Freedom

Freedom. What a complex concept. Really, I mean think about it. Can anyone ever have complete freedom? I first thought, "Well yes, if one lived all by themselves." But even a solitary life would have restrictions on freedom simply due to the absence of other humans.

Freedom is fluid, ever changing. It depends on who is in power. It depends on what society values and accepts. As long as we have to live together, freedom for one may mean a restriction of rights for another. Case in point. Say Sally believes it is her right to spit on the sidewalk whenever and wherever she wants. However, she has a highly contagious disease that can be spread through spitting, sneezing, and coughing. Her community passed an ordinance that prohibits spitting on the sidewalk due to the threat of widespread illness. The right of society to be healthy results in the loss of Sally's personal freedom to spit on the sidewalk.

The bottom line is that sometimes your rights infringe on my rights. Yes, you have a right to blow up loud explosive fireworks for three months during the summer. And I have a right to live in peace and quiet if I choose. Yet we cannot have both. The best we can do is compromise, where we both lose a little bit, or gain a little bit, depending on whether you are a glass half full or half empty kind of person. You can light your fireworks between noon and 7 pm, I can have my peace and quiet before and after. That is the price of living together in a society.

I have heard many folks claim their freedom is being taken away because other have rights to birth control. This puzzles me, because one has nothing to do with the other. To take away the right to choose birth control certainly takes away freedom. Because one may disagree with birth control does not mean their freedom is affected by the fact others can and do use it. The no-birth control folks are still free to not use birth control. End of story.

Gun control is another area where the debate on what freedom means is alive and well. The Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. This was ratified December 15, 1789 in our Bill of Rights. The population size of Europeans colonizers in the United States is estimated at 3.9 million in 1789. They did not have have assault weapons back then. Today, the US population is around 314 million. Today we have assault weapons. I wonder what the Second Amendment would look like if there were assault weapons like the Gatling gun in existence in 1789. Perhaps it wouldn't have changed a thing, I don't know. But this is another example of how freedom for one group can infringe on the rights of another. Again, it goes both ways. To restrict gun ownership restricts the freedom of gun owners. To not have restrictions on gun ownership (example, allowing anyone to own an automatic assault weapon) infringes on the freedom of others because they can be directly affected by gun violence (unlike our birth control example).

Another very complex example is that of energy companies. Do the few individuals that benefit from oil and gas drilling have the right to destroy our environment, make billions of dollars, and leave the rest of us to clean up their messes? Society benefits from the energy they produce. Society and Mother Earth and all the Beings we share the planet with suffer for it. Does their right to run a business supersede the right to have clean air and water? Where does freedom appear here? I would argue that society places freedom in the lap of the big energy companies, and restricts the rights of society. In other words, we value oil and gas over a clean planet. If we didn't, there would be restrictions on their freedom to explore and drill.

Many folks want less government regulation. They feel that this restricts their freedom. If each one of us were an honorable, respectful person, then we wouldn't need regulation. Additionally, we would all have to agree on everything. Example. Some folks think is just fine to dump their garbage in wetland. I disagree. So does the government. We have regulations to protect our environment because it is our home. It is our health. It is also where millions of other species live, processes go on, it is a gift to us from a higher Being. We wouldn't need environmental regulations if everyone respected Mother Earth. But not everyone does.

Another example. Some people are racist and bigots. They would practice their racism in ways that would negatively impact other people. So we have laws to protect minorities. We wouldn't need these laws if we respected each other regardless of the color of our skin, sexual orientation, religion, etc. But not everyone does.

We are always pushing the limits, just like children. The result? More regulations.

So you see, freedom is a very complex issue. Living together demands that we compromise. For us to have an exceptional quality of life we must respect our differences, understand that just because we disagree on an issue, it doesn't mean freedom is taken away. Or, it might mean one of us may lose a bit of freedom for the greater good of society. Or, we both may have to give a little and thus each lose a degree of freedom. But we also gain something.

It's called harmony.