For a very long time I've given a lot of thought to the idea of what it means to be free, and by proxy what freedoms are. Of course the concept is complex, not only philosophically speaking but more so when it's attempted to be translated into rules and law that attempt to embody it.

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You may say that true freedom does not exist, at least not in practice, and there's a lot merit to that somewhat somber outlook, since nobody is truly free of paying costs for freedoms they take from shelves. That being said, there's a more pragmatic way to look at freedom, at least so that we can outline the skeleton for a social structure that allows happiness to exist. Funnily enough, it seems that the best way is to work backwards.

All of it

We start from a position of all freedoms and move towards sensible restrictions. It sounds counter intuitive, to talk about freedoms and restrictions, but just like shadow and light, they cannot exist without each other.

If we were to talk about an individual's freedom to choose, we should start the mental workout from an assumption that all is fair game, and then as we expand that mental fence, outline when someone else's freedom begins to conflict with the individual of our mental exploration. In other words, an individual is free to do anything, as long as that "anything" is not restricting the majority of people of doing something else.

As you see, the restrictions are necessary to protect the freedoms that the majority value, and the cost is the freedoms of the minority or in this case the individual. This sounds dystopian, and someone who dabbles in psychopathy or is literally a sociopath, it sounds illogical and unfair.

Imperfect Laws

This is why when it comes to law, a man made invention mind you, it's imperative we stick to things that are as balanced as possible, as to not break the delicate balance of light and shadow. In other words, sometimes when we argue for the abolishment of creation of a new restriction, we are failing to see the cost in freedom that must be paid or vice versa.

Can there be something like perfect governance? Can true freedom be fabricated through a legal system of carefully placed restrictions? Do you see where I'm going with this? The task is not just complex, because that's just an understatement, it's practically impossible. This is not say that law should not exist, but rather that no law is complete, perfect and certainly unexpirable.

If we are to create new laws, new restrictions to help "freedoms" flourish, we must attempt to draft them as to take into account the flippening of the current situation. For example, giving Church more power, more freedom, might sound beautiful to someone who is deeply religious, but horrible if a Church of an opposing faith was to practice their "wrong views" being "wrong" completely subjective of course.

Cogent

This is all I ask, more so if you love getting into these discussions. Myopic thinking is too common, and this is not a phenomena of today, but the ability to have a hearing, to have a voice, to have a keyboard in this case, has given even the most incoherent among us a loudspeaker.

Think about what restrictions you ask for before you demand them, think about the "freedoms" you claim you love being practiced by someone you don't love, and only when you've put all that into frame, you can be cognizant of what you claim you are fighting for.

MenO