A beautiful, yet sometimes misunderstood concept, freedom takes on many different forms. Some people understand it to mean the ability to vote for ideas and candidates that best represent their views. Others may see it as the right to speak freely and express themselves in any way they want. Often, the term is used in a political context, with distinctions made between countries that are free and those that aren’t. And in the realm of civil rights, there’s debate over whether all races, religions, sex, and social classes should be equally free or not.
What is true, however, is that people can’t have complete freedom if their choices conflict with the rights of others. In other words, freedom is more complicated than simply being able to do whatever you want — taken too far that could be dangerous. There are always constraints on choice, and how much freedom you have boils down to how well you discipline your decisions within those constraints.
To that end, it’s important to define what you think freedom means. For example, if you’re an anarchist, then you might believe that the only true definition of freedom is having no governing body at all. If you’re a libertarian, then you might say that true freedom is having the power to do anything you want as long as it doesn’t harm others. And of course, there are those who believe that freedom is a moral imperative.
A person’s idea of what freedom is, in turn, informs their politics and their priorities. For example, if you’re a liberal who believes that everybody has a right to speak their mind and protest their government’s actions, then you probably won’t support a government policy that would prevent this. On the other hand, if you’re a conservative who believes that all Americans have a right to health care and education, then you probably won’t support racial profiling or other policies that restrict these rights.
Another issue is that the nature of what you define as freedom is also informed by the economic system you live in. For example, if you’re living in a country that allows extreme wealth accumulation, then the negative liberty/positive liberty “freedom-from”/”freedom-to” dichotomy starts to break down pretty quickly. This is because when some people have billions and other people have zero, those with the billions are able to control the lives of those with none.
So a world that is truly free in the sense of no external coercion will require economic understandings that create enough resources for every human to have a secure and comfortable life. It will also require the elimination of special privilege and a commitment to protecting civil liberties for all. In short, it will require a global community that understands and respects the four essential freedoms that all humans deserve to have. And, if we can achieve this, then perhaps the fear and anxiety that now permeates our world will begin to dissipate.