There Are Five Different Kinds of 'Freedom'
We should keep them separated…and not conflated.
Notes:
First, please allow me to tell you how grateful I am to have you all here. I enjoy, and learn a great deal from, our interactions in comments. Your support and connection means a great deal to me. I also want to give a special shout out to my paid subscribers for contributing to support my work. You are enabling me to keep me doing this. Thank you all!
Second…
I had intended this to be a #FreedomMusicFriday, but when I started writing, I realized I needed to establish a little background. So I will post this today and then link to it from next Friday’s music post.
In the course of writing my big book (which I have now decided to self-publish, so hopefully that will be done early next year), I made a million discoveries, through study, introspection, and many conversations with others. Among these is the realization that there is more than one kind of freedom.
What first put me on to this notion was the left’s misuse of what I understood the term to mean…
Freedom, in its most basic and essential form, is freedom from external force. You are free so long as no one is using violence to compel you in some way, against your will.
Yet I kept hearing people—primarily on the left—describe rich people as being freer than poor people…or using terms like “freedom from want.” I understood that these were real concepts, but I also recognized that they can easily—and cynically—be conflated with “true” freedom.
That conflation is dangerous. There are a lot of different ways to alleviate privation, or to increase the options that poor people have. Some of those ways, unfortunately, require force. The left’s primary objective—to equalize outcomes (to equalize “freedoms”) requires that the true freedom be forcibly curtailed.
That is unacceptable. We must find ways to help people that do not involve using violence on other people. Even if they’re rich.
All of this prompted me to want to create a taxonomy of different definitions of “freedom,” which led to the chart below. The text still has not gone through my final round of edits, but it will suffice for now.
So what do you think? Did I get these right? Are there other kinds of freedom I am neglecting? (Note: read in a counterclockwise circle from one to five.)
That is interesting to think about Christopher Cook. Freedom from bad things would include freedom from pain . . . but . . . "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
Squashing everyone into equity boxes and suggesting that equals equality is an error. Life is unfair and skills are not distributed evenly, but how can a civilized society be compassionate without fostering laziness and apathy. Tough questions, but kind of moot when our governments are poisoning or allowing the poisoning of our air, water and food supply. Or mandating poison injections.
None of us are free to health and wellness when we are being culled at a population level.
Attributed to Robert Frost: "You have freedom when you're easy in your harness."
I like this because 'harness' suggests one has the means to do useful work, a set of guard rails and guidelines on behavior, and comfort with all of that.
I've often wondered how the Amish, monks, or ultra-orthodox Jews could find any sense of freedom or happiness with their strict rules on behaviors, but I think it has something to do with this notion of "comfort in the harness".