Freedom
An unrivaled ideal that encapsulates all known wisdom. An ethos, a confession, and an acknowledgment of human imperfection.
A foundational system for individuals built from the bottom-up in British Common Law, which is why authoritarians, theocrats, and dictators, who enjoy top-down rule, avoid discussions about it at all costs. The one exception is for economic policies, where it earns them more money than they could have imagined. Strangely, they do not perceive the value of freedom to be transferable to other realms of governance.
While the conclusions of this ideal infer that our lives each begin in a liberated state that is commensurate with our intrinsic potential, this was not its starting position. Freedom as a concept has been viciously attacked since it was first discussed in any serious manner. After all, how can the ambitious and affluent instrumentalize the average person if they believe that they were born free to pursue their own interests?
It can be argued that we all have duties as citizens of one sort or another, but it is much easier to convince us to take on risk, relinquish our rights, fight and die in battle, and give up money we earned through back-breaking labour as taxation if the idea of freedom is eroded or degraded. Freedom is an ideal that was reached after thousands of years of careful and sophisticated reasoning. It is a conclusion about the value of a human life that threatens the ambitions of the powerful who would prefer that we value ours a little less.
Freedom exists in an amount contrary to the number of laws that seek to legalize or codify it. A single constitution formalizing it for individual citizens is sufficient and often obligatory, anything beyond limits it, despite what governments may claim.
In his Doubter’s Companion, John Ralston Saul defines freedom as an occupied space which must be reoccupied every day. The elegance and poignancy of this characterization cannot be overstated.
Ideals alone fail to redeem the human spirit; they must be embodied.
Posted: 1 Jan 2023
