Freedom is a very political concept, I don’t think there is any such thing as “true freedom”. However, there seems to be a few things to take into consideration when discussing freedom, freedom from social/political/governmental oppression, and freedom from being required to spend considerable amounts of time procuring basic necessities.
The maximization of freedom seems to be the maximization of leisure time within a libertarian system that makes basic necessities immediately available and easily obtainable in a equal degree to all participating members.
Yes, but you cannot be truly free. Free to do what?
And what determines the answer to that “what”? And what determines that…ad infinitum. There will always be something you use and follow. As long as you follow something, you will not be truly free; maybe only free to follow (which is not “truly free”).
This doesn’t make sense. You behave like a human no matter what you do, because that’s what you are no matter what you do. How do you define being human?
Aristotle defined man is a “rational animal”,
but I intended to mean the best reaction to human experience.
What is the best reaction? The most truthful and loving one.
EDIT: For the excellent life should be one of the excellence of human nature. Chief among human faculties are intellect and will, the perfections of which are truth and love.
True freedom is not being incarcerated. If you ain’t in jail in a tiny cell you are free.
If you don’t need documentation to leave your city or town, you are free.
If you can afford food on your plate you are free.
If you can hug and kiss your family, laugh and play with them, you are free.
If you can unlock a door and live inside the building without fear, you are free.
If you can get up in the morning and be of sound mind and body, you are free
WTF more do you want? There is always someone worse off than you. You are free compared to them if you are reading this. So rejoice in what you have because, tomorrow you could lose your life.
But I think we are tangled with this scandal, I mean let us talk not of legal freedom, that is very problematic. Let us talk of human freedom, I mean is human freedom really free? Or is this a program, a string if you will, by a puppeteer we might call X that can equate to God or Karma or the current zeitgeist of being human.
To offer my opinion on this, I believe that the will always acts for good, that man always do what is good, no excemptions.
Sadly, his intellect only base itself on what it can know. Given this relationship I must say that man is truly free if his intellect can fully control and fully understand its respective appetites, because understanding and keeping in check these appetites the will will be free to do what is truly good.
Ergo, we are only free if we are doing what is truly good.
Understandable, but I think if you look at the youth of today, they tend to go to extremes of trying to test this hypothesis, and very often with fatal or near fatal consequences.
I think in the actions of the young, we are seeing a rebellion against growing oppression of freedoms, whether they are aware of it themselves, or not.
It might be , but, I lean more towards lack of new frontiers for that. All things now require a higher education and unfortunately most youth can’t afford it or even have the patience for it. If we threw a frontier open to the youth we would see a change.
I don’t fear death. I just want to spend as much time as possible with my husband. Death is no more scary than sleep. I do that every night.
LOL Its the dying part that can be painful.
I think that is what most people fear the dying not the death. For me, I have lived with physical pain all of my life so what the heck, I figure its going to hurt but, it won’t last long. so no big deal.
good to see you back Joker, your post is correct. Few people do have a full grasp of what freedom is. Or how they want freedom to be. thats why its disscussed, we do tend to get lost in our own worlds and lose track of reality or others. What may make me free may harm another. Can there be a balance of freedoms?
