Freedom

What do you mean by that?

If the opposite of oppression and enslavement is FREEDOM, we all want it … a lot! When we feel our freedom is being interfered with, we take it as a personal violation and we generally get angry and start pushing back. Makes sense.

Each of us gets to have our own thoughts and ideas. That’s a form of freedom too. The first thing that fascists and dictators do is take control of the media and the public sphere of debate and shut it down … hard! If you can control what people can say and hear, you can control their minds and behavior. So freedom of thought and speech are at the heart of a healthy democracy and person.

When we all use the same word, we can be forgiven for making the assumption that we all mean the same thing. But we don’t. Words are just sign posts for our thoughts and ideas. The title of a book doesn’t show us everything contained inside. Same with our words and thoughts. We can use words like love and meditation and mean very different things.

The same thing happens with the word FREEDOM. In the current cultural discourse, we discover that people have differing views on the topic. One way of mapping that cognitive diversity is to divide up freedom into two categories:

When we use the word freedom, we usually mean the freedom TO do what we want:

This Freedom TO side of liberty has to do with personal control and autonomy and choicefulness. It matters a lot to most of us. It’s about survival and well-being. From childhood on, we don’t like parents and teachers and managers and politicians telling us what we can and can’t do. We want to be the boss of us!

Related to the freedom TO do what we want is the freedom FROM the things that can interfere with our autonomy and control such as

These all nibble away at the omnipotence every young child and many adults desire. But without reasonable limits on individual freedom, there will be chaos and anarchy and the “tragedy of the commons”. It’s the price we pay for civilization, but most people resent that to a greater or lesser degree.

Most people want both kinds of freedom, and that’s all well and good. Where things can get interesting is when people demand a very specific combination of TO and FROM. For example, some people define “Freedom of speech” as

These people will react angrily if anyone criticizes or shames or shuns or rejects them for what they say. They will insist their “freedom of speech” is being taken away from them. In fact their freedom TO speak is fully intact and protected. They are protesting their lack of freedom FROM any consequences for what they said.

Other examples of this To-AND-From definition of freedom include:

You might chuckle at some of these examples as “unrealistic” or “childish”, but just make sure you don’t say that to someone who defines their freedom that way. You’re free to do that but you won’t be free from their reaction if you do!

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