Are we “free” in a society?

Benj96

Society in many ways is not the fosterer of individual freedom but rather convention (agreement), law, order, policy and regulation and ultimately control of a population.
Many of these things are of course beneficial to the vast majority - such as law and order and the general peace and security that comes with that.

However, we are not all equal in a society. Societies by nature are hierarchical. People are positioned both in varying levels of wealth for one, and secondly influence (politics). And often there’s a strong correlation between the two (lobbying, corporate string-pulling and political puppetry).

The irony is that all and any power or wealth in a society is based on the individuals behaviour.
If you can control or coerce large volumes of people to behave or act in a certain way you are influential - an “influencer”.

Yet the dissatisfied portion of every society are bound together by many of the same laments and maladies created by their “down-grading” on the hierarchy.
“I’m not paid enough for my work” “I can’t get educated easily” “there’s too many regulations between me and the thing I want”, “the price of a home is too much”, “I can’t afford decent legal representation” etc etc. The reason they don’t exert any change despite all being “unified/ in agreement about what is troubling them” is that they’ve been led to believe they are powerless, do not communicate well with one another to realise they are a large community that if aligned with a one voice have a lot of clout, or they are too preoccupied with the fear of not surviving and clinging desperately to the only hands that feed them.

It’s a simple fact at the end of the day. It is okay to concede to a state of lack of freedom provided you are happy and your needs are met by those with power over you - power that you gave away to them and likewise it is okay to chase power and authority and more personal freedom provided it serves the well-being of those that fall under it.
Any divergence from this equality is the perversion of human rights.

Tzeentch

It is okay to concede to a state of lack of freedom provided you are happy and your needs are met by those with power over you — Benj96

What if the state is unable to fulfill my needs? Also, am I allowed to determine what my needs are, or will someone else determine my needs for me and whether they are fulfilled or not?

Benj96

What if the state is unable to fulfill my needs? — Tzeentch

Damn they’re very good questions.what such unfulfillable needs do you suggest that the state couldn’t manage? Need being the key word rather than desire.
I suppose the issue that’s being posited here really is how do we a). define the border between the category of “leader” with authority and the “led/followers” - being provided for .

And b). with finite resources there is a state of personal attitude/ belief or expectation to have ones needs be met which is untenable. For example I need to be as well off as the leaders but I don’t wish to provide for others the same resources as I myself would have.

However need and desire are different. Maslows hierarchy of needs doesnt really feature mansions or porches or anything whilst it would feature a “comfortable and secure home” and “access to transport”.

Some people I guess will never be satisfied also even if they have more than enough for their needs. Which is another important thing to consider in which case the “well you get what you get” attitude is somewhat warranted I suppose.

Perhaps there is a third option: if you don’t with to pursue a position of leadership in which you will provide for others, nor do you wish/ are satisfied with position of follower in which perhaps your needs are decided for and fulfilled by others third last option is you lay leave the society and select another or create your own upon failing that.

The issue is territory is also finite and in the currently world most habitable territory is claimed. In essence true freedom to roam uninhabited land up for grabs is a thing of the past.

Apollodorus

However, we are not all equal in a society. Societies by nature are hierarchical. — Benj96

Well, we are unequal from birth on. Some may be more intelligent, practically dexterous or physically stronger than others, etc. Of course complex societies are hierarchical because they are divided by occupation, etc. and relative importance to society. The problem is that politics is about power and power tends to corrupt as well as seek more power. Without checks and balances, this ultimately leads to a corrupt dictatorship controlled by those who control resources, finance and economy.

Benj96

The problem is that politics is about power and power tends to corrupt as well as seek more power. Without checks and balances, this ultimately leads to a corrupt dictatorship controlled by those who control resources, finance and economy. — Apollodorus

My question now is why? Why does power tend to corrupt people? What is it about being able to exert force/ impact on those around you that lends itself so easily to this distortion of morality/ ethics?

Is it that those who wish to be powerful are the wrong type of personality to have power? Or is it that upon attaining it there is somehow a complex of elitism that is developed or that the ego expands out of hand. Or is it simply that one can no longer sympathise with anothers struggle/ desperation once they themselves have been removed from it for long enough?

Apollodorus

Is it that those who wish to be powerful are the wrong type of personality to have power? Or is it that upon attaining it there is somehow a complex of elitism that is developed or that the ego expands out of hand. Or is it simply that one can no longer sympathise with anothers struggle/ desperation once they themselves have been removed from it for long enough? — Benj96

My guess would be that it's a bit of everything. Obviously, desire for power would suggest a big ego and domineering personality to begin with. Corruption is inherent to some extent in the desire for power and readiness to do anything to attain it. It is later augmented by the fact that you have to accommodate many conflicting interests in order to acquire or hold on to power. The higher up you are, the more enemies you have and your desire for power develops into a struggle for survival or staying in power which becomes your raison d'etre . At that point, the interests of others become increasingly marginal, you become out of touch with the people and with reality and turn into a dictator even without realizing it. This may happen all the more easily in a society where Big Money, Big Tech and the Media hold and exert disproportionate power over society. So, some form or other of dictatorship seems to be the direction society is currently taking.

skyblack

We have made society what it is. It's a reflection of us. The crisis 'outside' is mirroring the crisis 'inside'. One can start with self-accountability.

Gregory

Power is not bad. Politics is founded on it. Why can't a state secede in the US? Because the power of the feds will prevent it for the greater good. A person can't say "I paid for my property and now I secede from the city and nation with me and my family". The powers will stop him. If a state becomes powerful enough to secede then they have the right. In the Civil war the South said (essentially) "might makes right with slavery and secession" but the North proved them wrong. Are we slaves? In a sense. All a human deserves are fundamental needs and rights. Power limits this or rights become corrupt

NOS4A2

↪Gregory

...will prevent it for the greater good.

So much freedom has been sacrificed on this one prognostication. The problem is they do not nor cannot know what "the greater good" is, so it is often used as a justification for megalomania.

Gregory

↪NOS4A2

Nobody knows what the greater good is. Everyone has to guess. But governments are not going to listen to a poll on every issue that comes up. They are here to stay. Why do we have income tax in this country? Because the U.S. is a society. The rich use the roads and avenues of society like everyone else. Who runs society? Governments. So the powerful take from the rich and give to the non-starving. This is how humans act. Nature has a political dao. We separate kids from their parents when the parents do wrong to show the kids and the parents the might of the nation. Humans can't choose to act any way they want. Power and rights will always fight each other and nobody in the end knows where we will end up

BC

Society in many ways is not the fosterer of individual freedom but rather convention (agreement), law, order, policy and regulation and ultimately control of a population.
Many of these things are of course beneficial to the vast majority - such as law and order and the general peace and security that comes with that. — Benj96

Has the individual ever been free? We've been living in ever-growing communities for the last 12,000 years, but even as hunter-gatherers individuals were not "free". Social animals like us can't be entirely free and independent agents. We are obligated by our various needs to maintain tight social relationships.

Obligated social beings as we are, we still have drives which conflicts with society. We have all sorts of needs and (especially) desires which may not be satisfied, sufficiently or at all. That is the bind we are all in, and always have been in.

There are various ways one can find relief. One can rise in society and gain more executive agency. People with more power and money have more options. One can also find social roles which involve less conventional social engagement. Loners, mavericks, and rebels specialize in social opposition. This route involves significant material sacrifices, usually, but can bring the reward of individual executive agency and interesting options,

One can also adapt to society, which is what most people do. Well-adjusted people fit society and society fits them. They may be better or worse off than others, but they are reasonably content, reasonably successful, reasonably happy. This is the lot of most people in the world.

Deletedmemberph

My experience is that equality leads to jealousy. And hierarchy to abuse. For me it's diversity that leads to beauty. It makes captivity... captivating ;)

Heiko

Are we “free” in a society?

It has always been a prime directive of philosophy to show that people are free not just despite any regulations or limitations but because of them.

NOS4A2

↪Gregory

The 16th amendment to the constitution didn't occur until 1913. Until then an income tax was imposed only to prop up the state in times of war. So its not because the US is a society that there is an income tax, but because the government, inspired by competing socialist and populist forces, gave itself the right to pilfer its citizen's wealth on the specious claim that politicians knew how to better use the people's wealth than they did. We can blame human nature all we want but it does not excuse the actual perpetrators of this exploitation.

James Riley

Whatever justice deems necessary to do should be paid for by those who object. And then some. You know, just to teach them a lesson; and so they can say "I told you so" as they fume and mope and whine and weep; "Oh woe is me!" LOL!

Nobody is free in a society; no one ever has been, or will be. Likewise those who try to step outside of society. Likewise those in charge. It doesn't matter. Life charges admission no matter who or where you are. Pay up or get the hell out. Those are your choices, whether you like it or not.

After all the accounting of freedom to and freedom from has been tallied up, we get to see where we are on the scale. But regardless, someone had to suffer your insufferable ass. Any you, them. That's just the balance due. Freedom is a fiction to fight over, to pay for.

skyblack

One has to look into the issue of freedom carefully. To look at the nature of freedom. Is freedom given? Before one can inquire into the nature of freedom does one know he is a prisoner. Does one know how one has been captured by society, by culture, by ideologies, by narratives, by what one has been told. Does the inquirer have a free mind. A mind that has the capacity to look without any distortions from conditioning, bias, or prejudice. Surely one needs a free mind and attention to even inquire.

god must be atheist

The reason they don’t exert any change despite all being “unified/ in agreement about what is troubling them” is that they’ve been led to believe they are powerless — Benj96

You had me until you I read the above. Your style is lucid, your examples were very true, striking and typical. They are highly present in my life and in my friends' lives. I liked societal aspect of how you introduced the topic. I understood and agreed enthusiasticlaly with everything you said until the quote came around in the reading.

People feel powerless because they are powerless. This is not an illusion planted in them by the circumstances and by the suggestion of the ruling class. This is actually a reality.

The don't have the guns. They don't have the money. They lack the communications and the organization.

Of these, only organization and communication can be obtained. Instead of sending cute cat pictures to each other, the downtrodden could organize a coup d'etat. But they don't, because they also lack -- by and large, there are exceptions in both camps -- intelligence to get organized.

I would also say they don't have the numbers. People who live in poverty, in apartments, and get paid lousy wages tend to be less smart than middle-class white-collar workers. But not as numerous as the cream of socitey. I define the cream of society to be those who live a normal lifestyle: own their home, have a vacation every year, provide a good education for their offspring, and have good food on the table. This, the cream of society, still outnumbers the poor people in Canada.

All these things are against the odds of the poor successfully changing the system, and not, or not only, is the reason for their poverty that they had been brainwashed to think they are powerless.

god must be atheist

What if the state is unable to fulfill my needs? Also, am I allowed to determine what my needs are, or will someone else determine my needs for me and whether they are fulfilled or not? — Tzeentch

You get paid for your work. You decide how and on what to spend the money earned. Nobody else has to look out for you and decide for you what your needs are... you decide yourself, and you use your money to buy those things and services that YOU decide YOU need.

YOU also are forced to pay taxes. This is used for many things that private people can't do: build roads, maintain a military, run government services like patent office and copyright protection, drug testing for approval for fitness, educating the populace for job readiness, and a million other useful services you can't do without, as well as foreign diplomacy administration and internal policing.

In Canada, Australia and Europe, the gov also runs a lucrative and manageable medicare program.

If you think you are unduly taxed, because some eggheads think they know you better than you do what to spend your money on, fine, try to exist for a few months without water supply, grocery stores, gasoline, and any medication, and then report back to us how it worked out.

n1tr0z3n

Depends on what you think of "Free" to mean. In society we need to live together agreeing on the proposals of different individuals to survive altogether for the improvements of mankind! You are allowed to be free within a limit, a border. Cross that and you might end up doing a wrong thing to someone. The simple definition of freedom refers to "being free within a certain border so our actions do not harm others in any way".

But should all people receive the same rights in case of being free? I don't think so. All people do not have the same amount of knowledge and ability to comprehend complex problems. So the limit of freedom differs to some people. But for some people life is unfair, freedom doesn't exist in their life because there are people who doesn't allow them to be free. Slavery, Bondage... Of course it depends on which society are you living in with which groups of individuals you are living with and if being free in some sense is allowed in it. Well, but if you consider the fact that our choices are nothing more than our vision about the world created from our experience with other people, then you certainly find "freedom" to be meaningless..

Gregory

↪Benj96

https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333?fbclid=IwAR3olPEM0IJU153GNvvZ5ktHV32cbFql_2MOz3IeiNnKh5LuSnxVydk9RJE

A liberal friend of mind sent this to me, calling it malarkey. There is a struggle in the US between traditional white people and non-white Americans and their liberal white friends. It's a power battle for the most part. It is almost as if a race war is underway or already here in a way. Everyone ideally should get equal privileges but this never seems to work out practically. People don't get along and people don't always know what is best for them. A lot of whites feel like they should be showed respect from non-whites and they don't want to deal with non-whites being all around them all the time. Non-whites like to get in the face of whites to make their presence known and this leads to conflict. It goes back to the foundation on this country and it is not an issue that can be settled by a debate

Benj96

. So the powerful take from the rich and give to the non-starving. This is how humans act. — Gregory

Except they don’t, or rather can’t. At least not by any punitive measure. Tax avoidance is a wealthy mans specialty. The middle class pay a disproportionate amount of their wealth into the system and this is because they don’t have an accountancy team working around the clock to maintain their assets.
Furthermore the whole way in which the monetary system operates further rewards wealth with interest rates which are negligible in the case of small capital but quite significant at large sums.

One could simply live off interest alone if they have a large lump sum in the bank.
Also the way the justice system operates companies can essentially raise a legal “blockade” while they operate to profit by questionable means. By this I mean they have no intention of winning the case in court all they have to do is have their team of 50 high profile lawyers find every way in the book to stall proceedings for as long as possible and appeal repeatedly. In the meantime they’ve made 20X what they’ll pay as a penalty to the court.

Benj96

Has the individual ever been free? We've been living in ever-growing communities for the last 12,000 years, but even as hunter-gatherers individuals were not "free". Social animals like us can't be entirely free and independent agents. We are obligated by our various needs to maintain tight social relationships. — Bitter Crank

I suppose you’re right. In many ways I think this is why the escapism of media and literature plays such a large part in our lives. Distraction from the disenfranchising aspects of every day social life and lack of true freedom. If anything the human mind and imagination is the most free thing we’ve got - there is little restriction in the non physical/ hypothetical.

Benj96

My experience is that equality leads to jealousy. — Pretty Herds

Why does equality lead to jealousy? Surely it ought to have the opposite effect. Then again being as subjective as we are “the grass is always greener on the other side”.

Benj96

So its not because the US is a society that there is an income tax, but because the government, inspired by competing socialist and populist forces, gave itself the right to pilfer its citizen's wealth on the specious claim that politicians knew how to better use the people's wealth than they did. — NOS4A2

Do you think we would be better off if we lived in a public “campaigning/ go fund me” type society where instead of paying tax to one centralised governing body each person is free to select their own beneficiary’s at an individual and micro-group level but have to invest a certain percentage of their wealth minimum.

I can see some benefits and flaws: the benefits being money would be spent by a community on its own improvements - the people who are most acutely aware of their local communities needs are directing the money rather than some national body. Also a lot more diversity would be seen in innovation and entrepreneurship.

The major problem is highly costly and large scale projects would never be funded because not enough money would be directed towards it. People tend to focus on what impacts them and their families most not what’s best for the country.

Benj96

After all the accounting of freedom to and freedom from has been tallied up — James Riley

That’s a brilliant quote. Of course freedom also operates in the avoidance of adversity by “restricting” you for your own good, not just the liberty to do what you want.

My only issue is I think one can go overboard with regulation. Many of our societies are getting to what I call the stage of “bubble wrapping”.
That is to say blanket restrictions for all on even the slightest of risky activities due to the inherent idiocy of a few. Bubble wrapping everyone and enclosing us in safety net after safety net so we can’t accidentally injure ourselves. It kind of drains the exhilaration out of activities because at the end of the day “life is a risk sport no matter how many protections you put in place and some people will always be hurt so we should go with waivers and disclaimers rather than preventing people from exploring limits that are considered borderline unsafe.

I can understand why adrenaline junkies seek out threatening situations to feel alive again.

Benj96

↪god must be atheist

in such a case how might we then help the poor to help themselves?
Do you think it will always be a case of providence by the better off? Or is there some way to encourage the poor to have self- directed, motivated and productive attitudes and improve their lives? Perhaps they don’t see any need to improve. Some people are very satisfied with their circumstances despite what others may believe.

I guess in the end it’s a case of a Gaussian distribution of productivity or intelligence or wealth etc. For a population of people you always have the majority in the Center - and then the exceptional upper margin and unexceptional lower margin. There’s always a “poorest” person not matter what.

Deletedmemberph

↪Benj96

Why does equality lead to jealousy? — Benj96

Initially it doesn't. You give equal rights to everyone and it increases the overall level of wellbeing. But at some point people feel that everyone should be treated the same. The fact is that everyone and everything is different. To some degree. Even identical twins are not identical. It creates a feeling of dissatisfaction based on comparison. Some call it competition, others call it envy or jealousy.
I think it's important to celebrate our differences.

Tzeentch

↪god must be atheist

Few things are so ignorant as thinking to know what another person needs.

dimosthenis9

↪Benj96

Total individual freedom is an absolute illusion and can never be achieved.All of us we are defined by circumstances we are born in (family status, society, health issues, geographical factors, wealth etc). If someone wants to live in a society he can't do whatever he wants cause he affects and he is affected by other society members.If for example I feel happy and free just walking naked around city I just can't do it. Cause they will judge me,attack me, cuss me, I would find closed doors at jobs etc. Even if I wanted to live all alone in the mountains I would have to deprive myself from some of the things that I would enjoy in society(friends for example).

As in life you can't have it all, same happens with freedom. Freedom is just a state of mind and only in such way can someone approach it and still not totally. You just have to compromise and find the balance in which fields you are willing to "sacrifice" your freedom as to gain more freedom in other fields.Your personal happiness is the only goal so that's what you have to estimate every time you look for that balance. The more freedom you get in general the more happy you'll be, and the more happy you become the more freedom you get. It's a constant fight knowing that you will never fully win it.

James Riley

My only issue is I think one can go overboard with regulation. — Benj96

Agreed. That often has something to do with insurance. The idea of motorcycle helmets and seat belts in cars sounds a little intrusive, but the requirement is often not because society cares about the individual; rather, it's because someone has to pay for taking care of them when they end up a vegetable, and the insurance companies absolutely hate paying for anything. So, we pass laws to keep the premiums down and Darwin is denied the opportunity to work on the adventurous.

dimosthenis9

the requirement is often not because society cares about the individual; rather, it's because someone has to pay for taking care of them when they end up a vegetable, and the insurance companies absolutely hate paying for anything — James Riley

Good point. So it's a kind of society "selfish" thing to do. And it is fair don't you think? Society shouldn't have a way to get protected from individual stupidity? So laws offer that protection. Society has to win something too out of it. Seems logically fair to me at least.

Are we “free” in a society?

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