Majority of these musings are from a previous conversation with my dear Bibi. I have had some time to think about them further to try and take up as much space on the internets. I will start with the basic question of what freedom is. When ever there has been a war of some sort, the aggressor usually spouts some nonsense about trying to give a people freedom. Freedom from what?
If you live in the UK you can say that you have freedom. Freedom to drink in public, freedom to protest, freedom of speech. That’s what the assumption is. Of course there are certain parts of the UK where you are not allowed to drink in public. The freedom of speech topic is interesting, because with in that “freedom” you have other things that you are not permitted to talk about. Hate speech is an example. I recall hearing a radio discussion regarding hate speech. It made sense and I agreed with some of the things the panel were talking about. Hate speech is unacceptable. Of course hate speech is a point of view. Both the person making it or the person who feels aggrieved. Other people might say thats just what someone thinks, others will say its offensive.
Me and B came to the conclusion that freedom is actually a state of mind. We get told that we have freedom to express ourselves, but its within boundaries. Its like being told that you are free to roam your house, but you can’t go into certain rooms or wings. Maybe its a good thing. Ultimately its a form of control to give you the sense that you can do what you like, but not all of what you like. Of course the you have ‘murica who make those things rights. That makes it even more confusing. The right to bear arms (and arm bears hehehe). If you want to buy a gun NO ONE can stop you essentially.
I think that being given freedom actually blinds you from the fact that there are so many other things that you are not free to do. I’m not talking about things that are legally or morally wrong. Those are things that everyone should on some level be able to decide as a human being are unacceptable.
Freedom is something I think is man imposed. Yeah sure law is man imposed, but freedom is literally some one or a group of people running an experiment and saying “lets see what happens if we allow them to do this”. Kinda makes me sometimes feel like a rat in a maze (not sure that made sense but it kinda did).
Maybe its an age thing that as I have continued to barrel down towards my third decade on this planet, that I realise there is a big difference between perception and reality. I perceive life a certain way because of what I see on TV (and as a result the way I see people behaving/living in real life), but the reality of it is very very different. The older generation of people (parents, grandparents if they are alive) always tell a different story. The famous “when I was your age”. Its one of the most annoying things to hear from the oldies. But on second thought, they are probably trying to tell us something as simple as “in reality the way you think and behave doesn’t make sense”. Sure. So my argument is “it was a different time so as such we behave different”. But there is a lot of truth that needs to be considered.
Freedom is a reward that should be worked towards, not given like a prize. If I want to go out every night of the week (which I sometimes do) it should be because I have the freedom to, not the money. It should mean that either I am not busy at work, or all my things are in check. The freedom to travel isn’t necessarily because of where you are born in the world. It should be because you can afford it (time and money). The perception is that if you have a passport you can go to any country in the world. Anyone will to share how difficult it is to get a visa to go to the UK? Think about that.
You'll thank me later 