This began as a reply to Peter's post on Catholicism, but quickly grew too lengthy for a comment, and so I'm posting it with a new subject, but I encourage you, dear reader, to read Peter's post first, and then, if interested, to read this.
In the simple terms proposed by Philosophy 101 courses,
there are two kinds of freedom:
- 1. Freedom
From:
from oppression, tyranny, unlawful incarceration, slavery, etc.
- 2. Freedom
To:
to express oneself, read anything one wishes, choose to be a monk or a lawyer
or a physician or an alchemist or a political scientist (contradiction in
terms, but let’s let that one pass anyway), leftist, rightist or centrist, etc.
We have to be careful with these definitions, and always remain aware of the blurred lines of gray between them, and also aware of, in to
paraphrase Alan Borovoy and the title of his wonderful and provocative book, “
When Freedoms Collide”. The problem
that arises when
Freedom To collides
with
Freedom From.
Freedom To does not include the freedom to enslave other
people, since that alleged freedom denies those victims their right to freedom.
Nor does it include the freedom to
impose one’s religious or political beliefs upon other citizens. Some nations
and many people believe that Freedom To includes the right to acquire and hold
unlimited wealth, for example.
Freedom From does not include the freedom from ethical and
political and social responsibilities; c.f. freedom from one’s obligations to
pay alimony, child-support, income taxes, etc.
The lines between these freedoms gray at their
edges, to the point where the intelligent person must weigh individual cases rather than general examples.
Given some fictional or factual state which permits the freedom to own slaves,
are those slaves free to rise up in protest and if necessary, confiscate the
lands owned by the slave-owners and redistribute the ownership of same? I say Yes. Some might say No. I acknowledge that.
Numerous nations face a serious problem of economic
distribution of wealth. Classic cases include the Philippines, El Salvador,
South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Canada, the USA, the UK, the modern Russia, and
numerous others, in which about 1% of the population either owns outright or at
least controls 99% of the wealth in said jurisdiction. In such places, one
might contest the right of that 1% to own or control the 99%, or
alternatively, one might adopt the “laissez faire” position, and suggest instead that this is God's will, and/or that
the market will ultimately sort out itself, just as it did in the age of the Robber
Barons. To politicize Supertramp, “Right, right, you’re bloody
well right, we know you’ve got a lot to save.”
Does freedom of speech include the right to deny the Holocaust, to say that 13 Sicilian rabbis control the planet, that either the Israelis or the Palestinians have a just cause (or worse, both)?
The closer we examine these boundaries, the murkier they
get. I have no clear-cut distinctions to profess, yet I try, despite the myriad difficulties and complications.
Recently I have begun to re-read Thucydides, and deem him
perhaps the smartest, most incisive political journalist who ever lived. In fact, I consider him the founder of
political journalism. His "take no sides, just
document what occurred, no matter whom might be offended" writings have stood
the test of a couple of millennia, and stand up still. He describes the brutality
of war in the most objective terms then, and perhaps now, possible.
In the age of propaganda, this standard is difficult if not
impossible to meet. I venture that Noam Chomsky is about as close as we have
come to the standard set by Thucydides. The thing about Chomsky is that he
buttresses all his arguments with hundreds if not thousands of citations.
I could write about Freedom From and Freedom To for at least
a book, and join the thousands of others who have addressed this topic, but I’ll
let the subject go at this.
These are difficult
questions, and as Alan Borovoy suggests in his brilliant book, When Freedoms Collide, these questions
are not easily decided. Freedoms collide, and with them perspectives upon
reality: not only what exists, but what ought to exist. And there lies the rub:
how do you and I reconcile these opposite values? How do we accept or refute
what exists versus what ought to exist?
I have no easy answers to this question. Despite that, I
shall not let it go, nor to succumb to anarchic/relativist beliefs. Difficult as it may be to sort out, I remain steadfast in
the belief that it can be done, that we can sort out the Freedoms From and the
Freedoms To, and figure this out.
This started out about the alleged freedom of Roman
Catholics to forbid/deny/condemn those who believe that the right to abortion
ought to belong to the pregnant woman in question. Once I heard proposed an
argument against the right to abort, expressed by a Roman Catholic nun; at best
I can paraphrase her argument, as follows:
To focus upon individual rights is to negate both the path
of God’s will and the path of evolution. In the former case, God had a plan,
and even if a woman’s pregnancy was a result of rape, that was part of God’s
plan. In the latter case, a focus upon the individual misses the point of
evolution of the species, which is not concerned with the rights of any
individual but rather on “The Selfish Gene,”
as propounded by Richard Dawkins.
If one is to take Mr. Dawkins seriously (and I do: guilty as
charged), It is not about what you or I want, but rather what our genes want:
we are the vehicles of our genes, and have little or no power over where our
genes take us. To put it another way, we are the passengers on our genetic
train, not the layers of those tracks.
Who can predict the next thought one is likely to have? Despite my
powers of concentration, in the middle of trying to create an algorithm, I’m
suddenly in the throes of remembrance of something awful I said in a
conversation 20 years ago – it only lasts a few moments, but I could neither
predict this nor defend against it. Recall happens, and I am powerless to
prevent it. I am the passenger on my thought-train, absolutely without the
power to re-lay the tracks, left to follow the random sequence of stations, thence departing after a two-minute stop: something awful I said to a
girlfriend when I was 14; some record I shoplifted when I was 17; some sexual indiscretion I committed when I was 31.
I am powerless to prevent or invite
the re-emergence of these painful memories, no matter how inappropriate they may be to the immediate problem: an algorithm, an argument with a girlfriend, a discussion with the police about an incident I witnessed. Extraneous faces impede, and I am not in control of what I am going to ponder in five seconds, even despite my attempts to concentrate upon the matter at hand: this or that algorithm, this violent event, the next line in the poem I am currently crafting.
I am most definitely not the engineer who laid the tracks of my thought-train, nor do I have control over where they may lead. It could be to Bisbee, or London, or St. Petersburg, or Winnipeg. I don't know, and cannot know, until the train stops at some station.
I think that the whole idea of self-directed concentration
is a myth. Or perhaps I am the only one so unable to re-channel the railroad
upon which I am riding.
