tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post4448781203841282957..comments2023-10-24T17:21:16.565+02:00Comments on Sounds in the Hickory Wind: Some Thoughts on FreedomThe Hickory Windhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02099970252405596982noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-5707673886962043342013-03-11T20:34:38.428+01:002013-03-11T20:34:38.428+01:00Thanks for the link.
'We inhabit different ex...Thanks for the link.<br /><br />'We inhabit different experiential landscapes.'<br /><br />Indeed we do, and it makes things much more interesting. I hate being told what to do, a revulsion that comes from my childhood, which I spend trying to do things I wasn't allowed to and trying to avoid other things that I was made to do. A perfectly normal childhood, I suppose, in most ways, but it left me with the determination to make my own mistakes once I was old enough (I have done so very feely over the years).<br /><br />I am also not very sociable. I enjoy the company of family and friends, but I don't seek it and I don't usually miss it if I don't have it. I don't feel the need to be part of something.The Hickory Windhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02099970252405596982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-5245372710495104462013-03-11T06:03:18.715+01:002013-03-11T06:03:18.715+01:00We inhabit different experiential landscapes.
Coi...We inhabit different experiential landscapes.<br /><br />Coincidentally I read the latest post from my MP. We haven't met face-to-face, but I respect him greatly. Now he recommends a book by Ayn Rand, whom I hate. But you may be interested in what he has to say: <a href="http://www.stevebaker.info/2013/03/rand-vs-whips/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stevebaker.info/2013/03/rand-vs-whips/</a>Vincenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-44772490644169939402013-03-10T21:10:28.358+01:002013-03-10T21:10:28.358+01:00My concept of freedom (which I probably don't ...My concept of freedom (which I probably don't understand very well myself, but insofar as I'm able to articulate it), is approximately that I want to know <i>why</i> my freedom is being restricted in any particular way. I often ask the same question about other people's freedom as well, because I'm not entirely selfish, although I ask it about others in a more abstract sense, whereas I ask it about myself viscerally.<br /><br />The reason I ask the question constantly is that it has become very clear to me that people love restricting the freedom of others for no reason at all. When they have nothing to gain from it, possibly no one at all has anything to gain, certainly not me, even though it might be done 'for my own good'. This doesn't mean that I can't recognise and respect limits on my own actions which I wouldn't otherwise impose upon myself. I don't tend to join groups (this was not always true), but when I do I know that the group will limit my freedom. If I can choose whether to join, and decide whether what the group does together is worth having it tell me what to do in some areas, then I don't complain. To accept a limit on your freedom to gain something else (company, an activity that must be shared, trade, peace) is not the same as uncritically accepting any limitation anyone wants to visit upon you.<br /><br />It is too easy to convince people in a group of the necessity for something 'for the good of society/the people/some nebulous abstract that is irrelevant to the case.' Communist Germany, among others, managed to make people accept that it was necessary to build a wall around them and shoot them if they tried to escape 'for the good of the revolution', or some such thing. History and geography are full of examples of rules imposed upon, or invented by and accepted by societies which a short time later they, or their neighbours, recognised as being absurd or inhuman. The point is that it is very hard to judge what these rules are really for, whether they are actually benficial, and most people don't even try.<br /><br />The people who make the rules usually do it for their own ends. Even when their intentions are benign, it is nearly always the case that the ultimate good, appealed to as a reference to justify the need for some rule or action, is an abstract derived from, but then divorced from, the people it is supposed to represent, and it often ends up as an end in itself, whose good is opposed to or at least very different from, the good of the people it was supposed to benefit, and who might well have created it themselves originally.<br /><br />I feel a post coming on. And please keep challenging clichés!The Hickory Windhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02099970252405596982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1707444165003305798.post-40259588575251841752013-03-10T18:50:35.365+01:002013-03-10T18:50:35.365+01:00I think I understand your concept of freedom a lot...I think I understand your concept of freedom a lot better now, and I think I don't buy into it at all.<br /><br />Given that we live in an overlapping plurality of communities and value systems today, it's important to understand the purpose of rules.<br /><br />If there are no rules, to govern such things as modes of speech, dress, behaviour and so on, we don't have the comfort of shared decent behaviour.<br /><br />As you say, religious freedom is not a special kind of freedom, it is just freedom. But freedom doesn't make any sense as a starting point. Freedom only acquires meaning as freedom from rules.<br /><br />As I get older I see that the rules around me have changed, and in many ways this causes me discomfort. I don't like certain aspects of speech, sexual behaviour and dress. Modern comedians, girls wearing clothes so skimpy you'd think they were prostitutes. But these are just examples and they don't matter. They simply mean I'm no longer a member of certain communities of the like-minded. In a plural society I can usually find a community that thinks as I do, whose members value the same kinds of restraint.<br /><br />For every in-group there is the possibility of an out-group which takes the consequences of not being in the in-group. And to be in the in-group you also face consequences, because you have to accept its rules.<br /><br />I live in a mainly Pakistani Muslim area (80-90%, I'm in the epicentre, 50 yards from the main mosque). Women encased in black with just the slit for eyes are rare, but it's clear from their body language that they wear it with defiant glee, because it leaves them free. They can wear alluring eye-makeup and don't have to drop their eyes modestly to the ground. I think they feel much more liberated than their dowdy sisters in drab scarves and traditional modest clothes. They seem to look and feel like snappy dressers. They return my interested gaze without inhibition. <br /><br />As a natural outcast from every conceivable group I shall challenge any cliché when it suits me, and defend the right of any in-group to limit the freedom of its members!Vincenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18297306807695767580noreply@blogger.com