freedom or security...

[fela fan]

From what i read, that negative liberty is not the kind of freedom i'm after. It is a concept that allows government to have control over me. In itself it recognises the need for government, and the need for that government to have control over me and all citizens. I reject that, for government is in reality just a bunch of people telling me what i can or cannot do.

When i accidentally emigrated (i went travelling at the time, not knowing i would not return to live in england) one of the immediate outcomes was the recognition that i was out of the clutches of governments.

Now, i don't say we can't have government, or something similar in its place, and i don't say we can't have a law of the land. But what we do have is deficient. It's likely that deficiency is due to this 'negative liberty'.

This is why i say freedom without responsibility cannot exist. It would lead to anarchy where everyone does anything they like without regard or recourse to their fellow man. It is vital that in exercising my freedom i do not trample on others.

Hence my parallel thread about control. If i control others, i cannot be free. I am dependent on them, just as i would be if negative liberty came into being and they controlled me.

Freedom comes with an absence of control. This in itself means that freedom is not an easy thing, and needs to be constantly worked for.

Interestingly in that first link i read, the parameters for negative liberty were within the political sphere. Politics necessarily tramples on citizens' freedoms, and it's the major reason why i call for an alternative organising mechanism for us humans in our world. Politics says it knows better than me.

I reject that. The best way i can live freely is to live without labels, without theories, and without what others tell me is the truth or is fact.

 

[fela fan]

Okay, so positive liberty sounds more attractive than its cousin, but again, both types of 'liberty' are defined within the political arena. Philosophy that is grounded in politics is limiting itself. Politics is the basest form of human life, in that it is about some people attempting to control other people. Politics is also just a part of the whole human existence, and unless you tackle the whole, you cannot solve the whole.

My freedom that i'm talking about is close to the positive liberty in your links, but without any politics, and without society. The freedom i want is to operate my life my way within the communities that i come into contact with.

If there's one man i've read who i find it just about impossible to argue against anything he says, it's fromm, and i notice he's quoted quite a bit in those two links. I like his marriage of economics and psychology.

So, let me redefine freedom as i see it now that the thread has progressed.

To be able to be and do as one chooses without interference or control by other people, so long as one does not interfere with or control others. Hence the need for responsibility.

Necessarily freedom is hard work, and that is one of the reasons i believe that people choose security instead.

 

[Gmart]

So, let me redefine freedom as i see it now that the thread has progressed.

To be able to be and do as one chooses without interference or control by other people, so long as one does not interfere with or control others. Hence the need for responsibility.

Necessarily freedom is hard work, and that is one of the reasons i believe that people choose security instead.

People get too obsessed with the word 'responsibility'.

Ability to respond if I choose, may be all well and good, but the acceptance of a 'duty' is more accurate for me.

I am intrigued that you feel that you released yourself from the control of the state by moving abroad. I have travelled loads, but I could never say that the state of the country I am in didn't have similar powers to send the plod to get me if they saw a need to do so.

I like being in England because I can talk to people on the street and have a laugh. It is that kind of thing I miss when I'm away.

Still it is true that the freedom debate has gone away as we have discussed before. I suspect that eventually it will come back, and liberal revolution could usher in a golden age of freedoms long forgotten, however the tide seems to be going the other way as a recent article here suggests.

Until then we will continue to turn a blind eye to the wasteland of culture we have created whilst pretending that more and more locks are the answer.

 

[fela fan]

I can't associate duty with freedom. Duty feels externally imposed. Responsibility is internally taken.

I didn't actually release myself from state control when i moved abroad. It just became an unintended or unanticipated outcome. I didn't even mean to move abroad. My travelling just extended itself.

It just so happens that policemen were always omnniprescent when i lived in england, and they seem even more so when return for holidays noawdays, not to mention the politicians and all others representing state machinery. Where i live now, it is nothing like that at all. The only thing i have to deal with is visas, and while i work that is nothing much.

Basically the state gets right in your face in england, whereas here in thailand where i live it rarely comes into my life, or into the lives of thais themselves.

And i know what you mean about talking to people in the street and having a laugh, but i'm living in quite a multicultural international town where i can do just that with people from all over the world, as well the locals.

 

[fela fan]

It's those sorts of reports that i find shocking. What dreadful reading! Record every phone call, internet connection and so on??? It brings into this debate the undoubted links between insanity and security, sanity and freedom.

The minds that are concocting up this scenario of checking everyone all the time really need removing from society.