The Value Most Vilified Today is Freedom

Even as our civilisation scales new peaks, we are slowly losing our freedom. Without it, all other values wither and wilt. One should be ready to face the consequences of pursuing and conserving this priceless possession. Countless leaders have championed the freedom of conscience and speech. But it is difficult to obtain it, harder to sustain, and demands an extraordinary commitment. At the same time, liberty needs to hold hands with law, justice, and common good and civic responsibility, writes MOIN QAZI. 

When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.

                                                                                                                                                      — Nelson Mandela

—–

THE price of liberty, it is said, is eternal vigilance. Liberty is the fundamental value from which spring forth all others. It is the river; others are tributaries. Without liberty and freedom, all other values wither and wilt. Without the courage to be free, all of them will sicken and die.

An oppressed mind can never open up like a parachute and take to the winds. We cannot exercise the entire range of our emotional repertoire until we allow free reign to our creative impulses.

We don't have to understand "freedom" to want it in entirety. Instead, we must be ready to face the consequences of pursuing and conserving it. We must also have conviction in walking that path. Once we've taken the first step towards freedom, we need to keep nurturing this priceless possession.

EVERY MAN IS CAGED

Our civilisation is scaling new peaks — ones that are giving us immense gains. But as we trudge along, we are blissfully unaware that we are slowly losing one of our most precious assets — a lifeline that can be summed up in a single word–freedom.

Very few of us can say with certainty that we live in total freedom. Every man is caged by the fetters of ideologies, superstitions, customs and social restrictions, among other things. These self-imposed fences restrict our creative flight. There is little we can achieve without freedom. The value that is most vilified today is most certainly the value of freedom.

When our way of life and sense of freedom are threatened, there is not only an emotional but an intellectual, philosophical and spiritual contraction as well – a reduction in our capacity to think in big ways.

At the headquarters of Burma's freedom fighters, in the remote village of Manerplaw, a wooden arch leading to a parade ground is emblazoned with the famous words of American Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death."

John Milton's revolutionary instinct led him to champion the freedom of conscience and speech. "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties," he wrote in Areopagitica, one of the most significant polemics against censorship.

Pope John Paul II rightly distinguished between the true freedom of doing what one ought to do in a way that makes use of the best of talents — the freedom of means — and the false freedom of doing whatever one wants, however base the goal or desire — the freedom of ends.

TRAGIC FREEDOM

Freedom is not easily acquired. Rather, it is difficult to obtain, harder to sustain, and demands an extraordinary commitment. We must actively work towards safeguarding it. Freedom is not a one-time fight. It's a slow and gradual progression. As Irish judge John Philpot Curran said in Dublin on July 10, 1790: "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance." Freedom is tragic because it is conscious both of its necessity and its boundaries.

Freedom is predominantly an internal construct. Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who wrote Man's Search For Meaning, said it well: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way (in how he approaches his circumstances)."

The defining quality of real freedom is that it should be alive, spontaneous and forever young. Being free is as birds fly and unchained spirits live.

A broad humanistic impulse persuades us to the universal concept of English philosopher Herbert Spencer: "No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy."

The "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was avowedly "self-evident" even during US President Thomas Jefferson's day, and yet — somehow — Americans hanker to see them written in his hand, to grasp how these things were woven into their nation's story. Americans still revert to their Bill of Rights, which secured freedoms to believe and to argue.

BORN FREE, STAY FREE

The foundational sentence of modernity is: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and, conscience. It implies that human rights are universal for all. Alex de Tocqueville, however, qualifies freedom saying, liberty does not stand alone; it needs to hold hands with law, justice, and the common good and civic responsibility.

President John F Kennedy talked of the threat to freedom of humanity even if an individual experiences barricades against his or her free will: "The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."

Freedom is undoubtedly man's birthright. As Gandhi proclaimed, "Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man." But freedom has to be nurtured and safeguarded.

American lawyer and politician Adlai Stevenson warned us: "Carelessness about our security is dangerous; carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous."

The same caution was sounded in Montesquieu's note: "A nation may lose its liberties in a day, and not miss them for a century." One essential attribute of freedom is that it has to be extended to others. "Those who deny freedom to others" warned Abraham Lincoln, "deserve it not for themselves."

Indeed, freedom is the link to God. Russian philosopher Nicholas Barchpev once wrote, "God has laid upon man the duty of being free." We must come to God not by concern, but by our own free will, accepting the spiritual insights that come to the open heart all through life. At the same time, we must grant freedom to others if we are to be free ourselves.

The famous American lawyer Clarence Darrow put it succinctly. "You can protect your liberties only by protecting the other man's freedom; you can be free only if I am free."

DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE

Freedom shouldn't mean the freedom to live our way. The truest freedom is the ability to live a life of purpose. The word "freedom" is a relative term and can mean different things to different people at different times. To some, freedom could mean no responsibility, and to others, it could mean assuming greater responsibility. It can mean being free from confinement or being free from outside interference, or free from obligation, and a host of other interpretations. The concept of freedom is situational and subjective to the degree that one person's sense of freedom could appear to be bondage to another person.

In America, religion and liberty have worked in tandem. Freedom is seen as a companion of religion in all of man's struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its rights. Religion is considered as the guardian of mores, and mores are regarded as the guarantee of the laws that uphold freedom itself.

The US' concept of liberty is of purposeful freedom; oriented towards something more important than "self". It diverges sharply from the pop-culture view of freedom as a freedom from any restraint on immediate urges and desires.

Cuban national hero Jose Marti in his interview in The New Yorker of May 27, 1975, said, "Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect."

Last but not the least, a famous Danish proverb says, "Better to be a free bird than a captive king."

(Moin Qazi is a developmental professional with doctorates in English and Economics. He has written books on religion, rural finance, culture, and handicrafts. The views expressed are personal.)