We need a Progressive Definition of Freedom.

As you probably gathered from the end of the previous post, I'm on a bit of an atheist-kick. That's partially because I'm reading what is shaping up to be a fantastic book, Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape, in which he argues that we can find a basic sense of human ethics through a clear understanding of science. So far, its great. I'll try and get through it quickly and write a little review that I can post here, but, so far, I highly recommend it to everybody. But here's my take on something that's been bothering me for quite some time now, the definition of freedom.

Freedom is a word heard from the cornfields of Ohio to the streets of Cairo. People all over the world talk of freedom, most everybody wants it, and hardly anybody thinks that have it.  But what is it?

There must be a progressive solution to this problem. Cultural conservatives have proclaimed a monopoly over defining freedom with very little trouble. Any theories of big government have successfully been propagandized into being the anathema of freedom. We are assailed both from the cultural conservatives and from the mealymouthed moral relativist Thoreauvian liberals on this point.  They state that a society with centralized and standardized state education or healthcare system will stifle difference and, in the end, create one single type of person, hardly better than a cyborg. For them, the only way big government ends up is with us all becoming the Borg. What they fail to grasp is that will only happen if the state behaves in a way that traditional conservative organizations would if given that kind of power. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places, but I don’t see a great deal of openness to individual exploration in traditional culture. It is conservative organizations do most of the  constraining. And that is because they are, at their root, philosophies not of consent and empowerment but of force  and submission-submission to authority, and even more than that, to a pursuit of an ideal created long before you even existed. Putting aside submission to God, even the most decentralized religions, particularly the monotheistic ones,  require a great deal of submission. Submission to your parents, of course, pledging to do nothing without their permission. Submission to the ‘elders’  of whatever brand of religion you ascribe to. And, of course, submission to  the heavily controlled information you create your worldview from. This is not simple respect. I have great respect for my parents, my teachers, my elders, and many the places I get my information from. But that is born of experience not instruction. It is conservative culture that attempts to force us to live our lives in a certain prescribed way.  When they speak of wanting freedom they are not talking about  freedom of personal choice. They are talking about freedom of collective control. They want the freedom to indoctrinate, abuse, and repress the next generation in the same way that they were.

Good public education, universal health care,  an interstate highway system, these do not stifle individuality. A higher standard of living allows all of us the ability to explore the realms of our consciousness. We are not average animals, living off of basic instinct. We are not machines, program to have one unaltered set of beliefs. We are not slaves, compelled to live our lives a particular way. We are humans, and we want the freedom to make up our own minds about what we believe.  This does not negate the value of learning or from the teachings of our elders. It empowers them! Unless of course, you don’t think your particular philosophy will last under scrutiny.

We declare this to be our definition of freedom not because it has been handed down from God, but from an understanding of the true realities facing people in the world today. This is not mean that accepting this definition of freedom is easy. We, as Progressives, must not shrink from the fact that our definition flies in the face of most traditional ideologies. But, given all that they stand for, shouldn’t it?