The Choice of Freedom: Trust or Destruction
By: Steve Bivans
Tags: Freedom, Trust, Violence, Social Contract, Democracy

I see the word Freedom bandied about willy nilly these days. But what does it really mean? What is freedom? What is its nature? Where does it originate? Are there limits to it? What does it look like? Feel like?

I have no plan to reference the great minds on this topic. At least I don’t intend to do so. Unless their mind has become my own through osmosis at some point in the past. What I hope to do is to carry the thought to its ultimate conclusion, something to which all thoughts should be subjected.

Many seem to argue that ‘freedom’ means ‘lack of all constraints’, that they may do what they will do, without interference from anyone. But most people, I would argue, don’t actually believe in that kind of freedom. Because ultimately, such freedom would mean no restraints, at all. Right? It sounds good, in theory, but does that not also mean, ultimately, that we can do what we will with other’s lives?

And if so, then we can choose to steal from, enslave, maim, and kill whomever we want.

But wait, you say…

It that were true, then someone else might do the same to me!

Exactly.

Would that be freedom? Of a sort, I suppose, a very Hobbsian form of it. I don’t think it’s how most of us would wish to define it. It is, however, the ultimate conclusion of unrestrained freedom. It is not a word to be taken lightly. It is not a simple concept.

“I can do whatever I want.”

Of course, to a certain extent this is true. You can. I can. We all can.

But there are consequences to all actions, equal and opposite reactions as Newton put it. If I can kill you and you can kill me (which we could choose to do) then what stops us from doing it? Why don’t we?

Either we choose not to, for some reason, or one of us picks up the axe and buries it in the other’s skull. But why would we choose not to?

Maybe we simply do not want to, and that’s good.

But let’s suppose for a moment, for shits and grins, that I want to kill you. I mean, I really hate you and I’m staring at the viking axe hanging on my wall — it actually is. Why don’t I just do it?

“Well, it’s against the law,” you might argue.

It is, of course, in most countries I know of. But we know the law doesn’t always restrain people from murder or violence, or a host of other crimes. Crime happens every day. Law cannot stop it, in and of itself. It is not law that restrains me from killing you, or visa versa. No, it must be something else.

“Well, it’s just wrong to do it!” you might argue. It’s a moral truism, in other words.

Is it? People are killed every day, legally, as well as illegally. If the law can kill, then is killing wrong? In and of itself? We’d have to say, no. There are those, of course, who argue that all killing is wrong. But most of us reserve the right for extreme circumstances: self defense, defense of the country, to protect innocent people.

Governments since the beginning of civilization have reserved the right to violence, of killing, to themselves. This is the basis of their authority. All laws are ultimately backed by the threat of violence and death, or they are not laws. Hell, even the law of gravity is backed by it. Try jumping off a very high cliff and see what happens if you attempt to break Newton’s Law.

If we argue for ultimate freedom, we must be contemplating a world without government, anarchy, are we not? How can one have true freedom if there is a big daddy looking over your shoulder telling you what you can and cannot do? If the government exists, at all, then there is no true freedom, right? Because governments have laws, rules, regulations, and they are all backed by force of violence.

Don’t think so?

Let’s take the smallest of legal infractions and test this theory.

Let’s say you want to cross a city street, but not at the corner where you are legally supposed to cross (in most cities). You simply do not want to walk to the corner and cross in the crosswalk when the light is green. If you do this you are breaking a law, a city code. If a law enforcement officer sees you do it, they could stop you and give you a ticket, right?

They could. Will they? Probably not, because most of them have better things to do than enforce every law and code on the books. But they could do it, and sometimes do.

If you believe yourself to be truly free, you might resist this intrusion, this restraint. But you aren’t truly free. Yes, you can choose to resist the officer, to pull away, to run, or to turn and fight them. You could punch them in the face, or attempt to take their weapon.

How would that play out?

The officer is wearing a gun, more than just a symbol of power, of violence, of that governmental threat underlying every law. You could, it’s true, choose to exert your rights, your freedom, but you would lose. Because you are not truly free. You are always free to choose to submit to the law, or to resist the law. But the consequences of that choice come from a much higher power: the government under which you were born, or chose to live.

Most of us were born under a government, somewhere, all of which reserve the right to use violence to enforce law. We cannot choose to live elsewhere. Where would that be?

This is not to argue governments should have this right.

Let’s challenge their right for a moment, in our mind, so we don’t get our faces blown off. Should governments have the right to restrain us? Even to kill us if we don’t follow the rules? Where do they get such a right? Who gave it to them? Well, that might depend upon what form of government we live under, right?

If we live in a ‘democracy’ then we must argue that the power to restrain us, comes from us! Right? We voted for Joe Schmoe, who then made some laws for our own good, and they are backed by policemen and women who are given the authority to shoot us, or arrest us (take away our freedom in other words) if we do not follow the rules.

But we are the government, in a democracy. So how did that happen? We gave ourselves the right to restrain ourselves?

In case your head is hurting, let’s make it a bit simpler. Let’s suppose we live in a dictatorship, an absolute monarchy. We have a supreme ruler, a führer, a king, or queen, who has the power to go to war at will, kill anyone they want without restraint. Surely that is not freedom. Most of us would agree. But how did this person come to have such power? Where did it originate?

How did they take it? From whom?

Of course, in some periods in the past, kings argued they derived their power from some heavenly mandate. But we all know, deep down, this is bullshit. God, if there is such a thing, did not single out a particular gene pool to rule over all humanity. If so, then there would be only one royal family on Earth, right? Not hundreds of them, all claiming the same powers. It’s ridiculous.

Kings and dictators do not derive their power from on high. They never did and never will. They derive it from the only place it can ever come: from us, from their subjects. People make kings and they break kings, and they do it all the time. This is largely the story of history, over and over again.

All human power derives from the same place: the individual. And the individual chooses — whether or not they think they do is irrelevant — to hold or give away that power. If we choose to give it away, someone else will take it, and ultimately someone will abuse it. But then we must take it back from them. It is a give and take.

But why would we ever choose to give away our power, our authority over our own selves? That seems foolish, on the surface anyway.

Why would anyone want to give it away?

Because humans are social animals. We are not lone wolves. In fact, lone wolves aren’t really lone. If they were, there would be no more wolves. Because in order for there to be more wolves, at some point, two wolves, a male and female of the species have to choose to be not-lone, and fuck. That’s how baby wolves are made. Thankfully, it’s also how human babies are made.

We could, of course, theoretically choose not to make more babies. It might be the best thing for the planet, given our rapacious nature to devour and poison everything in sight. But so far, we have not chosen to abstain from baby-making, not on a large scale anyway. Individuals do choose this, on occasion.

We are social animals. And as such we form societies, groups of other apes. Why? Because our ancestors, long before they came out of the trees, discovered that a group of apes has advantages over lone apes, or other so-called but not really, lone animals. There is safety in numbers, right? We can look out for each other, fight together against other groups of apes (they do actually do this), pick lice from each other’s bodies, couple together and make more apes, gather food together, sleep together for warmth.

And once our ancestor apes came out of the trees, began to hunt, learned to speak and stuff, we formed ever more complex societies. Eventually, we formed cities of human apes, we planted crops together (food security), and then built walls to protect those crops and ourselves from others.

More and more complex societies needed more complex systems to keep them running, so the individuals, increasingly gave up their power to the group, and the group chose leaders to do the leading jobs, and some to do the teaching, the farming, the smithing, and on and on.

At some point, this relinquishing of power came back to bite the individual in the ass, as it always does. Then the individuals formed another group and took back that power. But as soon as they did, they gave it up to some new form of society, which in turn abused its power and lost it, only to be formed again and again.

I see people railing against their ‘loss of freedom’ every fucking day. They’re not wrong, mind you. But they haven’t really given it much thought. They are missing the point of freedom. They’re just bitching about wearing a mask to protect their fellow citizens from a global pandemic, or not being able to eat turkey with grandma, who they might actually kill if they do so, instead of stepping back to realize all the freedoms they’ve already given away. Some of them actually matter.

I could go on and on in this direction. But it would accomplish little.

Freedom isn’t limitless. That’s the point.

While we can, in theory, do whatever we want, whenever we want, we all choose not to. We give up some of our freedoms for the benefit of the group, because groups survive better than lone wolves. We give that power over to leaders. Sometimes those leaders are more or less worthy of the power we give them. Often, they are not. Then we must take it back and dole it out again. We choose new guards to protect us.

But who guards the guards? The answer is, of course, “We do.” We chose to submit to the guards in the first place. And if we choose to do so, it is for a reason. Or reasons. Because we believe that the collective, society, is more important than our individual right to kill one another. We choose to trust each other. Just a little maybe, but we do. And I would argue we simply must trust each other, or we will destroy each other. Those are the two choices: trust or destruction.

It’s easier if we also do it out of a sense of compassion for each other. I give up some of my power because I actually care whether you live or die, whether you have shelter, or not, food, or not. I either care about these things, about the welfare of my fellow human beings, or I do not. It’s that simple. If I do, then I should act as if I do. I should happily relinquish my power over life and death, over some of my freedoms, in order to live together with you in some form of harmony.

If we do not choose to do this, then we will, ultimately, destroy all of it. We are currently perched upon the precipice of doing just that. You can trust me on that, or not. I’ve studied human history, all of it, for a very long time. It’s a very old story. A tired story.

True freedom, I would argue, is the choice to give some of our freedom away so that we may all benefit from the collective power of our society. It is a social contract between us all.

This is the nature of true freedom. That it must always be guarded, not by the guards we hire, but by we, the people. We must trust each other to do this, or it will fall apart.

I am not sure if I have made a case worthy of the topic. It was probably crudely argued. For that I apologize. It is my lack of skill. Others have said the same things more eloquently. I hoped I might lay it out plainly in a way most of us might understand. I hope, at least, that you will consider trusting your fellow human beings, just a little, so that we may save what is left of our society.

Steve Bivans is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers: Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians, The End of Fear Itself, the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth; and Anno Draconis: Dawn of the Dragon. He loves to hear from his readers! CONTACT STEVE