How much freedom should people have?

Freedom has always been a heated topic. There are those who believed people and their freedom could be bought and sold (I’m talking about slaves in case that’s not clear), and there are those who believe freedom is our right by birth. There are also those who talk about how you need to earn your right for freedom and how with freedom comes a greater need to police ourselves and be responsible with the freedoms we have.

So the question is, how much freedom is too much? How much freedom should people have?

Before I continue, I just want to put in a disclaimer. This is an opinion piece, if you disagree with me that’s fine, I’m just giving my own opinion.

So freedom; what is it?

The Cambridge online dictionary defines it as:

the condition or right of being able or allowed to do, say, think, etc. whatever you want to, without being controlled or limited:

Okay cool, sounds nice and all. But we need to be realistic, we do not live in a perfect world and absolute freedom would definitely lead to problems down the line.

Humans are not angels, and even good people will do bad things sometimes, that’s why we have rules to keep the peace and we also have authorities who make sure that people follow these rules (because let’s face it, if no one was there to make sure, we would be breaking the rules all the time).

But you might be saying: hey, aren’t you being too harsh? Surely people are basically good and if taught properly, would know what they should and should not do?

Well, sadly that’s just not true. Take bullies at school, they pick on a kid because they know they can get away with it. Some of them will only stop when they are caught and punished for their actions.

The same is true for snake oil salesmen of the past; unscrupulous sellers, buyers, corrupt politicians and even some companies who only care about making money and not the people they cater too.

Absolute freedom, while tempting, would lead to anarchy. Humans are just too flawed to accept that kind of responsibility without needing any supervision at all.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we need to give up all of our freedoms and let big brother police us all the time to the point that we live in a dystopian future as shown in the novel 1984. But I am saying that, sadly, we cannot trust ourselves with absolute freedom and that we need to know when to draw the line between what we can do and what we can’t.

Well, that’s it for this post. I hope you liked it and I hope that you have a good day ahead.