Freedom is Like Religion to Us!

What is the greatest desire of a human being? Well, if you were to search that online, your search engine would return quite a lot of things. It could be money, fame, power, love, good health, etc. Quite frankly, the list is endless. 

According to Aristotle, that would be happiness. In his Nicomeachean Ethics, he argues that happiness is the greatest goal of human endeavor. That we seek happiness, unlike our desire for other things, as an end in itself, not a means to any other end. 

If you think about it, all these things are valid. They have been known to motivate man since ancient days. 

However, I think that the thing that really inspires man is FREEDOM. Is there a thing as great as knowing that you are FREE? 

I think not.

Several years ago, back at the university, a lecturer asked: “Why do we go to church?” A hand shot up from the back. “For amnesty of the soul.” So, why does the soul need to be free?

But what is freedom?

Oxford Dictionaries define freedom as follows: 

"a. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.

b. The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved."

In the first instance, it is clear that man seeks to think, speak and act freely. To constrain one in any of these areas is a recipe for disaster. Anyone who tries to put limitations on the other in manner in which the other person thinks, speaks or acts is bound to be faced with resistance. And is bound to fail.

In the second definition, it is clear that imprisonment and/or enslavement of people who should essentially be "free" is inimical to the human spirit. Those who thought themselves better tried with slavery, colonialism, imperialism and whatnot and failed spectacularly. 

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto reminds us that human history is one of struggle. "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."

Since there is little shortage of people, institutions, governments, religions and societies that think of themselves as better than others, or of having better understanding, or of being privileged and God-sent, or of being just plain thickheaded bullies, it is safe to argue that the history of today and tomorrow is one of struggle. The slave, plebeian, serf, journeyman, and the oppressed of today and tomorrow will continue to rise against those hellbent on taking their freedom away.

But why is freedom so important that we should fight for it? Well, think of the poor and the indignity that poverty wraps around one. Think of the sick, the unemployed, the homeless, the slave, the underpaid, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, etc. Are these people free in their thoughts, voices or actions? Are they not imprisoned or enslaved by the station of their lives? Is there anything to smile about ala Morgan Heritage of such stations?

To one whose right to freely think, speak or act, or one who is wrongly imprisoned or enslaved, freedom is all they seek. And since, as it appears, we are being shuttled from one cell to another, one inglorious prison to the next, one cruel master to the other, we must remain sober in our quest for freedom. History is on our side!

Viva!