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Freedom Definition #1
Everybody is always talking about freedom-this, freedom-that in the United States. But nobody really talks about what freedom is. When pressed, most people - I’m guessing - would say something like freedom is “doing what you want” or maybe “not having somebody else decide for you.”
But that hides a deeper issue: why do you want the things you want? Have you been driven or corralled into wanting certain things or taking certain actions? Can you even say why you want what you want and does it matter at the end of the day as long as you can fulfill it?
It seems like if we define freedom as “doing what you want” then the ultimate goal of freedom is actually fulfillment: satisfying your wants and needs.
I would, however, argue a step past that. Freedom, to me, is being free from wants and needs. Most of our wants and needs are equivalent to habits or patterns which we act out without regard for how we came to have them or why we would necessarily fulfill them. When we want something we “just want it” and that’s supposed to be enough. It’s not though. It means you’re acting without reason, acting blindly according to patterns and habits. How can that be freedom, especially when it’s so easily manipulated?
October 8th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Then being free is being dead?
I desire to live. I know that this desire evolved.
For me, freedom is something about heart & imagination.
But it’s not about freedom from the heart.
October 8th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
No, it’s not about freedom *from* the heart. It is about the heart being freed from desire. The death of desire is the cessation of suffering and the beginning of Truly Living, instead of Unreal Lifing.
Your desire to live prevents you from living and chains you to your conceptions about what Life is, instead of allowing Life In.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I dunno, Tim, …
My heart sure has a lot of desires!
It seems pretty important to life to me.
I agree, though, that if we’re feeling “less than free,” that one of the things to check, is whether our desires — these gifts of the heart — are being taken to excess, or not.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Funny how your definition coincides in a weird way with the definition of Marx, who defined freedom as the individual not being bound to the realm of physical necessity. The problem with Marx’s view is that when one is racked with desires, there is literally no end to the realm of physical necessity…
October 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization
Yeah I’m going to need to read Marx soon as I am finding a lot of points of overlap. Also want to go back through people like Adam Smith, John Locke, etc.