, and its perceived encroachment on seemingly every aspect of daily life. Part of this is the necessary outcome of technological progress, which continually opens up further possibilities. Before the advent of automobiles there was little need for a comprehensive traffic code, and since every new device brings new possibilities, both beneficial and harmful, some additional form of guidance and control usually becomes necessary. Such regulation, when considered in the light of the new options that have become available, does not necessarily constitute an overall decrease in freedom.
So where has freedom really suffered? Every objective requires the input of a combination of personal resources . Among these are time, energy, attention, enthusiasm, health and partner cooperation. None of them are perfect substitutes for one another, and no human being, regardless of his material wealth or intellect has an unlimited supply of all of them. For the average person, they are all more or less limited. The severest controlling factor in any pursuit is the scarcest necessary resource. Personal freedom suffers more through the progressive confiscation and subtle drainage of these personal resources than from any increase in police powers or external threat. An expanding supply of available options can never compensate. The outcome is a little like trying to plan a holiday with more destinations on offer than ever before, but less fuel in the tank to go anywhere.
It is true that some of this is due to personal mismanagement and self-enslavement through greed, gullibility and fear. Skilful marketing makes us feel we need far more than we can ever use: We are told what to want and we end up with little left over for anything else, sometimes a lot of debts and often a feeling of deprivation. We have become less care-free and more risk averse with the hype on safety, security and protection, all of which not only reduce the range of acceptable options but the resources available to pursue them.
The 'system' makes its own contribution to our individual depletion. The growing trend towards unreasonable litigation forces us to take ever more extensive measures to 'cover our arses'. The increasing imposition of complicated auditing, compliance and accountability processes, whilst hard to criticise, can only be implemented by diverting scarce resources from other objectives, and beyond a point becomes highly counter-productive altogether. Information overload and the lack of assistance with evaluation only leaves us more burdened and confused. Emphasis on economic rationalism, globalisation, competitiveness and 'efficiency' often lead to longer working hours, so we might earn more but almost invariably have less time to do other things we want. The accelerating pace of change, increased crime and social unrest contribute to a growing sense of impermanence and insecurity. In as much as all important decisions usually involve some assumptions about the future, confident planning becomes more difficult despite a greater number of options being available. Where a person has 'had enough' and wishes to opt out of the hassles of modern life, he finds that the system has been 'sewn up' and there is no such place as 'elsewhere'.
The issue of equality in freedom also has a prominent place in modern social thought. For better or worse, it is an observable fact that personal freedom is not uniformly distributed either in quantity or kind. This is hardly surprising, for human abilities vary widely and natural resources are not evenly spread. In every form of society, including the democratic, the greatest power and freedom has always belonged to those who are able to organise themselves to defend their interests and control the resources. Any deviation from this must be consciously designed and artificially maintained. Whilst it is generally accepted that there should be greater equality of freedom (equal opportunity etc.), complete uniformity is neither possible nor likely to be desirable. In any case, the very heterogeneous nature of the concept makes the total amount of freedom possessed by an individual extremely difficult to quantify.
Optimum Freedom
As pointed out earlier, unrestricted freedom cannot exist. In any case, it is evident that stability and predictability are also necessary and desirable. Paradoxically, it is the limitation of freedom in nature (it must obey certain physical laws) that gives us the freedom to build . Inanimate objects do not move about totally randomly; iron, wood and plastic do not spontaneously disintegrate without warning and our bodies retain their shapes at least in the short term. The greater part of science is devoted to discovering predictable patterns for the purpose of extending our power, and the extent of our freedom when working with an understanding of the 'laws' of nature is vastly increased precisely because they do exist. Law in society has a similar purpose, and while the optimum amount and distribution of freedom is debatable, it is clear that the ideal does not lie at either extreme.
From the perspective of happiness, perhaps there is some ideal amount of freedom for each individual. Too much freedom can lead to chronic indecision and inaction if the person 'does not know what he wants' at a higher level and has no basis on which to make a choice. This is particularly noticeable with children and retired people who are mostly known to thrive on a good measure of imposed structure in their lives.
The need to optimise where freedom is concerned is evident also in the amount of 'freedom trading' that people do. For example, in becoming an employee, one surrenders the free use of part of one's time in exchange for an income, which provides freedom of another kind.
In relationships, the desirable extent of freedom usually needs to be determined at the interpersonal level. Agreements between people (contracts) and promises are the voluntary surrender of some freedom in exchange for other mutual benefits, and in all personal relationships the optimum balance between interdependence (which requires degrees of predictability) and independence (freedom) must be worked out between the parties involved. Again, experience shows that neither extreme is workable.
At the individual level, the wise person will place voluntary restraints on his own behaviour so as to maximise some long term good and avoid the prospect of his freedom being extensively curtailed. In short, he tries to keep out of jail and hospital except for visiting purposes. The reality is that he is always free to pursue any objective within the limits of his power and his willingness to accept the consequences. At the same time, he is never free from the necessary consequences of doing so. In this way he must strike a balance between his 'freedoms to' and 'freedoms from'.
Why Have Freedom?
Without meaning and purpose in one's life, freedom has little ability to contribute to happiness. A person must first have objectives before freedom has any value, unless all he wants is to experience the feeling of being unburdened. The pleasure in that lasts only until the pain of directionless emptiness sets in. Freedom is a useful means but a useless end. Without meaning, knowledge, wisdom and character - particularly a sense of responsibility, freedom is extremely destructive. It is never an ideal that can stand alone.
Morality
Freedom in the use of power implies proportional moral responsibility for all the effects and side effects of its use or failure to use it. By the same token, whatever laws and commandments may be imposed on a person from above, his moral accountability can never extend beyond the limits of his freedom.
Some Observations On Slavery, and Conclusion
Perhaps slavery is seen as the most extreme opposite to freedom. In terms of social progress, we are tempted to praise ourselves for the abolition of terrible evils such as forced child labour and the slave trade, and countries endlessly celebrate the overthrow of tyrannical governments. It is undeniable that in many ways the world is different now because of these changes. However, slavery is just as 'alive and well' today. It has merely altered its form. The ball and chain of iron may have been removed. Other forms of tyranny such as oppressive legislation, inadequate opportunity, extremes of wealth and poverty induced by economic systems geared towards the organised exploitation of one group by another and martial law in various countries still remain. New forms continue to be invented. Fewer people are being manipulated by perverted religion and many more by an equally perverted marketing machine, so the slavery of induced guilt feelings has made way for the slavery of addicted self-indulgence, orchestrated fashion and peer pressure. We find ourselves victims of the 'paper chase' and the proliferation of bureaucratic hurdles. We become trapped in the increasingly hectic pace of modern life and the endless juggling of over-commitment. People are no longer legally bought and sold. They sell themselves out of greed and desperation.
Are we more or less free than people ever were? Perhaps the more important question is not 'how can we be free?' but 'how free can we be?' |
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