The perils of freedom

The harrowing, shocking and imbecilic murders of Charlie Hebdo staff in Paris this week have provoked a rightly outraged reaction, with the most prominent message to arise being a defiant insistence that our values of freedom must not be threatened by such callous acts of terrorism.

This is a more complex topic than it first appears, however, because “freedom” can only be relative: we are social animals and it is impossible for any human being to exist in a state of absolute freedom.

In modern Western societies, for example, it is acceptable for a newspaper’s editorial team to express their freedom by publishing satirical cartoons mocking Mohamed, but it is not acceptable for anyone who happens to be offended by those cartoons to express their freedom by storming into the newspaper’s offices and brutally murdering the people responsible.

Freedom has — inevitably must have — its limits, and knowing where freedom ends is not always an easy line to discern.

This is not at all intended to defend the cruel and moronic actions of the deranged halfwits who carried out this week’s atrocities in Paris, but the great problem with freedom is that it is not easy.

Living in a condition of freedom demands individuals to have the mental capacity to form their own opinions, make their own value judgments, establish their own philosophical beliefs and forge their own identities.

Crucially, however, for freedom to function effectively within a society, it also requires members of that society to be broad-minded enough to understand and accept that while they are free to make their own choices, so too are other people; and that it is permissible for other people to hold opinions, values and beliefs that differ from one’s own.

Journalists and citizens surround flowers placed in front of the offices of weekly satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 8, 2015, the day after a shooting at their offices. — Reuters picA great number of people are simply not capable of taking this position, possessing insufficient mental and/or emotional intelligence to escape the dangerous belief that they are right and that only they are right – a mindset which can eventually lead, in extreme cases, to the kind of brutality we have seen this week.

To put it bluntly, a great number of people are too stupid or emotionally imbalanced — whether through a lack of education or a natural disposition — to live in a state of freedom. Anyone idiotic or brainwashed enough to believe that brutally killing fellow human beings will receive the blessing of their god clearly is not capable of living in a state of freedom and does not deserve to have it in the first place.

In Europe’s past, freedom didn’t really exist in the modern perception of the word prevailed. The vast majority of people were uneducated and answerable to lords and masters who controlled their day-to-day economic, social and cultural activities. Their mental activities, meanwhile, were dominated by the church: religious belief was not a self-conscious choice as it is now; it was a matter of pre-ordained compulsion.

Since the widespread rejection of institutional, enforced religion and the move towards a secular society, however, those old ways of living have been rejected and the concept of “freedom” for the masses has been introduced.

This is, on the whole, a good thing, allowing people to think for themselves and live their lives in a manner which best suits their own personalities and social status, therefore encouraging a fuller realisation of human potential. But it also has negative consequences, because it is applied indiscriminately — as it has to be — and is therefore wide open to abuse.

In a free society, everyone must be granted freedom equally: there is not and cannot be some kind of test to determine which citizens are mentally capable of positively exploiting the opportunities offered by freedom and which citizens will abuse those opportunities.

But the diminishment of religion’s influence, ironically, has created a problem, because we are no longer given a sound moral framework upon which to base our day-to-day lives. This is, for the reasons outlined above, is a dangerous state of affairs, and perhaps the greatest long-term task facing secular society is the need to introduce and implement a new set of non-religious ethical guidelines.

As things stand, there is too much of a free-for-all. Those who are actually incapable of using their freedom are given licence to tread their own paths, when what they really need is to be told in stronger terms what is and what isn’t acceptable in our societies.

People need to know how freedom can be used and where its application ends, and this can only be achieved through institutional education on ethical matters, something European nations tend to shy away from.

This does not just extend to religious belief. I don’t believe that freedom, for example, should not stretch so far as to allow the culture industry to subject children to relentless advertising and sexually provocative images from the day of their birth. The freedom of Disney to Princess-ify and of Miley Cyrus to shake her backside in the faces of as many children as possible should be prohibited, but instead we let it pass.

We must also stop being inconsistent in our attitudes to religious extremism. Let us not be hypocritical: if are serious about condemning one type of (Islamic) harmful fundamentalism, we should adopt the same stance in all cases.

The Catholic Church, for example, should be much more forcibly prevented from continuing to contribute massively to the spread of AIDS by peddling the moronic message that their god is deeply offended by the use of condoms. The freedom of the Catholic Church, if it can only abuse its freedom in such a regressive manner, should be restricted.

It is a complex issue with no simple answers or short-term solutions. But while we are correct to talk about defending our freedoms, we should be clearer about what freedom entails, where it should end and how a stronger moral framework can be disseminated throughout society. Because too much freedom, as we have learned this week, is a dangerous thing. - MalayMail