Freedom from Wasted Time. Freedom from Regret.

And freedom from regret about wasted time. (#FreedomShorts)

There are a number of different definitions of the word “freedom.”

True freedom—freedom in the political sense—is freedom from externally imposed force and coercion. You are free to do what you want. You are free to live your own life and make your own choices.

We might also call this natural freedom—the freedom of natural law. You are a self-owning being with exclusive, inalienable, dispositive control over your own body, life, and being. No one has any natural right or authority to forcibly control you in any way.

This is, of course, the kind of freedom upon which I focus. My goal in life is to defend the individual human person against all violations of this natural freedom.

But none of this speaks to what one should do with one’s freedom. A person in the absence of external control is free to drink until she is an alcoholic or eat until he is obese. They are free in that no one is stopping them. But they are enslaved by their addictions—by their own lack of self-control.

This leads to the next two types of freedom: the freedom of discipline and the freedom of options.

The freedom of discipline is the freedom that results from self-control, or from mastery of something.

The virtuoso piano player and the beginner are both free from external coercion—no one is stopping them from playing. But the virtuoso’s fingers are far freer to explore the farthest reaches of his own muse, while the other can only bang out a crappy rendition of “Chopsticks.” Similarly, the food or liquor addict becomes far freer when he masters himself and conquers the addiction.

Discipline, thus, opens up a world of options. The 300-pound man is certainly not as free to walk, move, have sex, or sit in an airplane seat as he was when he was only 150 pounds.

The freedoms of discipline and options are obviously related, but because of political chicanery, they require separate treatment. Simply put, the political left throughout the West has, for over 100 years, attempted to conflate true freedom with the freedom of options:

Look, rich people have so many more options than poor people. No one is free when he is hungry.

Both of those claims are true, but the implication is disingenuous. Neither the rich man with more options or the poor man with fewer options is subjected to external force. Both are free. But the left makes it sound as if the rich man enjoys a larger measure of true freedom, when what he actually enjoys is a larger measure of the freedom of options.

Setting aside questions of cronyism, special treatment, etc., and just looking generically… The average rich person gets rich through discipline—through delaying gratification, having low time-preferences (future orientation), working long nights, taking risks, etc. He has more options because he has shown discipline. As a result, he can choose, later in life, to take a month off in Fiji.

The lazy man lacks this option. He is less “free” to take a trip to Fiji. But that does not make him less free in terms of his natural freedom.

Then, of course, comes the next related freedom: freedom from bad things. Someone with more options may be better able to avoid hunger (by having more food) or physical insecurity (by having a wall, gate, and alarm system for his home).

Here too, political forces have attempted a conflation, describing “freedom from want” as a natural right. This is, of course, incorrect. Your natural right is to take the actions necessary to alleviate your want, free from anyone else’s external coercion. But if you choose not to take such actions, that does not mean you are less free in the true sense.

By conflating these two types of freedom, the left managed to establish the political claim that the true freedom of one person may be violated in order to alleviate the privation of another. This linguistic and philosophical legerdemain does great violence to the core meaning of the word “freedom.”

Finally, we have the people who just feel more free in general. They feel less pressure from social norms and criticisms (external) or less pressure from themselves or their own conscience (internal). We might call this freedom from compunctions.

This can be both good or bad. External norms have value, in that they help us get along with others. But they can also become stultifying—targeting individuality, uniqueness, and creativity. And internal compunctions are essential in regulating behavior, but we can also become crushed by the weight of our own minds—by our insecurity, fear, regret, or shame.

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Here in my middle 50s, I have clearly reached the point where I get why Rod Stewart wrote

I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was younger.

I wish that I knew what I know now,
When I was stronger.

I am sure that everyone has these thoughts and feelings to different degrees, but everyone over a certain age at least knows the thought I am talking about. Maybe you regret something you did. More likely, though, we regret what we didn’t do…or didn’t do as well as we should.

There is a good and bad component to such thoughts. The good: it helps us improve our current and future behavior. The bad: it can lave us mired in regrets about things we cannot change.

Of such regrets, one of the biggest involves time.

Have you wasted time smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo, when you could have spent that time being more productive, or perhaps telling loved ones how you feel? Do such thoughts bother you now? Do you fantasize about what you would do differently if you could?

This is natural, and a small amount of it is okay. Too much of is, though, is a prison. We can be free on the outside, but trapped by own own internal regrets.

Today’s #FreedomShorts video explores these topics in a cool, sci-fi sort of way.

How does this story make you feel?

You cannot go back and change your past, but does it make you want to change your future?

Here are a couple of songs appropriate to the topic. It’s not exactly #FreedomMusicFriday, but why not? No regrets.