How well do we know what people mean when they evoke the idea of liberty?
Freedom is a multifaceted and powerful idea. It speaks to conservatives at the same time that it speaks to liberals. At once it inspires the unfortunate and the fortunate. It is a proud attainment in developing societies (freedom from poverty and scarcity), as well as post-industrial states (freedom to enjoy life), and even, from a certain perspective, in authoritarian societies (freedom from chaos). And yet the definition of freedom shifts and transforms according to perspective and priority.
Through our various definitions, we often talk about freedom in two fundamental ways. There exist freedoms that liberate us from undesirable or crude life conditions, and also freedoms of empowerment and creative opportunity.
In the realm of the first mode there are many examples: freedom from tyranny, freedom from oppression, freedom from violence, freedom from prejudice, freedom from cultural norms, freedom from the power and persuasions of our animalistic drives, freedom from hegemony, freedom from undesirable social obligations; the ways that we focus our impulse to free ourselves from the past are as varied as our conceptions of history and of existence.
And yet there is freedom towards the future, too. We can uphold many freedoms of empowerment and creativity: freedom to follow my pleasure or bliss, freedom to create a more positive future, freedom to independently choose my actions, freedom to spend my time and energy as I see fit, freedom to make bad choices, freedom to learn from my bad choices, freedom to be proud of who I am, freedom to live a full and unexpected life, freedom to profit appropriately for my work, freedom to be a part of the decisions that affect our lives, freedom to arrange our societal structures to support a host of freedoms in other areas of life, freedom to care for where we are going as a family, as a culture, as a nation, as a world…
And as I can mean freedom in one sense, and you can mean freedom in another, I can’t help but ask if there is room for different ideas of freedom to see each other, to respect each other, to find a way to thrive simultaneously. For instance, there is a conservative affinity for the freedom from tyranny, for the freedom toward self-determination. At the same time liberals demonstrate a preference for freedom from cultural prejudice and the freedom to create a society that actively supports diversity and inclusion through civil rights and activism. From a certain light these freedoms are all positive and good, and yet they appear to clash more often than not. Conservatives see liberals’ preferences as verging on oppression and tyranny, whereas liberals interpret conservative passions as means toward a prejudicial and merit-oriented society that continues to fail those whose cultural inheritance is unfavorable.
And what of this? Are these essential oppositions? I don’t know about you, but I want neither tyranny nor prejudice as the hallmarks of my world. And I want both self-determination and a society that is willing to stand up for those who history has failed to recognize and respect as fully as it could. Perhaps we haven’t always gone about our passion for liberty with enough regard for all the positive directions and applications for the impulse toward greater freedom. Or we haven’t attended to our perceptions enough to see how we are creating conflict whose productivity, whose necessity is questionable.
How are we to govern our own preferences such? If we are to be fully self-governing as a society, we must first govern ourselves and our perceptions. If we are to be free to accomplish our passions, to engage with our deep sense of freedom on a large scale, then I would hope that many of us would take some time to see and respect others’ affinity for freedom as fundamental, even through our great differences and disagreements.
I imagine a future built in such a manner. I see in us a possible freedom to enact a world in which our leaders are empowered to synchronize our creative efforts and to transform our true diversity into a dynamic wholeness.
positive governance 