No Smoking Here
… said the sign at Shoprite.
Freedom — as I’ve observed — has been a misunderstood concept. In my mind, for a few years now, I’ve grappled with the notion of what being free looks like practically. What does it mean? Does freedom have boundaries?
These few years coincided with my freqent use as a chirper and observer on Twitter where I came across the saying “Do what makes you happy, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone” over and over. This saying seemes to also be what self-identifying liberlas hold to. Alongside this saying, the common thread that the Twittersphere and more broadly, the rest of the ever-liberal world clings to is the idea that freedom means no inhibition.
An obvious contradiction exists, because the saying above points to freedom having a very big caveat — you must consider people. I still couldn’t conclude on what freedom means because I had always thought that there was really no such thing as freedom.
Somehow, seeing a no smoking sign led me down a rabbit hole of what I have come to believe freedom is.
We’re created in a womb, then born into this world within a solar system, which itself is within a galaxy, which itself is a member of the galactic universe. All the above — being born, the earth, the galaxy, the universe — freely exist, yet they cannot exist out of the boundaries that they exist within.
Many times, when freedom is mentioned, we tend to picture an expanse of land or an area with no boundaries where we can do whatever we want. A place where you can’t step out of bounds because there are clearly no boundaries. The dictionary meanings further lend to this idea because they present an inhibition-free concept generally. Amazingly, one of the opposites of freedom is restriction. Is restriction as an opposite of freedom tenable?
The Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, the formal document that addresses the universality of human rights (our freedoms as residents of planet earth) states among other important things:
5. All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Does the presence of interdependent and interrelated not lend to some level of restriction when freedom is discussed? Since my freedom is somehow related to and depends on another person’s freedom, does this not mean that when I see “restriction” as one of the opposites of freedom, it is a flawed view of freedom that is presented to me? It seems to me that we can safely conclude that everything in our life experience points to freedom having restriction(s).
Welcome, friend, to the no-smoking section. 😊
