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28. What is freedom?

LightSun

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28. What is freedom?

"True freedom for me would necessitate the basics of human decency. This would include health care, education, a healthy happiness ration and to close the gap between the super rich and poor. Only then can we march forward and reach our potential as a society in whole."
 

Typh0n

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Being left alone. Not to be confused with being alone.
 

Typh0n

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"True freedom for me would necessitate the basics of human decency. This would include health care, education, a healthy happiness ration and to close the gap between the super rich and poor. Only then can we march forward and reach our potential as a society in whole."

There needs to be some kind of safety net in society. The minute you take that away is the minute you have a communist revolution. Now, I'm more or less for people taking care of their own financial needs and all, I'm not saying I want the state to provide for everything, or even anything if you can provide yourself - but we know that's not always the case with everyone.
 

draon9

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Freedom is willing to be responsible in order to keep it. Freedom is from the inside.
 

Lark

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I think freedom is probably the single most important thing in human history, in both its negative and positive sense.

Despite all the progress that's been made it seems to disappear over the horizon each time one is reached there is another and a lot of the old battles need to be fought afresh every couple of generations, maybe even in less of a time span than that.

I also think there's an innate drive to freedom in every individual, also an awareness of the freedom of others, its as powerful as the drive for attachment, which I kind of think has primacy for most individuals. Even the most highly introverted individual who would like to live in hermitage has a drive for attachment in some shape or form. The drive for freedom is the only thing that comes close to that.

The world being as it is there's all sorts of corruptions and temptations to suppress, repress or deny freedom, your own, others, a whole system of forfeits or power trips which seem enticing to the really successful. So I think that creates psychological conflicts and crisis on an individual and social scale. The blocking of this drive, like any other big drive, doesnt make it go away, growth doesnt stop, it just goes toxic or twisted.

This, in my view, accounts for some of the more bizarre sorts of trends, some of which appear like an affirmation of freedom or at the very least very definitely consider themselves as such. I definitely think it accounts for how weird a lot of totalitarian regimes turned out to be and also why they seem to be such a feature of a lot of fetish cultures which explicitly involve norms of domination and submission.

Its also interesting to me the extent to which its not a popular topic, at least so it seems to me, people prefer to talk about other things, race, sectarianism, stuff like that but not freedom and there doesnt even seem to be the same sort of examination or reflection in an academic sense that there once was. I dont know how long Burnham's book on the Managerial Revolution has been out of print now, which Orwell thought was a huge big deal and significant bit of publishing at the time. Instead there's this simpler sort of thing that so long as its all privatised its not tyranny any longer or oppressive or injurious at all. At that point I cant see how there can be anything other than a sort of project creep towards the reintroduction of slavery in some guise or other.
 

Kanra Jest

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Internal Freedom is the most important thing. Identity. Expression. Being and sharing that with the world. That brand of freedom means everything to me.

External Freedom is important, as well. But Absolute Freedom I'm not so sure. I think we all need some sense of structure and order, while free to explore and be ourselves.

I find it quite ironic and amusing that Anarchy is kind of an ENTP shtick but I see something a little different. I think we all need a balance. Too much of any one thing can be just as dangerous as it can be 'freeing' or 'entrapping'

That is free as an essence

But let's explore a different interpretation: Freedom of equal rights ? Certainly. But that's a basic understanding within our current confines. Let's extrapolate.

Freedom is an 'Idea' and that 'Idea' is empowerment and exploration, evolution. When I say evolution, it is because often times we are held back by our "traditions". Evolution is one of the most vital things of any society to continue to exist and thrive.

'Evolve or Die'
 

Lark

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Internal Freedom is the most important thing. Identity. Expression. Being and sharing that with the world. That brand of freedom means everything to me.

External Freedom is important, as well. But Absolute Freedom I'm not so sure. I think we all need some sense of structure and order, while free to explore and be ourselves.

I find it quite ironic and amusing that Anarchy is kind of an ENTP shtick but I see something a little different. I think we all need a balance. Too much of any one thing can be just as dangerous as it can be 'freeing' or 'entrapping'

That is free as an essence

But let's explore a different interpretation: Freedom of equal rights ? Certainly. But that's a basic understanding within our current confines. Let's extrapolate.

Freedom is an 'Idea' and that 'Idea' is empowerment and exploration, evolution. When I say evolution, it is because often times we are held back by our "traditions". Evolution is one of the most vital things of any society to continue to exist and thrive.

'Evolve or Die'

I dont think that freedom and equal rights are dichotomous, I also think that tradition is no obstacle to freedom but is instead its basis.

Tradition is just another way of saying memory or learning, its impossible to evolve if you have to repeat the same lesson over and over and over again like 50 First Dates.
 

Maou

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The ability to choose, good or bad.
 
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Knowledge.

The ability to seek knowledge and to widen one’s perspectives is what nutures freedom of thought. To be given the opportunity to learn how to think and not what to think. The moment a power limits accessibility to knowledge it begins to strangle freedom. So in the end, knowledge is not just power, it is also freedom.
 

Lark

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I found this clip good, in the discussion of the material basis for freedom, which is what I think measures such as universal basic income are and ought to be.

The thing is, I think that both Rogan and Shapiro are correct in what they are saying. In some communities the availability of benefits has been a blight, among other things. However, do you generalise from their experience? Or do you generalise from the experience of legacies and their Trust Funds? Also, technological obsolescence is still a thing, not everyone is going to be a coder and I definitely do not think everyone should be a soldier, law enforcement, prison officer or work for social services.
 
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Because in Europe, and even more in America I guess any concepts of freedom is totally false (the one offered by modern societies),
Deepak makes me dream (within my dream).
 

Kanra Jest

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I dont think that freedom and equal rights are dichotomous, I also think that tradition is no obstacle to freedom but is instead its basis.

Tradition is just another way of saying memory or learning, its impossible to evolve if you have to repeat the same lesson over and over and over again like 50 First Dates.

People want equal rights as a sort of freedom. Tradition can get in the way of change, when they are resistant. If one remains the same and doesn't want to change, it isn't free. So it can be an issue technically. Fortunately that's what revolutions and people like Martin Luther King Jr are here for. To make that change happen. Freedom is often seen through a political lens but it's more than that. When I see freedom I see symbolism. Not being chained down by things, a.k.a tradition in this case. But there are other chains that restrict our freedom, as well. To be truly free we needn't be chained.
 

Lark

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People want equal rights as a sort of freedom. Tradition can get in the way of change, when they are resistant. If one remains the same and doesn't want to change, it isn't free. So it can be an issue technically. Fortunately that's what revolutions and people like Martin Luther King Jr are here for. To make that change happen. Freedom is often seen through a political lens but it's more than that. When I see freedom I see symbolism. Not being chained down by things, a.k.a tradition in this case. But there are other chains that restrict our freedom, as well. To be truly free we needn't be chained.

Tradition is merely the learning (memory of the ages) which is passed from one generation to the next. It should spare future generations the need to repeat the mistakes of the past. I say it should but the fact it probably wont. Not while such an easy criticism of it is possible and so uncritical a perspective on change prevail in its place.

There is of course, innovation, which is positive change. It can (at its best) balance out the scales WITH tradition. Fresh insights may give pause for thought about traditional practice but it is also important to avoid fashionable trends, vogues, capricious and chaotic pitfalls. Progress is not really a linear route. There is a lot of two steps forward turning out to be four steps back.

It may sound counter intuitive (especially since a lot of what was one time very radical thinking has become mainstream) but traditionalism can be progressive. Traditions can be/and are a good foundation for freedom. It is if it amounts to something other than, something more than simply a defence of privilege, legacies, old money and all that jazz. There are traditions which dont look to ruin some people for the benefit of others. Traditions that properly recognise that one persons freedom should not and can not continue to be at anothers expense or loss of their freedom.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Really, it's being able to do what you want provided it doesn't negatively impact others. Rather high bar to set, actually. Lots of people aren't actually free even if Lee Greenwood says so.
 

shinedowness

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There is unconditional freedom, which is when people can do anyone or anything at anyplace, anytime, and anywhere and in any way they please. So, this would allow rapists to rape, killers to kill anyone for fun, pedophiles to "play" with children without authorities taking the children away from those pedophiles, people to put graffiti everywhere (especially on military buildings), druggies to use drugs like LSD whenever and wherever, people to lie without punishment, people to cheat without punishment, etc.
And there is conditional freedom, which is when people can have some freedoms to do what they want to do on the condition that they do not cheat, lie, abuse people, etc.
Countries opt for conditional freedom rather than unconditional freedom to make sure people are obeying the laws rather than becoming wild animals that are uncontrollable, uncivilized, etc., which is the rational and "decent" thing to do.
To me, freedom is the ability to do what you want to do without someone or something preventing you from doing that. Some people create this reality that they can't do something because their politicians say they can't do it. But, some people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Bob Marley, etc. create this reality that they can do something despite their politicians saying they can't do it because they don't choose to be easily obedient citizens if they see that their politicians are not seeing the bigger picture.
 

Mole

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Freedom is being free from unlimited power, as we have found power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

We don't want to be powerless, so we balance between no power and absolute power, and the sweet point, we have discovered, is liberal democracy and human rights.

Liberal democracy doesn't abolish power, rather liberal democracy limits power, by elections, the Separation of Powers, and human rights.

Liberal democracy is an act of pure genius. It is unappreciated.
 
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