Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?
Nietzsche, ~1889
It’s that when you little to no choice we say you aren’t free. It doesn’t follow that having more choices makes you free, but it is a prerequisite. Serfs tied to the land were not free, they had a choice to stay and struggle or leave and risk wandering and starving. Not much of a choice.
Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad decisions with their choices, and this seems not like freedom to the author.
This piece makes me uneasy, it’s like there’s this effort to justify limiting our choices and calling that freedom. I’m wondering where this is going.
You have a myriad of artificially created choices that amount to more or less the same outcome; think of a supermarket, where all products are the same high-processed food and imported vegetables. Freedom would be having a competing family-owned local shop with proximity products.
To have meaningful choice, you cannot depend of having a single homogeneous environment providing all the choices you can make; this can come from having healthy competition, or sometimes by you creating your own choices when there were none.
Your example is completely orthogonal to liberty. Choices are completely orthogonal. If the serf could leave and not starve, he still wouldn't be free because they would find and drag him back and punish him. He wasn't permitted to make the choice, it being incidental that he wouldn't survive long enough to be punished for it in most circumstances.
If they had refrained from punishing serfs that leave you'd still insist there is no freedom there, I think, because of the starvation. But no one is obligated to feed you so that you can choose options that would otherwise starve you.
>Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad decisions with their choices
For good reason. Given choices, humans inevitably pick the worst of them. And I'm not talking about those that are only bad options in hindsight.
>it’s like there’s this effort to justify limiting our choices and calling that freedom.
There's no effort, that's called reality. Reality limits choices, and it is effortless.
Said who? This is an argument from invented opposition. I’m not sure anyone actually defines freedom as "a huge array of choices". The author seems to invent a mainstream narrative just to dismantle it(arguing against a straw man)
Abundance of choice and freedom are orthogonal. Having the right choice and being free are not.
- Comprehensiveness: instead of pork or beef, you can choose from meat, fish, tofu or egg as your protein source.
- Non-commitment: choosing one of them doesn't prevent you from choosing another for the next meal.
- Safety: none of them shouldn't be so expensive that it hurts you financially, or poisoned it hurts you physiologically beyond its nutritional nature.
I'm not talking about meals but elections, by the way.
The first freedom of course is freedom from fear (e.g. from fear of being snatched from the street just because you are brown and speak with an accent)
- is an abundance of choice not freedom, or is freedom not strictly speaking “good”
- is there a freedom to be able to have a life on rails? Maybe 50 years ago you grow up in a small town with a coal mine, and you get married to someone from that town and work in that mine for the rest of your life. That choice or lifestyle is not available to a lot of people anymore.
- non-compatible choices —- some people say about work from home is always good, because each person has a choice, some can work from home, some in the office, but these choices just aren’t compatible. Having a work from home policy generally means that people who want to work in the office don’t get the experience they were hoping for.
- super markets. consolidation means there’s only a few brands of supermarkets left. But those super markets have more choice than ever before - but they also tend to have a pretty narrow selection of raw ingredients / produce. What is freedom here?
* the loss of special experiences. My city had a great authentic Thai restaurant. It was great! I could go whenever I wanted, but when I actually went to Thailand, I was a bit disappointed that nothing really felt new there.
* the loss of human connection. I think the world was a better place when Tv during the day sucked. We’ve fundamentally lost the need to rely on each other for entertainment, and I think this has impacts in community formation, friendship and dating.
gausswho•1h ago
In practice, we all restrain our choices in ways that we hope narrow our focus and abilities towards things that matter. It would be nice to read a piece that explores how this can be true collectively.
cma•1h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom
gausswho•1h ago