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Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

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Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#121

Post by ttfkam »

ttfkam wrote: post #110
the_drunkard wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do not extend tolerance to those who would deny your humanity. Probably a bad ethos to harbour, one that I imagine quickly rationalizes violent behavior. And I think we're all fortunate that in the US there is no prevailing force denying any specific race of their humanity. Is there scar tissue from the past? Certainly. As Snowden states "freedom is a direction" and we've certainly moved in the right direction…

Imagine you were a Black woman born in late 1865. You were among the first never to have known slavery. You witnessed the first Black folks elected to Congress and even considered it normal. Then Reconstruction ends with a whimper. Burning crosses are showing up everywhere. Thousands flee north as a reign of terror grows. Your voting rights are curtailed then eliminated. When Black folks are elected, they are driven…

For reference, I was born less than ten years after my parents' marriage was made legal across the US.

I am not yet 50 years old.

Ruby Bridges only recently became eligible for Social Security. Many of the people who fought to keep her out of the classroom are still alive today. They are elected officials. They taught in the schools. They raised their kids.

Now ask yourself if a law passed today would change your mind on an issue that's important to you.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#122

Post by bluetomcat »

debacle wrote: post #115

No one is ever truly free. Maybe great, great ascetics who are so detached from the world that their freedom has become a prison of their own. When I was young, I felt every bite at my freedom deeply. Having a job, a schedule, responsibilities. Each one was deleterious to my freedom in a way that, as a young man, I was unequipped to handle. I've learned at some point in the last few years that we trade in our freedom…

Freedom is context-dependent. Living in a civilised society gives you different kinds of freedoms (and obligations) compared to living in some form of a hunter-gatherer society. Like, freedom to pick the desired room temperature from your AC remote, rather than freedom to roam around and hunt whatever animals you choose.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#123

Post by [deleted] »

beaconstudios wrote: post #93
evancoop wrote: post #67

Perhaps there is some definition of freedom in mathematical terms in which the total scope of decision-making autonomy is maximized over all citizens? The barbarian example would yield a low tally, as the leaders of a hoard are "free," but their subordinates have little decision-making capacity. In terms of the limitations of personal freedoms, the boundary might lie where the diminishment of others' freedoms exceeds…

there is sort-of, it's called utilitarianism. However, maths isn't a magical cure-all - the ethical dilemma is just shifted onto how you quantise your ethical problems.

[deleted]

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#124

Post by tremon »

ewzimm wrote: post #86
woile wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that hunter gatherers had all of the units of freedoms, and when full centralization happened (monarchies) we lost all those units. Democracy gave you back some units by decentralizing power (not fully). I'm not saying decentralizing more is gonna give you more freedom, more like a different take. I think your point is still valid, there has to be an equilibrium and I just don't know where it lays.

I think you would enjoy the recently published book, "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow. A point made early in the book is that Native American criticisms of European society, particularly its lack of freedom and mutual aid, led to the development of defensive European theories of civilizational development that proposed that the loss of freedom was the inevitable result of the movement from…

What does "Native American" mean in your post? Are you referring to early interactions between the colonizers and the inhabitants of North America, or present-day Native Americans that have lived in Europe?

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#125

Post by defaultprimate »

beaconstudios wrote: post #118
defaultprimate wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made my argument for me. When those in power use the justification above and the justification is not based on reality, it has disastrous consequences. It's not a valid justification, and authoritarians don't care about objective reality or rationality.

when authoritarians get into power they can do whatever the hell they want. That's why the point is to stop that happening in the first place. Hitler turned himself into a dictator pretty much immediately after (possibly staging) the Reichstag fire and declaring a state of emergency. The whole point is to stop people like him getting in in the first place, and you don't do that by making calls to genocide viable.

Hitler was elected based on the premise that he would save the German people from destruction, the exact justification you excuse, not simply because he hated Jews.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#126

Post by long_time_gone »

debacle wrote: post #115

No one is ever truly free. Maybe great, great ascetics who are so detached from the world that their freedom has become a prison of their own. When I was young, I felt every bite at my freedom deeply. Having a job, a schedule, responsibilities. Each one was deleterious to my freedom in a way that, as a young man, I was unequipped to handle. I've learned at some point in the last few years that we trade in our freedom…

I love your comment. I have a small question with this part:

> What I see today is a contingent of people who don't value their freedom at all. They have no spiritual relationship with their existence as an individual - their identity is predicated on their characteristics and not their innate uniqueness.

Is it possible there is some "hierarchy of needs" for freedom and that "characteristic freedom" must be achieved before "uniqueness freedom" can be achieved? Said another way, maybe these people actually can't feel innately free until they feel their characteristics are accepted as part of free society.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#129

Post by ttfkam »

the_drunkard wrote: post #98
ttfkam wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update: I misspoke. Hitler absolutely accused Jews of treating Christian Germans of being lesser than themselves while arguing that Germans like himself were superior to everyone and everyone else was subhuman. ------- Have you actually read Mein Kampf? Hitler never claimed the Jews were denying his humanity nor had German Jews ever denied the humanity of Christian Jews. Hitler on the other hand did indeed deny the h…

[flagged]

“All who are not of a good race are chaff.”

Let's all be honest, Hitler was all over the place in Mein Kampf.

Re: Freedom is not a goal, but a direction

#130

Post by testing192847 »

mfcl wrote: post #3
arnoooooo wrote: post #2

I can understand how it could be considered that in a very non-free society, but no. Freedom exists only as an equilibrium between your freedom and that of others, between paralyzing order and utter chaos.

I was thinking, I can currently go from NA to Europe today if I wanted to. But that level of technology and orchestration would not be possible in a lawless and barbaric society (at least I don't think so). This possibility offers me a lot of freedom (traveling around the world) and in exchange, I had to follow rules and work. I gave some freedom and got more in exchange. The same thing applies for many other things…

yes
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