Quote:
Originally Posted by Bakkels
There's no dancing around anything; I just don't agree with you.
Freedom in my opinion doesn't mean you can do whatever you want or feel like. That's called anarchy. There are boundaries, and yes, you should be very careful not to set them too strict, but there should be boundaries nonetheless.
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If that does not sound familiar to me. Do we just agree on this or have you just paste&copied from an earlier thread of mine?
Yes, anarchy we talk about here, and the jungle'S law-of-the strongest - that is what total freedom without rules really mean. At the same time it also often is to be heared that freedom of this kind should also be given to the other, and that tolerance need to tolerate even the intolerant trying to destroy tolerance.
It is an asburdity in itself, no matter the scenario possible:
- You withhold the total freedom you claim for yourself from the other in order to prpotect your own freedom: then you are y tyrant, free in yourself, supressive to the other.
- You grant the total freedom of yours to the other as well, since then you deal with two individuals claiming unlimited freedom for themselves, both of you necessarily must come into conflict with each other when your freedom-spheres start to rub and cling to each other. The faster shooter wins, the stronger claims all the jungle for himself, the loser has to fall: that is anarchy then.
- You grant the total freedom and total tolerance you want for yourself to the other as well even when you know he is absuing this freedom and your tolerance to destroy and overthrow freedom and tolerance. Then you will your own fall and the destruction of freedom and tolerance. This fits a descritpion of "self-destructive" and "masochistic".
You can turn it and look at it from any angle you want, but claiming unlimited and total freedom - causes the destruction of freedom, inevitably, and necessarily ends in either anarchy where you are the more free the stronger you are, or submission to a foreign conqueror destroying your freedom in the name of his own ideas.
When thinking in absolutes, you must necessarily scratch the plural. There can be only one, single absolute, else it would not be absolute, total. Co-existence between two claims for absolute ideas, is impossible. The confrontation is inevitable, and only one absolute claim can prevail - that of the stronger. The other gets destroyed.
It is dangerous, self-destructive and short-sighted to demand absolute, toal freedom.
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!"
However, it all is an illustration how the good can give birth to the evil, and how good intentions alone not only do not mean much, but can even create the opposite of what they wanted. You see it right today: total protection for freedom leads to total security measures in society that totally destroy freedom: the "war" on terror. Total tolerance for the intolerant encourages the intolerant to try to destroy tolerance and replace it with their own totalitarian ideas: Islamisation. Total obedience to the law meant to protect the state and the society, leads to totaly tyranny: dictatorships like the regimes in Rumania, fascist Germany, Soviet Union, China. Total lack of authority in "anti-authoritarian" education leads to chiuldren who learn that they get away with it whatever they do, and thus are often some of the most brutal and unscrupulus egoists or crusaders for the right way to think the right thoughts later when they have grown up, putting their own authority and demand over the others.
Live with it everybody: in this world you destroy yourself and the other when thinking in terms of total freedom and total tolerance. It's anarchy and the law of the strongest, simply that. A myth especially in American culture where there shall be no boudaries and the frontier always is poushed more Wetswards or now: spacewards, but a dangerous myth neverthelss. Because as long as you do exist
all alone on this planet, you will need to accept sharing, or become a evil villain yourself when not wanting to. Communities and civilisations do not survive and never have survived on the basis of unlimited freedoms, and tolerance for those wanting to destroy them.
Or to put it more general, and abstract: Structure and structuring means - limiting degrees of freedom. Unlimited potential and degrees of freedom you only have where structure is non-existent. Structure is the basis for higher orders of complexity. But it can go wrong and strangle you if you push it to far: overboarding bureaucracy may serve as an example.