"Aut inveniam viam aut faciam" I shall either find a way or make one. 
​(Hannibal crossing the Alps)

​There is no absolute freedom, except in theories and dreams. You cannot disregard the given, the necessity of causes above, beyond, beneath and around your will.

In spite of this, quot Spinoza, even a stone thrust, would believe – if conscious – that it flies free [1]. Our will, particularly when we let it roam uncontrolled, has deeper roots in blind spots of the awareness. It appears that we want only what we are able to conceive. You want what you can want.

Even so, this is no reason for fatalism; in fact, smart initiative finds and creates amazing freedom, by its choices... so sad that this freedom remains unavailable to many who do not even know what they can want and what the choices are.



What is freedom, anyway?

Human freedom is not a notion of the infinite Universe, it has nothing to do with Physics and mathematics within which it does not exist; freedom is something that only makes sense when you speak about experiencing it and about its human size. Freedom is something phenomenal, experienced according to our human nature, within our environment. Or else it remains beautiful philosophy or hollow political bull. You cannot let other people measure and define criteria of how you are free or how free you are.

Practical freedom is - positively – to do something different or differently from what would happen without your choices, to act as you prefer, to do something new, to become who you want to be, to have what you desire.

Still, the freedom really yours, being your own master, is to master what you want by some criterion higher than whim. Like your values and plans, for an example. This gives manifold freedom which is indeed yours; higher liberty that doing whatever you fancy.
 
Negatively – and not less crucially - your freedom is not to have and suffer, not to do, to let happen, to abstain, not to become, not to be, what and who you do not want [2]. It is to have a protective space and time of safety around you.

Actually, earning how to avoid what you do not want, finds you more freedom that the triumphs by force.

                                                                                *

For a living person, for you and me, the word “freedom” means nothing “in general” but only related to the variable richness and nature of actual choices one can conceive and practice. To mean something, freedom must always have a definite domain and object. Many objects being possible, in the many fields of our lives, there are many dissimilar freedoms we enjoy. We gain to size-up each instead of confusing them all.

Your freedom can be evaluated– aim by aim and field by field - by the variety and latitude of meaningful choices which you are able to conceive and make, in your mind, and in your life.

                                                                                   *

Multiply then the choices you consider, learn to chose to have more freedom. First in your mind, then in whatever you set to do. Use your power to create choices for other people to free them too...

If you want to read more...

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[1] Spinoza, LETTRE XXIX. (O.P. : LXII ; C.A. : LVIII) p.59-60, in SPINOZA LETTRES, TRADUIT PAR E. SAISSET (Ed. 1842), http://www.spinozaetnous.org :
"Une pierre soumise à l’impulsion d’une cause extérieure en reçoit une certaine quantité de mouvement, en vertu de laquelle elle continue de se mouvoir … Concevez maintenant, je vous prie, que cette pierre, tandis qu’elle continue de se mouvoir, soit capable de penser, et de savoir qu’elle s’efforce, autant qu’elle peut, de continuer de se mouvoir. Il est clair qu’ayant ainsi conscience de son effort, et n’étant nullement indifférente au mouvement, elle se croira parfaitement libre et sera convaincue qu’il n’y a pas d’autre cause que sa volonté propre qui la fasse persévérer dans le mouvement. Voilà cette liberté humaine dont tous les hommes sont si fiers. Au fond, elle consiste en ce qu’ils connaissent leur appétit par la conscience, et ne connaissent pas les causes extérieures qui les déterminent. C’est ainsi que l’enfant s’imagine qu’il désire librement le lait qui le nourrit; s’il s’irrite, il se croit libre de chercher la vengeance ; s’il a peur, libre de s’enfuir. C’est encore ainsi que l’homme ivre est persuadé qu’il prononce en pleine liberté d’esprit ces mêmes paroles qu’il voudrait bien retirer ensuite quand il est redevenu lui-même; que l’homme en délire, le bavard, l’enfant et autres personnes de cette sorte sont convaincus qu’ils parlent d’après une libre décision de leur esprit, et non par un aveugle emportement." pp 59-60

[2] To understand negative and positive freedom, a good reference is Berlin, I. (1958) “Two Concepts of Liberty.” In Isaiah Berlin Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1969. Note that Berlin - the philosopher who made the original notions of positive and negative liberty known - defines these two liberties differently, not as they appear in this text; for him positive freedom is the "freedom to" be one's own master, one's own instrument, a doer, at least one who takes part in governing his life; negative freedom is for Berlin to have an unobstructed space of "freedom from"  obstacles, coercion, from others, so that one can act.

 
“What happens to me is because of me!”

I need to recall it more often.

This is how free people think, without however bragging carelessly, nor taking on themselves all the guilt of the World.
 

For they are not madmen, deluded that anything goes, only awakened, self- determined minds who understand from their reality that some things are given but some you make. And even from the given, you can often choose, for they are many...

To be a person, not a toy of fate, you observe and respect that which is given, you do not run into trouble like a fool but - if you keep your head - you are the one who makes the choices, right or poor; for this reason, sooner or later, what you live is your own doing.

Paraphrasing what Joseph de Maistre, wrote so uncharitably about nations - that they end up having the government they deserve* - it is true about individuals too, that those who are unable to fight for their freedom, or to withdraw to the inner exile of their reflective life, or to flee, or perish, deserve their situation.

Psychology has a name for this factor in its jargon - it is called locus of control [1], the place from which you feel that you, what happens to you, is controlled; from inside your lived experience or from somewhere else, outside. If everything is decided elsewhere we are not free, because you are not responsible.

Strangely, the emancipating realm of Reason promised by the Enlightenment to wake up the peoples of the world from the darkness of believing in God-decreed providence, did not live up to its promise. It only replaced the slave-master: divinity deciding everything traded for the revelation of almighty materialist causality.

Educating modern people with a science-given belief that ideas are not world-changing, but mere reflections of given reality, instilling that freedom of will is mere delusion, results in creating puppet-people. Teaching us that on the contrary that the world is a System of systems, ruled by laws independent of us - what matters whether they are divinity's preordained course or Science's objective physical, social, evolving biological universe where our brain and values are ruled by genes, chemistry, electro-physiology  - all this ravishes us of the "unreasonable" confidence needed to turn our dreams real and our actions bold enough to count.

Those who expect and accept whatever happens to them to be determined from an external place, above their reach - commanded by the forces of economy, God, history, chance, rulers or hidden conspiring power-groups or -not better - by the inexorable logic and progress of objective natural processes - those people tend to live like objects, spare-parts and servers of machines, doomed to be some kind of puppets and cogs, helpless and submissive.

Those "fools" those poets and dreamers and visionaries who on the contrary hold that in their life-space, they are the main cause of what happens to them - by what they decide, do, create, build and avoid or defeat by means of their actions [3] - are able, I believe, of substantial control. In their mind, and possibly in deed (as my life has proven in many occasions), they are free. As free as one can humbly be. And that is enough for a life-time well lived. They may fail, many do, but even then, they lived free. As a classic Romanian poem claims:

"We owe a death, we all, death reigns
but it is not at all the same
to die a roaring lion
or a dog in chains" [2]

What a paradox! It is in occasions when we just lost "everything", that is all our reassuring ties and fetters, that we have dangerously more freedom, like a puppet freed of its strings; as Janis Joplin cries out “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose...”

No need to perish for pride, though. What you cannot master and you do not want, you can often avoid, wait-out and work your way around. Let Time work for you.

You can wait and persist still, tepid, like the Taoist water, passive, looking dumb, yet always ready to flow your way by the irresistible force of gravity. Your choice will come to pass, be certain, "provided you have patience to sit by the riverside".

Warning!

Keep away though from the recurring places in time where “everything not forbidden is compulsory” [4]; or run away from there as soon as you can. Do the same when you see that the "wheels of history" start to turn [5] around you.


If you find this interesting read "The choice of choices"
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* Joseph de Maistre: "Every country has the government it deserves (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite")  cf J. B. Alden, 1880 The Library Magazine vol 2, General Books (29 march 2010) Comment in a letter he wrote in August 1811, later published in Lettres et Opuscules Inedits (1851)  My thanks to Quote/Countrequote - Origins, uses and abuses of famous quotations and phrases

[1] Locus of control: Rotter, J. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcements. Psychological Monographs, 80, Whole No. 609

[2] George Coşbuc, Decebal catre popor: "C-o moarte tot suntem datori!/…/Dar nu-i totuna leu să mori/Ori câine-nlănţuit." My translation
 
 [3] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998

[4] T.H.White, The Once and Future King

[5] Martin Luther: "Blood alone moves the wheels of history" (but I never found the historic source where Luther wrote this. Note 2019: in fact it was Mussolini, the the sinister comediante who uttered this monstrosity "Blood alone moves the wheels of history!": Speech in Parma (13 December 1914) quoted in Foreign Affairs, May 1924, p 234

At the time you must chose, which one is prevailing?

Truth or compassion?

Friendship or Justice?
 
Beauty or usefulness?

Freedom or Equality?

Solidarity or Prudence?

It is easy to choose between good and bad; the difficulty is to choose between bad and bad or good and good. The hard part is to judge the degrees of each and how they fit together.

The trouble with positive moral values is that they are not ends in themselves and not alone to rule the world.

The high moral values are - like work and science - only tools, instruments, servants of the final value - GOOD itself - which is essentially Human flourishing in the pursuit of happiness.

This truth, that most high values are only means is often forgotten by the zealots of one or other ideal. The moral values are good because and only as long as they serve humanity's well-being and survival. They are means not ends. As high and sacred as they are they are, they remain good as long as they are pursued in harmony and good sense. Good as long as each of them leave place to the other good values. Such concord is not easy.
 
Worse, values are not created equal, there is no impartial measure of numbers to compare their merit* and they have no privilege to measure each other. They are relative to each other but poor judges of each other: the case in point is that you cannot judge all the other values by how true or precise or profitable they are; or you cannot judge truth on how beautiful, or generous or just it is. In fact, truth cannot claim moral merit beyond itself. The pairs I proposed as examples are all in possible conflict. To avoid turning inhuman, our value judgements require character and intelligence - and, above all, wise moderation - not just exclusive loyalty to abstract codes.

Most of us people, even the vilest, will swiftly agree with most of the labels naming high values of humankind: life, freedom, happiness, truth, respect, justice, equality, prudence, compassion, courage, modesty, patience, moderation, harmony, industry, competence and so on. Who does not want a happy and meaningful life, those ultimate values of humanity? This could open, as it seems, a generous way towards global  harmony and peace, a rule for the solution of all conflicts.

​However, ask people which value is the most important and prevailing in order to make life happy and meaningful (not to speak about how they define what those words mean); you will suddenly find in the pattern of ranking the striking differences that tell fascists apart from communists and religious fanatics from tolerant free thinkers; or, why not, tolerant believers and fanatic free thinkers [1]. In good faith, each live in their own edifice of unquestionable values, so obvious and universal, the sole one possible, that debate is impossible, a dialogue of the deaf. Values are too deep in the chest to discuss.

Bad people have no problem with good values. Irreconcilably opposite world views and politics are made from the same handful of noble building-blocks representing ideals of the most desirable, of human duty and virtue. It is the hierarchy and the weight of each that differs; and also to what or whom we believe that they apply, where and when.
​
The selfsame values change their bonds and consequences depending on how we rate their order of importance and how far we go in applying them. The noblest value turns base and evil when exaggerated astray from good sense.

​                                                                              *
Arguably, the difference between sages and fools is also a matter of good sense in judging the priority of values in a real-life context.

Did you ever find time to explore your backbone of values?

To pull your own constellation of values within awareness - in front of your mind, not behind it as a puppet-master -  and  to size up your orders of priority - in general but also relative to the often incongruous seasons in which you live - careful reflection is well worth. Simply because you may want to be a free person, not a puppet or a weathercock.

Alas, in our busy everyday life the changeless virtue of values passes so unquestioned by the persons and groups professing them in good faith, that our common sense keeps unaware and we take them for granted.

​We do not see or examine our edifice of values because we see everything through them, as if they were our eyeglasses. Your "obvious" layout governs nevertheless, like a compass shielded from critical sense, like a shiny mirror reflecting everything but itself, who you are, what you value and respect and what you seek in life. Nonetheless what you detest, hate or ignore with indifference. Your value-formula determines what good life is for you and what kind of wisdom fits you. That in turn gives shape to your possible choices and sizes your moral freedom.

Not considering the existence of a plurality of ways in which values are shaped and structured hierarchically in individuals is, I find, one of the main blindnesses making people unable to even understand their differences, not to speak about discussing them with mutual respect. This makes life so much harder to live.

Your values drive you; if you are not aware of their thrust, they drive you from the dark. You interpret everything - inevitably - in their selective light. Bring them to awareness and examine their articulation, so that you become the rider, not the horse. Moral values are supposed to be rational; therefore you do have the means and a right - in your head - to weigh them fairly but freely,  to chose your own justified preferences.

                                                                               *

To start this work of clarification you cannot avoid understanding that values are not something otherworldly, nor intangible; they are standards of an encounter, a face-to-face of who you are with the World, with people and with circumstances, sometimes beyond your control. Your values acquired from your education and your experiences, become practical in what you do or abstain to do. Values are not nailed in some spiritual realm, nor in lip service and political correctness. I would go further, to say that many values become existent only because and to the extent we practice them and thus bring them into our world.

We tend to forget that values are man-made axioms of civilisation, agreed as beneficial for each of us and for us all to fit together. To share a sphere of  core values (an axiology) is to justify peace and recognise humanity to each other. In the succession of Cultures such shared spheres of values are historically changing, seemingly improving but stable and reliable in each culture; we share them because we need them, we instituted them as sacred, warrants of social harmony established by well grounded tradition, but there is nothing God-given about them, if you ask me [1a].

Some post-modern thinkers (whom I see as responsible in part for discouraging moral relativism, for promoting anomia and the dissolution of Western civilisation) draw from the plurality of value systems and from their human, historically evolving origin a loser's conclusion that everything is relative, that whatever comes is justified for somebody, sometimes or from some point of view.  This is false and spineless nihilism, compare it with one telling you to throw away your walking cane because there are many kinds of cane and some people do not need walking sticks anyway. It is not true that anything goes.

We do not live in general, in History, we live here and now, in our time, our country, our culture, our biography. We do need these artefacts to be sacred and stable, our norms conquered their social reliability through long tradition, because they serve and protect us. Our hierarchies of values make our human world predictable. They make human action mutually understandable and concerted. After having tested and civilised them for millennia, we have a right to our customary values; visitors - and even theorists studying them - have a duty to respect them. As long as they give meaning and harmony to our life and societies, we have a right to refer to them and to act in their name. Human values make us human. They give us rights.

It becomes however justified to re-examine values and challenge them when they are used to oppress and to cheat. When values offer pretext for hate, rejection and violence it is time to remember that they are man-made and therefore they may need to be argued and justified anew. For the sake of being free, when people wield  "universal" values at you as self-evident, higher and more important than Man, keep Nietzsche's hammer at hand [2] or at least in your mind, to gently tap on each such value and to judge the sound. Depending on the place where they are hung, some of those bells are noble sounds but some may give an empty ding of hypocrisy. Or of utopian delusion turned feral.
 
My call here is not theory, it is a recipe of personal freedom: your own chime, your arrangement of espoused values chants who you are and what you can. Master it. As long as you respect people who differ and they respect you, this is a right.

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Notes:

* The precise word for this is "incommensurable".

[1] See the work of Milton Rokeach ex: "The Nature of Human Values" 1973

[1a] To put the science of values (axiology) in simple words read this:

"Pre-industrial societies thought and lived secure in the belief that their collective
axiological projects had been passed down to them by their sacred ancestors or the
gods.
In the first wave of industrialisation, societies were convinced that they received
their collective axiological projects from the very nature of things or the inevitable
course of history, through philosophy and the sciences.
In modern industrial knowledge societies, we now know and live in the knowledge that we do not receive anything from anyone. Rather, we must construct it ourselves."

Corbí, Marià, Principles of an Epistemology of Values, The permutation of collective cohesion and motivation, Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016   p.V

[2]Friederich Nietzsche, "Twiligt of the Idols" and "Beyond Good and Evil"

 
You can measure the depth of your understanding – and to say it bluntly, your intelligence – by the number of points of view you apply when you consider something or someone[1].

The multiplication of your points of view which you are able to hold in your mind is  a powerful lever of freedom.

Using just one dimension makes man as discerning as an ass. “People who only see one side of things engage in quarrels and disputes” exclaims the Buddha[2].

The unexamined habit is to adopt a point of view and hold firm to it. To become aware of why we came to our slant and to examine multiple points of view – ours and others’ - frees us from such a narrow, unique angle; the more standpoints we conceive, the more we grow able to understand and to dialogue; our action choices increase too. 

                                                                                                                  *

The good news is that adopting more than one point of view is something we can learn. We can become aware of our point of view, understand that it is just that - a point of view to examine - observe other people's position and understand multiple views of that which first appeared one-way. This awareness does not prevent us to take clear decisions.

How then  do you discover what is your point of view? 

By asking yourself.  Care to reflect for a moment. Ask someone you trust to describe to you what your point of view seems to be, compared with other possible ones.

And other people’s points of view? 

Nothing special is needed, just observe, listen and give at least a thought to what other positions are possible.

Stop practicing that truth is one, that right opinion is one and they are all yours.

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[1]See research on this subject called “semantic differential”.  The good news is that you can educate yourself to consider more points of view and so, grow more intelligent.
[2]"Tittha Sutta: Various Sectarians (1)" (Ud 6.4), translated from the Pali by John D. Ireland. Access to Insight, June 14, 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.6.04.irel.html.