Liberty? How free are you?

Just last week during one of my courses, “Middle Eastern Scene”, the teacher said something about liberty and about how people have the all kinds of liberties. That made me think about how much liberty do I actually have as an individual?

I started to think more about what liberty means, I firstly check the dictionary for a definition. Thus form the semantic point of view, liberty is defined as : “the possibility to act accordingly to own will or desire, the possibility to act consciously according to the knowledge of the laws of society”.  By this definition, liberty would be enlisted in the law code of every state, being an “asset” guaranteed by birth to every human being, every citizen that belongs to a certain state. For this we can, stretching the point, indeed, that man is in a way “condemned” to be free.  But this “sweet- bitter” right doesn’t come by its self, man need time, evolution and brave people to fight for this “ideal”.

Continuing with our analyze, politically speaking, the notion of liberty has been associated through the passing of the time with the term “ideal”. This was done because the world and the societies inside it, have had to pass through many, many political regimes, some have been of liberal nature, some had powerful dictatorial accents and other were completely and profoundly dictatorial.

Let’s take in this case the example of Romania (I am choosing this one because I am more familiar with the problems), who during its 50 years of communism, has tasted a dictatorial regime. You must have heard of Ceausescu, the communist leader of Romania that imposed during his reign the “personality cult” and that subjected the Romanian society to his will. The ways that he enforced his will are, I think internationally known today, the couples from Romania had to have many children, women were not allowed to have an abortion (as a result many women died having performed such a procedure illegally ), the people from the country side were forced to move from their home to the city in the “great urbanization” and the examples can go on, but it is time to go back to my main issue, liberty. So,  people were not allowed to think or to have opinions, their only “just” activity was to serve the interests of the state. No one could contradict the mastermind of  the state.  In this period liberty became an “ideal”, a dream, that once more needed to be reached.

Form the judicial point of view, liberty is a right that allows every individual to do whatever she / he wants to do in the society they live in as long as their activities of no matter what kind/ sort, do not harm in any way the people that live in the same community and that their actions do not contravene the laws of the state, more precisely the Constitution and the various Law Codes that exist (Penal code, Labor code, Civil code, etc.). Liberty would be in this context, the possibility to do whatever we want as long as we do not hurt anyone else.

Taking into account the argument exposure made until now, the best approach of the word liberty, I think should come through the philosophical point of view.

To philosophers, liberty has always been a problem, it has started endless debates and as expected multiple contractions. Many philosophers have brough to light the following idea, or better said question “how much liberty should a man have and how free is he in fact?”.

If we say that every man that wants to live in society has to obey the laws of the state, then we can easily notice that we are not talking about absolute liberty, but of a certain “perceived liberty”. In short, it could be summarized in the principle “I am as free as I am allowed to be”. And concerning the amount of freedom that a person should have the plot thickens.  If we look into the past, into our own history, the negative examples of what people did with too much liberty are endless. People have slaughtered, tortured and killed their fellow citizens in the name of their own good.

In the year 1789, the French Revolution marked a great historic moment, not only because it brought to light the idea of fighting against the unjust regimes, but more because it promoted some of the illuminist ideas that later on became internationally known and recognized.  I think everybody has heard about the slogan of the revolution: “Liberté, fraternité, égalité” which means “Liberty, brotherhood and equality”.

These ideas are the base on which democracy is founded upon, but although politically they are very practical, in reality they are impossible to achieve.  Why? Well, let’s take every term and see.

Equality. People are born with different abilities and they have different opportunities (some countries are rich, other poor and so on), thus they can not be equal in every aspect of their lives. People have to obey the rules of their state, if they do not they face legal punishments, thus people aren’t entirely free. And last, but not least, people are selfish, so they will always do what is right to them, they will place their good above the others, thus we see that true fraternity is a precious gift, that is reached only by completely just persons (which is quite rare).

Sociologists and political scientists say that liberty can’t exist in the absence of legal structure that can maintain it and that it can’t function without a social system that has to be based on values and the actual application and preservation of values.

In this point of the conversation, it is necessary that we talk about religion. It is considered by many scientists as a source that can bring together liberty and man’s desires. It is a factor that has had a word in the liberty issue for a long time.

If we think that the duty of the church and its responsabilty has been over the years, as an institution to assure and guide individuals towards a healty moral conduit then we see that man isn’t free, neither form this perspective. God is seen as a force that punishes the bad people, that requires that man obey to His dogmas and Christian values. So, even if we assumed that man is free from the social point of view, he will still be bound by his religious views.  Of course, if he is affiliated with a certain religion and he follows the dogmas of his cult.

As you can see, I think that an afirmation such as „man is free” has multiple meanings and is above all, of an ironic nature, because liberty is not a concept with an universal application in today’s society and I do not think this will change in the near future. 

Why? Because of the disagreements existing in the EU bloc caused by the refusal of some more developed states to help other states that are facing economical problems and due to the adversities existing in the NATO bloc between the states that support the USA actions and the ones that doubt the purpose of these actions.

These internal problems  combined with the perpetual modification of the economical context of several countries, I think will lead to divisions, not just concerning the common vision about the world, but also concerning the support pacts that exist between countries.

These small conflicts (now) could grow bigger in the future and this will surely affect the way liberty is seen all over the Globe (it is possible that powerful states may consider that smaller states should not have such a high level of freedom) and as well, the way we apply liberty may change (in any moment a negative change upon the idea of liberty is possible and the return of the dictatorial regimes is not a „crazy wish made by maniacs”, people just need the idea of true fear to act crazy ). Meanwhile, I have no other choise than to think and hope for „Liberty, brotherhood and equality”...

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