What is Freedom?

by Groff Schroeder

Freedom appears as the simple ability to do what you want without interference. Yet true freedom appears to be anything but simple.

In a society, it is difficult to safely exist or raise your offspring - let alone do what you want without interference - if your surroundings are characterized by polluted air, contaminated water, poor sanitation, and inadequate public infrastructure. Similarly, without moral laws, law enforcement, courts, and the rule of law, virtually anyone or anything can take away your freedoms, your safety, and even your life. It appears honest government is all but essential to societal conditions under which freedom is possible, and unless government provides these conditions equally, not all citizens are free. So freedom requires more than just government.

Does freedom mean everyone gets to vote, votes are counted correctly, and the candidate who receives the most votes takes office? Does freedom mean everyone - including government, politicians, corporations, corporate leaders, organizations, powerful individuals, and celebrities - participates in the same system of justice, cannot evade justice due to their connections, wealth, or position, and receives appropriate penalties if convicted? Does freedom mean that government cannot presume guilt, conduct surveillance upon, or arrest anyone without evidence, probable cause, and a warrant? Does freedom mean everyone receives a fair trial? Does freedom mean that no one’s privacy can be invaded and everyone can read and say and write what they want without fear? Does freedom mean everyone can freely exercise their religious beliefs, no matter how peculiar - even if they are based upon nothing more than what Mark Twain called “believing what you know ain’t so?”

Even if basic freedom requires “all of the above,” it appears true freedom requires even more – or less. What if what someone wants to do without interference is alter their state of consciousness or overtly and directly kill themself? Are they free if government or employer prohibition prevents them from purchasing, possessing, and ingesting [insert psychoactive substance name here] until they die? Similarly, what if government, corporations, employers, etc. prohibit (or require) bodily functions - especially functions related to our most intimate and private reproductive behaviors? Does freedom exist when anyone is forced to comply with someone else’s religious beliefs, can be arrested for ingesting prohibited substances or failing to bring a pregnancy to term - or physicians can be imprisoned for saving a woman’s life? Can anyone be free if government (or the politicians running it) have enough information about (or enough power over) our bodies, our sex lives, and our sex organs, that they can monitor, control, and adjudicate what we do with our brains, marriages, interpersonal intimacies, pregnancies, and reproductive tragedies?

If true freedom is to exist, it appears government must provide the infrastructure and services freedom depends upon, prevent usurpation of freedom by others, and provide everyone the power to retain complete control over our own bodies, brains, and actions. If the government, churches, corporations, employers, or anyone or anything else has the power to monitor and control what you do, read, say, or think, how are you different from a slave? If the government, churches, corporations, employers, or anyone or anything else has the power to monitor and control your sexual and reproductive processes, how are you different from livestock? If you cannot control your own body, how can you call yourself free?

Published in the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs Freethought Views “advertorial” column in the Colorado Springs Independent on July 3, 2019 with the quotation below.

"What then is freedom?  The power to live as one wishes."

Marcus Tullius Cicero