Alright, alright, fear not, this freedom has little to do with the kind of freedom that a Buddha or a Sankaracharya were fond of, this has entirely to do with the supposed freedom that the humanity is said to have. Is there any such freedom at all, or should we laugh and say “Freedom is not free” with the unknown author of the quote?
Curiously Martin Luther King Junior seems to second this view. To him “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” No doubt he was talking from the point of view of those coveting freedom but sadly he never could achieve the status of a distributer of it. You need to be a ruler to do that. It is to be believed that the rulers would have craters full of freedom to dispose of.
We all have heard of things like ‘freedom struggle’, ‘freedom fighters’ and “one’s right to be free” and the like. There are still people rebelling all over the world against their rulers to obtain this enviable commodity.
The Irish have been at it for a considerable time now. The Libyans are fighting a bloody war to win it, against government troops. Several other people have also turned against their rulers (these rulers are then called “despots” or ‘autocrats’) for this same purpose. The same ruler can be both liberator and oppressor at various periods in his life. Some are both at the same time!
Don’t ask me how!
So then what is the content of freedom? Is it something that can be distributed by the ruling or is there some method by which one can bottle this commodity up and keep it under lock and key to deny it to some and serve it to some others, like serving it only to the moneyed or to one’s own people or one’s favorite allies? Are there different sorts of freedom such as the freedom to speak, the freedom to think, and also as Gandhi say’s the freedom to err? Yes, what is the content of freedom?
The dictionary gives us the following definition of freedom: “The condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints”. If we agree with the definition the only thing left to decide is who has this power and who else haven’t. For this power can’t be exercised by all at the same time. Maybe you could just get away with the freedom of thought, because it’s mostly incoherent and internal. Most of us have learned to not to mind that.
If somebody thinks us a dud we could manage to think of them as the ‘dud-almighty’ and can go on with our lives. But this could not be the case with free speech and free act. You would not let someone exercise their free power to call you a dud to your face. That might prompt you to use your freedom to ‘act’ leading up to certain terrible results and both being admitted to a hospital where the treatment is not free.
So who has this power and who has not? If everyone is out to exercise this power to be free there would not be any one left to exercise it at all. May be this is why some think that freedom is the product of order. It is a contradiction in terms I know, order is nothing short of restraint. And our dictionary says that freedom is free from restraint.
There seems to be some problem here. I believe in freedom, it is something inherent in my nature and I think this preference for freedom is inviolable. But there seems to be no sense in going for freedom unless others can share it with me. The trouble is the extent to which I can trust others and allow them to share it. This brings on talks or restraint and your freedom is only up to the nose of the other guy. Then I think about a consensus. It is reached and I start to take the consensus as the guardian of my freedom. That in turn brings on laws of conduct and that brings on more laws and law enforcers and over and top of everything a law-firm called the government.
It enjoys a sort of monopoly in law making. It passes laws, implements laws, and protects laws. And suddenly it becomes law. The power to think, speak and act free belongs to it alone. It is sometimes called the king, the socialism, the capitalism, or any other cute names it can find to describe itself. In whatever manner it describes itself, it is god, and only it has the power to distribute freedom.
Well you see how freedom gets bundled out of the door the moment I start making judgments on others and becomes frightened of them. Sadly, I and mine have been making such judgments from the time immemorial. That’s how slavery originated, both mental and otherwise.
Perhaps that’s why Orwell said that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
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