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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Freedom
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
I remember an old (and particularly cheesy) episode of Star Trek where the landing party encounter warring tribes who are supposedly the post-apocalyptic remains of the two sides in the Cold War.
The leader of one tribe intones a word that sounds like "freedom"; the crew recognise the word and repeat it; the leader tells them to be quiet because this is a worship-word, and Kirk says "It's our worship-word too".
So:
Does modern western society worship the idea of freedom ?
And if so, is this because of our Christian heritage or in spite of it ?
Do Christians believe in freedom ? What does it mean to believe in freedom ? If you think you believe in or put a very high value on freedom, what is it exactly that you value ?
(I take it as given that for example the sort of socialist who believes in the freedom to practice socialism but not the freedom not to isn't really into freedom...)
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
Well, community - but of choice, not imposed. Isn't that freedom?
Of course in many cultures throughout history the concept would have been unfamiliar - you are born into a role in a specific community, you follow your father's trade (whether hunter or shopkeeper) or learn you mother's skills (whether gathering or weaving) and probably marry who your parents choose or approve of, and never consider any alternatives.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
@ Russ
Well, I take it as given that for example the sort of capitalist who believes in the freedom to practice capitalism but not the freedom not to isn't really into freedom. IMF please note.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
Freedom is a surprisingly complicated concept and has been expressed in many ways throughout history. Almost all regimes, revolutions, and governments can, and many have, declared 'freedom' to be what they stand for. It's a rabble-rousing word, and usually means little.
Are we talking about freedom to do anything we want to do (anarchism), or freedom from the oppression of foreign powers (often the result of a strong and powerful state - nationalism). Do we have freedom from capitalist oppression (communism) or freedom to make money without the state's interference (laissez faire capitalism). Do we want the freedom to elect our own leaders (democracy) or the freedom to lead ourselves (socialism). Do we have freedom from state control, or freedom from others acting outside state regulations to exploit us. Are we supporting the workers freedom to strike whenever they choose, or the factory owners' freedom to run their business without the fear of constant strikes.
Tyrants, intellectuals, students, revolutionaries, mobs, unions, businessmen, parliaments, orators, and kings have all fought for 'freedom'. And they all meant very different things by it.
[ 22. March 2013, 11:08: Message edited by: Hawk ]
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
When we talk of freedom, we often tend to be thinking of "my freedom not to be bound, which others are bound to respect".
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
As others have indicated, there are all kinds of freedom.
I see the freedom offered by Christ as that which sets us free from all that hampers the good nature within us from emerging and being fully expressed.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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TomOfTarsus
Shipmate
# 3053
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Posted
With Raptor Eye there, with the slight nuance (IMHO) "...sets us free from all that hampers the good nature that He created within us from emerging and being fully expressed. On my own my "good nature" just wasn't...
And this is the ultimate freedom. While I am partial to the US, I am aware of oligarchal pressures (per Hawk, great post); and we aren't free to elect anyone, choices are necessarily very narrow; but we are very free in a lot of senses that many throughout history would not have even imagined.
I recall from my youth something from Solzhenitsyn ("The First Circle"), speaking of a prisoner in the Gulag, that there is a certain freedom to the man from whom you can't take anything away. The Christian is in some sense like that (or he perceives himself to be, for those who don't believe). No matter what is around him, he is the heir to all things eventually; not even death can take away the freedom he has in Christ. You cannot take the Holy Spirit from a person, though you can make them quite miserable, torture, kill, etc.
I need more coffee.
ETC: "quiet" instead of "quite"... not a good proofreader... it wasn't underlined...
[ 22. March 2013, 13:31: Message edited by: TomOfTarsus ]
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By grace are ye saved through faith... not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath ... ordained that we should walk in them.
Posts: 1570 | From: Pittsburgh, PA USA | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eirenist
Shipmate
# 13343
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Posted
My freedom is the freedom not to want what you think I ought to want.
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'I think I think, therefore I think I am'
Posts: 486 | From: Darkest Metroland | Registered: Jan 2008
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eirenist:
My freedom is the freedom not to want what you think I ought to want.
I'm free to think that you ought to want it though. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
Freedom is a surprisingly complicated concept and has been expressed in many ways throughout history.
Freedom really is much more complcated than it would seem to be.
The hard part is that there is an inherent conflict between everyone being "allowed" to do whatever they wish, and everyone being "able" to do whatever they wish.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
Freedom really is much more complcated than it would seem to be.
The hard part is that there is an inherent conflict between everyone being "allowed" to do whatever they wish, and everyone being "able" to do whatever they wish.
Poverty often seems to remove both possibilities.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
Historically Christianity has been either ambivalent towards or hostile to freedom, in the sense the term is used in the OP (i.e. the kinds of freedoms usually safeguarded in liberal democracies). There's nothing in Christian scripture that supports, for instance, freedom of religion, nor was there historically much support from institutional Christianity until such freedom was already a "fact on the ground".
As for whether Western society "worships" freedom, I think that's stretching the definition of worship past the breaking point. There's a trend among the faithful to consider giving anything importance a form of worship. A standard by which people can be said to "worship breathing" (for example) is virtually meaningless.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
Freedom is a surprisingly complicated concept and has been expressed in many ways throughout history.
Freedom really is much more complcated than it would seem to be.
The hard part is that there is an inherent conflict between everyone being "allowed" to do whatever they wish, and everyone being "able" to do whatever they wish.
I think you just summed up the Torah in one sentence.
The core of Jewish religion is a liberation story- but it is a particular kind of freedom. It isn't a freedom to do whatever you want. I think about two texts that always give me the shivers- first, from Deuteronamy 26:
quote:
“My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians mistreated us and made us suffer, subjecting us to harsh labor. Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the first fruits of the soil that you, Lord, have given me.”
And the first part of the Song of Zechariah, as I know it from the 1978 BCP:
quote:
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel; he has come to his people and set them free. He has raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of his servant David. Through his holy prophets he promised of old, that he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us. He promised to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant. This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to set us free from the hands of our enemies, Free to worship him without fear, holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.
In both texts, the speaker talks about freedom in the same breath as talking about following the Law. God freed us from slavery, and in gratitude, we follow God's law.
I would say that a particular kind of freedom is inherent in Christianity's roots.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Ronald Binge
Shipmate
# 9002
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Posted
Every Christian should be wary of the abuse of power.
CS Lewis in The Last Battle put it best:
quote:
"Now don't you start arguing," said the Ape, "for it's a thing I won't stand. I'm a Man: you're only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you're wrong. That isn't true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you."
"H-n-n-h," grunted the Bear and scratched its head; it found this sort of thing hard to understand.
Posts: 477 | From: Brexit's frontline | Registered: Jan 2005
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
A collect in the Book of Common Prayer contains the phrase, ..."whose service is perfect freedom..."
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
Almost all regimes, revolutions, and governments can, and many have, declared 'freedom' to be what they stand for.
Isn't that a strong argument in favour of Kirk's statement ?
After all, if you lived somewhere where all the arguments for opposing causes of action - going to war, making peace, spending money, saving money - were all that it was the Christian thing to do, would you not conclude that you were in a deeply Christian society ?
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Mere Nick
Shipmate
# 11827
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Does modern western society worship the idea of freedom ?
We say we do.
quote:
And if so, is this because of our Christian heritage or in spite of it ?
Probably because of it.
quote:
Do Christians believe in freedom ?
I'm a Christian and I do believe in freedom, or at least I say I do.
quote:
What does it mean to believe in freedom?
The best I've seen it put is by Thomas Sowell.
"Freedom refer to a social relationship among people -- namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect."
quote:
If you think you believe in or put a very high value on freedom, what is it exactly that you value?
That we pretty much do what we want as long as we aren't messing with other people or their stuff. At least, that seems to be how most everyone lives among ourselves. We seem to generally be cool with it if we elect someone to mess with other people and their stuff, though. I guess that makes the politicians our evil henchmen.
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"Well that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher's done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting's my reward."
Delmar O'Donnell
Posts: 2797 | From: West Carolina | Registered: Sep 2006
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
Do we want the freedom to elect our own leaders (democracy) or the freedom to lead ourselves (socialism).
Wait, WHAT??? ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Twangist
Shipmate
# 16208
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Posted
Sometimes we don't differenciate between "freedom from" and "freedom to". And sometimes there is a conflict between them.
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JJ
SDG
blog
Posts: 604 | From: Devon | Registered: Feb 2011
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
I've just finished watching Star Trek TOS and know the episode you refer to . Having been conceived in 1966, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at just how much 60's thinking permeated the whole series.
The 'better dead than Red' came through pretty strongly, as well as bill shatner having the freedom to snog almost half of the female castings.
The ol' F-word . H'mmm.... Yes , all relative stuff . The conversation around the camp fire in 'Easy Rider' said it all for me.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twangist:
Sometimes we don't differenciate between "freedom from" and "freedom to". And sometimes there is a conflict between them.
Wouldn't "freedom from" be better described as security rather than freedom ?
Seems to me that - whether you consider security to be a lesser thing, a greater thing, or an equally-valuable thing - it is at least a different thing.
But as you say, in these days of Homeland Security, freedoms seem to be being surrendered in the quest for greater security. And to the extent that everyone's cool with that, perhaps freedom isn't our supreme value after all...
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Mere Nick
Shipmate
# 11827
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Wouldn't "freedom from" be better described as security rather than freedom ?
Well, how free are you if you are insecure? Our Bill of Rights is the federal govt's admission of the realization that they can't do various things to interfere with our freedoms and that admission is a source of our security. But then, it seems only the third amendment is the only one that isn't routinely screwed with.
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"Well that's it, boys. I've been redeemed. The preacher's done warshed away all my sins and transgressions. It's the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlasting's my reward."
Delmar O'Donnell
Posts: 2797 | From: West Carolina | Registered: Sep 2006
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
I think Wordsworth's take on liberty is worth considering:
quote:
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
There is much to say about this and I will only address a couple of things. I am free, it seems to buy any of the 100 flavours and styles of yoghourt, other foodstuffs and consumer products. I am not free to buy a car with manual windows, and usually in North America, with a manual transmission. I am usually not free to buy a computer without proprietary operating system on it.
The upshot of the consumer illusion of freedom is to allow me to express my individuality by following others and doing as marketters tell me. As in the old saw that 'all art is limitation, the essence of every picture is the frame', my freedom is confined by the context in which I am forced to express it. The only answer is to decide not to engage in the consumer culture, avoid packaged and brandname products of all kinds as much as I can, and to abstain from mass culture. At best, this is only partial today.
Our opinions are informed by the controlled and packaged media, similarly to the consumption of products. The copyright police are trying to control your consumption of media, increasingly regulating what you're allowed to receive electronically through the airwaves and online. Countries have increasingly limited what sort of news is presented particularly with holding documents and data in secret and not allowing reporters to release images of battlefields. Thank God for the willingness to violate the secrecy from some brave souls, including Wikileaks and Anonymous.
The corn industry in the USA does not give me the freedom to have tomato soup or ketchup without high fructose corn syrop in it. I have no choice about canola oil, it will contain genetically engineered canola because Monsanto wants it that way. I have no choice in differentiation between gasoline derived from the Albert tar sands and that from other sources, though I have the freedom to call them tar sands and avoid the term oil sands.
I would ultimately say that we have confined freedom. And more confined all the time. Freedom within the choices in the today's society as offered by companies which decide with governments, and increasingly for governments, with what information we will receive and what necessities and wants of life are available for our use and in what form.
The three largest threats to our freedom today are the increasing privatisation and corporatisation of things that used to be available to everyone, lurching toward a corporate control of governments, and the obscene enrichment of the rich to become even richer. The revolution will not be televised nor will be it be available online.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I am not free to buy a car with manual windows, and usually in North America, with a manual transmission. I am usually not free to buy a computer without proprietary operating system on it.
Really? You're not free to buy any one of these ~100 or so cars? And does the search engine of your choice produce no results when you search for "computer no operating system"?
Even as a litany of first world problems, this one takes a bad stumble at the starting gate...
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I am not free to buy a car with manual windows, and usually in North America, with a manual transmission. I am usually not free to buy a computer without proprietary operating system on it.
Really? You're not free to buy any one of these ~100 or so cars? And does the search engine of your choice produce no results when you search for "computer no operating system"?
Even as a litany of first world problems, this one takes a bad stumble at the starting gate...
I don't live in the USA. I have bought 2 computers without operating systems, one ordered from there, and one constructed specifically for me. They are available with great difficulty.
We can buy under-powered automobiles that cannot tow any form of trailer with manual transmissions. They sell in Canada, only the lowest power engine models with manual transmissions. Believe I know, we have 2006 and 2010 vehicles which replaced models with manual trannies and both got better mileage that these newer ones.
I am merely giving examples of how we are confined by companies making decisions for us. If you can dismiss me as making something something of first world problems, I can dismiss you as displaying American igno-arrogance with feet in mouth.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
I think freedom is very simple.
It is freedom when you can participate in changing those people who make the laws that you live under.
Once you have that as a basis, everything else is just commentary.
As an arch capitalist, I honestly have to say that I wouldn't mind living under a communist government, providing that the communist government put itself up for election every five years or so.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I am not free to buy a car with manual windows, and usually in North America, with a manual transmission. I am usually not free to buy a computer without proprietary operating system on it.
Really? You're not free to buy any one of these ~100 or so cars? And does the search engine of your choice produce no results when you search for "computer no operating system"?
Even as a litany of first world problems, this one takes a bad stumble at the starting gate...
I don't live in the USA.
Yet for some reason your complaint was about North America, not just Canada. quote:
I have bought 2 computers without operating systems, one ordered from there, and one constructed specifically for me. They are available with great difficulty.
I'm pretty sure all the companies on that page would be happy to ship their wares even to such an exotic country as Canada. quote:
We can buy under-powered automobiles that cannot tow any form of trailer with manual transmissions. They sell in Canada, only the lowest power engine models with manual transmissions. Believe I know, we have 2006 and 2010 vehicles which replaced models with manual trannies and both got better mileage that these newer ones.
I am merely giving examples of how we are confined by companies making decisions for us. If you can dismiss me as making something something of first world problems, I can dismiss you as displaying American igno-arrogance with feet in mouth.
"Making decisions for us"? Sorry, it just sounds ludicrous to twist a complaint that you can't find a product with exactly the features you want (manual windows!) into some kind of oppressive constraint on your freedom.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
You know Dave, my post was about a lot more than cars and computers. You're fastening on to an example item, not the core. The point is that we are increasingly confined by choices made on the large scale by others, with promise of individuality cum freedom, and we're being seduced by an illusion. We're ever more ready to comply and to go along with it. If you're good with being sheeple, go for it, you can have your illusion of freedom.
Meanwhile, in India people can talk on their cellphones while they defecate beside the road, while, let's see if you can analyse such things for us. It may also be freedom for a corporation to introduce GMO brinjal (egglant, aubergine) and with rather significant difficulties for the Indian population to express their freedom to reject it until it is forced in. Because that is the way it goes today. Which is the point.
[ 23. March 2013, 22:16: Message edited by: no prophet ]
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
You know Dave, my post was about a lot more than cars and computers. You're fastening on to an example item, not the core.
Well, they're your examples, aren't they? And I find several of your other examples to be similarly weak - perhaps you are idiosyncratically unable to find tomato soup and ketchup without HFCS, but they're widely available in the US (I just saw 3 varieties of the former and 8 of the latter in the local branch of the chain market on the corner) and I rather doubt the situation is so different in your part of North America. quote:
The point is that we are increasingly confined by choices made on the large scale by others, with promise of individuality cum freedom, and we're being seduced by an illusion. We're ever more ready to comply and to go along with it.
I just don't think this point is factually correct. While it's true that consumers of mass-produced items generally have to make do with what producers decide to produce, consumer choices in the developed world are broadly increasing, not decreasing, notwithstanding specific examples of products you'd like to buy but can't find. (Personally I find the proliferation of choices can often be more a burden than a boon.)
As for being constrained by other people's choices - well, that's pretty much a condition of living in a society, isn't it? quote:
If you're good with being sheeple, go for it, you can have your illusion of freedom.
I'm sorry, I thought we were being seduced by the illusion? Did you break free from your chains somewhere between your last two sentences? I'm willing to accept a little rhetorical we-ness, but it's your thesis that people seek freedom through buying things - don't foist it off on me.
quote:
Meanwhile, in India people can talk on their cellphones while they defecate beside the road, while, let's see if you can analyse such things for us.
Certainly! This example also makes no sense as a support for your "ever decreasing freedom" argument, as you've chosen what is clearly an example of increasing freedom. Given the choice, I'd rather have poor sanitation plus a cellphone than poor sanitation without a cellphone, and I'm pretty sure all those cellphone-toting Indians would agree. Are they deluded to think so? Of course they'd be better off with improved sanitation - but it's not as though they once had functioning sewer systems that were torn out to make way for the cellphone network at the order of moustache-twirling corporate villains.
I'm moderately sympathetic to arguments for labeling GMOs, though I think the health concerns are probably overblown. But I really don't think this issue is enough to bear the burden of your thesis of lessening freedom (particularly when the introductory paragraph to your own Bt brinjal link ends with "after a public outcry, the Indian government applied a moratorium on its release"), and packing in your own peeves as a dissatisfied consumer really doesn't strengthen your case.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
As for whether Western society "worships" freedom, I think that's stretching the definition of worship past the breaking point. There's a trend among the faithful to consider giving anything importance a form of worship. A standard by which people can be said to "worship breathing" (for example) is virtually meaningless.
I've heard that "worship" = "worth-ship", that the original meaning of worshipping is something like "finding ultimate worth in". In other words, valuing someone or something supremely is worshipping that person or thing.
Of course the word is also used in a different sense, to describe the activities that people perform in order to express their supreme value. Do we sing hymns to freedom ?
It might have been Charles Handy who came up with the wonderful term "hygiene factor". Meaning something that's important to us in a negative sense if it's not there, but not valued highly when it is. The argument being that people don't generally frequent, like, recommend etc a restaurant just because it's clean. But they certainly won't think much of it if it isn't.
(I'm always suspicious of second-hand cars that are advertised as "really clean").
Others have written of a "hierarchy of needs/wants" - meaning that we humans tend to prioritise escape from immediate threat, then necessities like food and water and shelter, then higher-order goods, and only once many other needs are met do we work for ideals like peace on earth.
That's clearly a simplification - people can and do make sacrifices. But the existence of immediate needs like breathing doesn't stop us having ideals, and preferring some ideals to others.
The ideal of freedom - that people should not be constrained from choosing their own way of life - their words, their friends, their career, their life-partner (or none), their location, their religion - seems obviously a Good Thing. But most of us would choose some degree of safety from the possible choices of others over absolute freedom to do whatever occurs to us.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Truman White
Shipmate
# 17290
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Posted
Instead of "freedom from" and "freedom to do" (which I reckon is what ournresident Twangist was implying) how about "freedom to be."
I'm thinking about the correlation between "freedom" and what we now call human rights, since Our Russ was asking what the link was between all this and Christianity.
Wherever else you might look for it, the concept of human rights is deeply rooted in Judaeo-Christian tradition. We see that influence, for example, in the authors of the American Declaration of Independence, who held that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
Now the interesting bit is that people like, the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche denounced equality as immoral and harmful, asserting "Life itself recognises no solidarity, no 'equal rights,' between the healthy and the degenerate parts of an organism: one must excise the latter–or the whole will perish," and "The poison of the doctrine of 'equal rights for all'–it was Christianity that spread it most fundamentally."
If our survival is based on the success of the "fittest" what's "human rights" got to do with anything?
But if people have fundamentally equal value since they are all made in God's image, then we've got a basis for affirming the "right" of people to be free (however we define that).
Posts: 476 | Registered: Aug 2012
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
A collect in the Book of Common Prayer contains the phrase, ..."whose service is perfect freedom..."
And what do you take that to mean ?
Is it another example of "we're not in favour of people being free to choose not to do as we say, but freedom has a nice positive sound to it, so we'll try to redefine freedom as something we are in favour of ?"
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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