I personally view liberty as of the highest importance and believe society should maximize it. Liberty isn’t so redundant when you realize there is still slavery and subjugation in the world.

But I do believe it is under threat from a vast variety of forces, from governments to corporations to paranoid busy-bodies on the internet. An unfortunate effect of living in a free society: it’s easy to give up defending human rights and freedom when we’re too busy enjoying them.

You speak of liberty being under threat, and I do believe that is true and that in its many guises totalitarian regimes are being ushered in gradually through ideas of the moral good. I would argue that the whole pandemic is part, but could become a whole basis and paradigm of thinking through policies aimed at high ideals of health and social improvements.

I am certainly not opposed to the ways of going beyond the problems of our times, including the real concerns of the pandemic.But what I am worried about is the way in which this whole area allows for ideas and ideologies which are not in line with the view of seeing the human being as as of importance. I am worried that we are on the cusp of seeing a whole panorama of human freedoms being dismissed and curtailed, under the guise of the common good, and that this is part of a philosophy of control of the masses. I hope that humanity can go beyond the idea of control, to a way of seeing freedom for individuals, in contributing to future of humanity in a less restrictive vision. Otherwise, I daren't imagine what future we are facing.

"Too much rope" comes to mind. Someone wants to promote a previously unheard of view, say abortion or even right of the unborn, women's rights, modern transsexual surgery as "intrinsic human freedom", emancipation even, we'll assume in the pursuit of this "liberty for all" .. someone can, accurately, point out how it offers potential to be counter-productive to the very concept. Some will say abortion infringes upon the right of an unborn person, others say it infringes on the right of a woman's freedom to choose. Some say women's "rights", in a society of laws, rules, and equality already, not only diminishes gender equality but their own right of equal potential/progression in manifesting skills not possessed or refined, arbitrarily paying them more based on their gender and not their work value, simultaneously/counter-productively labeling them as inherently "lesser" and so needing to be paid more without acquiring more skills to truly become an equal, simply for being a different gender.

Why stop there though, it extends beyond rational belief, because liberty, that is to say the extremes, are not inherently rational. Say I want to engage in carnal relations with deceased animals, or why stop there how about people. How dare you and your fascistic authoritarianism even pretend like it can attempt to deny my pursuit of happiness simply because it's different than yours. Say I want to drive around schools at recess yelling obscenities and playing pornography at full blast. Again, how dare you attempt to become an enemy of the Constitution and human freedom in my presence... Etc, etc.

I am not wishing to stress anyone's rights over and above others. I am just one person feeling depressed and demoralised when I see that people's rights are being eroded. I realise the problems of the time of the pandemic and my biggest concern is just to be able to go out and buy a cup of coffee in a cafe, to be able to read a book indoors.

I can see that current rules are related to the pandemic, but I do see them as paving the way towards a whole way in which a climate of restrictions is an accepted norm, hastening in the ways of totalitarian thinking and regimes.I am not wishing to view this way of thinking as the overriding perspective, but I am not seeing many alternatives in critical thinking at this moment.

I see the general emphasis on liberty as being ruled out from the picture gradually. I am interested to know what other people on this forum think about liberty in the present time. — Jack Cummins

It's an enormous question in political philosophy, one which would require volumes to address properly.

A theme I have been contemplating is the role of Christianity in the formation of liberalism and the concept of human rights. In the Roman world, liberty was certainly not automatically given to all, it was a privilege bestowed on citizens but withheld from slaves and inhabitants of vassal states. As David Bentley Hart points out, Christianity was, in the ancient world, a revolutionary force, because it treated every believer as 'equal under God' on the grounds that Christ died 'for all mankind'. It was this that imbued the individual with 'infinite worth'. However there were two sides to this story - the individual was offered salvation in return for faith in Christ. With the decline of religion and the advent of the secular state, the centrality of the individual has been retained, but its grounding in the sacred covenant abandoned. So the locus of judgement now shifts from God to the individual conscience, armed with science but de-sacralised.

I sometimes wonder that as a consequence of these dynamics that the role of the secular state is to create a 'safe space for the ignorant'. In other words, we are liberty to do as we please, but now under no obligation to the Mosaic law. I contemplate this, forlornly, while pushing the shopping cart around the supermarket, splendidly arranged with a cornucopia of consumer goods and delicacies specifically for my (our) convenience. Yet at the same time, we're rushing headlong towards environmental and economic catastrophe. 'Fool's paradise' comes to mind, but I fear to scorn it, as I'm one of its denizens.

As Neitszche foresaw, modern culture trends irrevocably towards nihilism, 'nothingism', because with the collapse of Christendom, there is nothing to sustain a sense of values, beyond the endless 'march of progress' which now sets its sights (also forlornly in my view) on the colonisation of space as a kind of sublimated vision of Heaven.

Western secularity, including its capitalist economy, originated as the result of an unlikely concatenation of circumstances. To survive within the Roman Empire, early Christianity had to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, and keep a low profile that did not challenge the state; spiritual concerns were necessarily distinguished from political issues. Later struggles between the Emperor and the Papacy tended to reinforce that distinction. By making private and regular confession compulsory, the late medieval Church also promoted the development of a subjective interiority that encouraged more personal religiosity. New technologies such as the printing press made widespread literacy and hence more individualistic religion possible.

All that made the Reformation possible. By privatizing an unmediated relationship between more individualized Christians and a more transcendent God, Luther’s emphasis on salvation-by-faith-alone eliminated the intricate web of mediation – priests, sacraments, canon law, pilgrimages, public penances, etc. – that in effect had constituted the sacred dimension of this world. The religiously-saturated medieval continuity between the natural and the supernatural was sundered by internalizing faith and projecting the spiritual realm far above our struggles in this world.

The newly-liberated space between them generated something new: the secular (from the Latin saeculum, “generation, age,” thus the temporal world of birth and death). The inner freedom of conscience was distinguished from our outer bondage to secular authorities. “These realms, which contained respectively religion and the world, were hermetically sealed from each other as though constituting separate universes”. The sharp distinction between them was a radical break with the past, and it led to a new kind of person. The medieval understanding of our life as a cycle of sin and repentance was replaced by the more disciplined character-structure required in the modern world, sustained by a more internalized conscience that did not accept the need for external mediation or the validation of priests.

As God slowly disappeared above the clouds, the secular became increasingly dynamic, accelerating into the creative destruction that today we must keep readjusting to. What we tend to forget in the process is that the distinction between sacred and secular was originally a religious distinction, devised to empower a new type of Protestant spirituality: that is, a more privatized way to address our sense of lack and fill up the God-shaped hole.

By allowing the sacred pole to fade away, however, we have lost the original religious raison d’etre for that distinction. That evaporation of the sacred has left us with the secular by itself, bereft of the spiritual resources originally designed to cope with it, because secular life is increasingly liberated from any religious perspective or supervision.

Does this historical understanding give us the context we need to understand the much-maligned shari’a of Islamic law? Like the Judaic emphasis on ritual law (dietary prohibitions, etc.), its primary purpose is not punitive. Both are designed as ways to sacralize everyday life, by instilling patterns of behavior that work to infuse this world with a sense of the divine.

We may want to question how successful some of those ways remain today, but the Judaic and Islamic approach is to structure our life-in-the-world with rituals that remind us of the sacred and offer us ceremonial access to it.

By privatizing religious commitment and practice as something that occurs primarily “inside” us, modern Christianity encourages the public/private split and aggravates the alienation of subject from object. When religion is understood as an individual process of inner faith-commitment, we are more likely to accede to a diminished understanding of the objective world “outside” us, denuding the secular realm of any sacred dimension. With fewer and fewer spiritual identity-markers left outside our own psyches, we are supposed to find or construct an identity “inside,” a challenge not easy to meet:

“On the one hand, modern identity is open-ended, transitory, liable to ongoing change. On the other hand, a subjective realm of identity is the individual’s main foothold in reality. Something that is constantly changing is supposed to be the ens realissimum.”

The basic problem with the sacred/secular bifurcation has become more evident as the sacred has evaporated. The sacral provided not only ritual and morality but a grounding identity that explained the meaning of our life-in-the-world.

Whether or not we now believe this meaning to be fictitious makes no difference to the metaphysical security and ultimate foundation that it was felt to provide. A solution was provided for death and our God-shaped sense of lack, which located them within a larger spiritual context and therefore made it possible to endure them. Human striving and suffering gained meaning; they were not accidental or irrelevant but served a vital role within the grand structure of things. — David Loy

Excerpted from Terror in the God-Shaped Hole: Confronting Modernity's Identity Crisis

I see valuing liberty is on the way out in favor of the promises of socialism for three main reasons. The first is the different ways society values equality. Society is increasingly favoring equality in servitude

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Liberty requires voluntary conscious obligations to sustain it. But society demands rights. How long can liberty sustain itself with this mindset? Simone Weil wrote:

The notion of obligations comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from other men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.

It makes nonsense to say that men have, on the one hand, rights, and on the other hand, obligations. Such words only express differences in point of view. The actual relationship between the two is as between object and subject. A man, considered in isolation, only has duties, amongst which are certain duties towards himself. Other men, seen from his point of view, only have rights. He, in his turn, has rights, when seen from the point of view of other men, who recognize that they have obligations towards him. A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.

We read all the time of women's rights, gay rights, minority rights, etc but how often do you read of women's obligations, gay obligations, and minority obligations etc? The fight over rights can only lead to tyranny to establish order. Appreciating obligations requires a spiritual mindset discouraged by secularism.

"Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams

Unless some catastrophic unseen event takes place, America is doomed to eventually live under the philosophy that "might makes right" replacing the goal of liberty.

I am in England, not America, but I presume that the same principles apply. How do you believe that the idea of 'might makes right' as a replacement for the idea of liberty will translate in practice?

I have read the article link and can see problems arising with the idea of liberty in the secular times, but came away from reading without any clear idea of a way forward. Do you see one?

Loy makes good points regarding how the importance of personal conscience came to occupy the stage.
But the arguments from that side also include a demand for responsibility that is very personal. Each decision is like deciding how all the rest will be. I don't understand how that bit of praxis relates to issues of "culture" as a thing.

Maybe there is a challenge there unlike other things. One does not have to understand all of civilization to accept it. Liberty is yourself stuck with yourself.

Well - I think it has to be very much around down-sizing and sustainable economics and a philosophical shift that recognises the importance of this. That will require a very different mind-set and outlook to that of capitalist materialism. E F Schumacher's 60's classic Small is Beautiful is one of the harbingers of those ideas.

That writer I linked to, David Loy, also has some very interesting things to say on just these matters (his article index is here.)

But I have the ominous feeling that this is not going to be accomplished by a sudden, voluntary change-of-heart, especially when you look at the role 'delusion' plays in current American politics. I think we are headed for a planetary crisis compared to which the current COVID crisis is going to look pretty minor. I hate saying that and I hope I'm wrong.

I don't understand how that bit of praxis relates to issues of "culture" as a thing. — Valentinus

Totally with you on that.

I keep remembering that 60's slogan 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem'. I think some aspects of the green-left movements are important - turning away from consumerism, downsizing, reducing your energy footprint. (Mind you other aspects of the green left drive me nuts.) But I'm painfully aware I'm not doing that. Currently I live in a 5 bedroom house with a large pool and two cars. Part of me wants to sell up, downsize and tree-change, but my spouse would never countenance such a thing.

I quite like your idea of 'Liberty is yourself stuck with yourself'. Having opened this complex debate, with no easy answers, I feel a bit consoled with that point, at least.

And https://satyagraha.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/pitirim-sorkin-crisis-of-modernity/

Thanks for your link article. I will read it tomorrow as it is after 1am. I do think that we are in need of culture change to prevent cultural collapse.

Probably our personal circumstances do influence the way we see it all. I am sure that I wrote the thread today because I moved into a shared house with a group of strangers. I am forced to spend time in shared spaces with these people and this seems indefinite because I believe lockdown of indoor venues is likely to last into spring or summer. I go out but can't even find anywhere to read a book because it is bad weather.

So, I feel imprisoned in a room and lacking any liberty. However, while out today I did see many people without any place to live, stuck outside in the rain, so I am grateful to have somewhere to live, but I am very uncertain about the way civilisation is going. I realise that we are living in a difficult time, with the pandemic, but I do believe that human beings are being seen as of lesser worth gradually. I think that it is probably due to overpopulation and we are becoming mere numbers, and of little importance individually.

I am sure that I wrote the thread today because I moved into a shared house with a group of strangers. I am forced to spend time in shared spaces with these people and this seems indefinite because I believe lockdown of indoor venues is likely to last into spring or summer. I go out but can't even find anywhere to read a book because it is bad weather. — Jack Cummins

I feel for you, Jack. Sounds a tough situation. Especially as I believe you're in the UK? and things are very tough there also. Here in Australia we seem to have beaten back the virus so the mood here is not too bad. Hang in, things will improve.

Thanks, I will just hope that things will improve in England because at the moment it is all so demoralising and soul destroying. Obviously, all the people on the forum are in different parts of the world, so are in very differing sets of circumstances.

Yuval Noah Harari suggests that,
'The liberal story cherishes human liberty as its number-one value. It argues that all authority stems from the free will of individual human, as it is expressed in their feelings, desires and choices. In politics, liberalism believes that that the voter knows best. It therefore upholds democratic elections. In economics, liberalism encourages that the customer is always right. It therefore hails free-market principles. In personal matters, liberalism encourages people to listen to themselves, be true to themselves, be true to themselves and follow their own hearts- as long as they do not infringe on their on the liberties of others. This personal freedom is enshrined in human rights.' — Jack Cummins

That's classical liberalism; and most definitely not contemporary liberalism.

The only liberty that we have is to have a thought. What we're losing is the ability to express that thought. Fear suppresses.

↪Nikolas
I am in England, not America, but I presume that the same principles apply. How do you believe that the idea of 'might makes right' as a replacement for the idea of liberty will translate in practice? — Jack Cummins

From the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.”

Liberty requires receiving Grace from above. When it is denied, the natural tendency to establish animal superiority takes over leading to "might makes right."

"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace." Simone Weil

Simone was highly regarded Marxist admired by leon Trotsky. Her strict dedication to truth made allowed her to experience its weaknesses. She died a Christian mystic.

When liberty becomes impossible for a society due to the human condition and the absence of grace, it must devolve into the struggle for prestige which can only be resolved by tyranny

Thanks for your comments. I have been reflecting on the nature of liberty today and I that even though the idea is related to aspects of life in the world, it is to some extent, a whole matter of mindset or perspective.

Yesterday, the whole way I was feeling lacking in liberty was partly a fault of my perception. From the moment I got up I was feeling oppressed by obstacles, including cafes all being shut and the rain. Of course, these were real, but it is all how we view them really. We create our own reality by our own perception. Thinking back to when I had a job, that often struck me as a form of loss of liberty because I was obliged to get up and go to it, even if I didn't feel up to. At least, at the moment I have the liberty to spend time reading and writing in my room. So, what I am saying is that the more we see loss of liberty we create our own oppression.

In relation to Nikolas's point about liberty in relation to loss of grace, I would say that belief in liberty for ourselves does become narrow, if we do see it as something just to achieve for oneself, rather than as for others to. Whether or not we believe in God, in the literal sense, of conventional religious belief, if we seek maximum liberty for ourselves, without consideration for our role of living harmoniously with others and the cosmos, we are developing a view of liberty which is primarily about gratification of the self. I would suggest that any ethics of liberty needs to take a wider view, involving the happiness of others. However, I think that it is best if this belief is discovered for oneself ideally.

I read the article on Sorokin, thanks. I had not come across him but it does seem that he has some useful ideas. The one which I found particular interesting was the idea of the supraconscious. Perhaps the idea of a higher self is helpful for us for guiding us. Certainly, at times I find that it is as if I can tune into a higher state of mind than ego consciousness. Generally, I think that many people may not be aware of this faculty and it probably gets lost if we focus on television and other social media too much. It may be that this dimension of seeing is the one which enables liberty being seen as just about fulfilling one's own personal wishes.

Hi, thank you for this site. I am new here and this is my first post.

For me liberty is an important word to keep our eyes on the shore of freedoms. While liberty may have downsides and should not be used as a loophole to hide crime, it's nonetheless an important concept for personal empowerment and freedom. Liberalism is something we need to tread more carefully with. For example, liberty is enshrined in the US constitution and yet some amendments which have this concept at heart can be perceived as orthodox, and so to oppose this established doctrine is sometimes considered part of liberalism, which to me seems like trying to bite off your own head.

I would say liberty is the thing you understand the meaning of when you get rid of it. Whereas at the heart of liberalism is change and so volatility which has its own merit too. But volatility requires freedom to allow the volatility to exist in the first place. So I guess liberty for me is the most important raft you cling on to.

I once exclaimed that in times of high corruption, we should withdraw from liberalism as the change cannot ever be that good or well thought through, or without a sinister agenda behind it. Conversely, you only feel that that corruption is low when we don't talk about it it it doesn't come up that much in conversation. If we think of mainstream media as one big obnoxious vacuum cleaner that wants to suck up only the parts of society it wants to keep, its clear that we need to embrace those things that are left behind. Liberty is what is being left behind in my opinion.

I am glad that you found this site and I have found that it has given me a lot of liberty to express ideas since I found it in September last year.

I do think that the idea of valuing liberty is important, especially in giving a sense of empowerment. Of course, you are right to say that it should not be 'used as a loophole to hide crime'.I also like your idea of mainstream media 'as one big obnoxious vacuum cleaner'. I don't watch much television and don't know how or why so many people do, but I do listen to some mainstream music. I do spend a lot of time reading but do listen to music to relax. I find this important because life can be so intense otherwise.

Thanks for the welcome. Glad to be here. I try to avoid media these days too.

I read the article on Sorokin, thanks. I had not come across him but it does seem that he has some useful ideas — Jack Cummins

My thoughts too. That article was the first I'd heard of him, but his ideas resonated with me.