Freedom

Freedom. What does that mean? A lot of people like to shout about how they have or should have freedom. Freedom to decide for themselves, freedom to act how they want, freedom to believe what they want to believe. And yet these same people are also very willing to restrict other peoples freedom as soon as it becomes apparent that someone else’s thoughts, beliefs, desires do not match theirs. It seems that for some there hasn’t been much thought put into what it actually means to want freedom. Instead the entire concept gets diminished into a great sounding buzzword that gets thrown around whenever there are actually difficult issues to figure out. It is, after all, a great deflector: Who wants to oppose freedom? But just saying something isn’t enough, there needs to be an actual understanding of the concept. So what does freedom actually mean or what should freedom actually mean in today’s society?

There is the Cambridge Dictionary definition, “the condition or right of being able or allowed to do, say, think, etc whatever you want to, without being controlled or limited.” That makes perfect sense in terms of a literal definition. However in application, things begin to get messy. We live in a free society, yet we are not allowed to do or say anything we want. For example, I can’t go and take someone else’s property because I want it. That would be stealing and is against the law. Now this becomes a restriction on my freedom. I can no longer do anything I want, my actions have been restrained, my freedom has been restrained. Yet as a society we agree that this restriction on our freedom is beneficial. Why?

Another example, I’m having a feud with a shop owner and decide to write an article lying about the quality of goods and the cleanliness of the shop. I’d be committing libel and the shop owner would have the right to sue me for my knowingly false statements. Now there is another restriction on my freedom. I can no longer even say anything I want! My freedoms seem to be getting more and more restricted and yet society is fine with these restrictions, why?

The answer is that there has to be a balance because we are not living isolated lives. We are living in a society filled with other people so we can look to the golden rule for guidance: treat others as you, yourself wish to be treated. We can’t defend stealing someone else’s property as our right/our freedom because we have an inherent notion of fairness. We don’t want somebody to steal our property, so we shouldn’t steal theirs, and to be certain that this guidance is followed, there should be a law restricting the ability of people to steal. Thus, we decide that in order to maintain a stable, functioning, productive society, we must accept some restrictions on our freedom. These restrictions are based on fairness and should apply equally to all members of society. Unequal application of restrictions will eventually sow discord and revolt as it goes against our fundamental innate ideas of fairness.

Of course another aspect of all of this to keep in mind, is that everyone’s freedom to do and say whatever they want is actually still there. If you want to steal, you can. If you want to commit libel, you can. The freedom to choose your words and actions is still solely yours to make. The restriction on your freedom only comes into play afterwards. Your choices inevitably lead to consequences. And the consequences for certain behaviours and/or words have been deemed sufficiently important enough by society, that they are set up to be deterrents for those behaviours and/or words. Stealing can lead to jail time and a restriction on a person’s freedom to move because society has deemed the idea of stealing, important enough that there needs to be a strict deterrent in place to prevent people from just going around and stealing from others. The deterrent for libel is a potential costly lawsuit. Knowingly lying about someone can end with you having to pay huge damages. You still have the freedom to lie, but you also have to abide by the financial penalty from that lie. It’s this balance between personal freedom and other people’s rights that allows society to continue functioning and not descend into a wild-west, free-for-all. 

So freedom is a lovely idea, but one that must be tapered with reasonable restrictions. Remember it is not as simple as just declaring your freedom for whatever and expecting that to be enough. Instead you must adhere to certain restraints or face the societal consequences. Freedom will always be a delicate balancing act between competing interests, required by a fully cognisant society, in order to remain stable and not disintegrate into chaos.