argha1991
12-09-2011, 02:41 AM
“What is a perfectly free person? Evidently a person who can do what he likes , and where he likes, or do nothing at
all if he prefers it.”
G.B.Shaw in his famous essay ‘Freedom’
The first word that can be associated with freedom and probably solely responsible for its development is ‘civilization’ which marks
the beginning of the arrival of the question of being free, or in an inverted way independent. Does an animal need to be in a drobe
when he is out in the scorching heat of summer, or does it require a home to live in , in particular, or does it mind making love
without falling in love? Don’t think so. The irony lies in the fact that these inferior (in accordance with psychological and intellectual
development) living beings can neither feel nor enjoy their freedom. In spite of being an animal a man is bound to be mastered by the
accepted code of conducts well established by social norms. There are two words “normal” & ”natural”, though apparently both of
them sounds the same still there is fine line of difference between them. The previous one deals with social norms and the later one
means according to nature. The action of a common man is studied against the reference frame of normalcy. Now there is none to
explain the source of these ideas. The violation of this format is considered as the act of an outcast. Let us take an example,
While watching an electrifying India-Pakistan match in the common room of my hostel a senior student suddenly
slapped a junior saying,”sala! Beiman, bejat…”(you bloody creep, traitor… ). Now this makes no sense to me. Being an avid admirer
of the game cricket I can support anyone I like. Here comes the question of free will. A faculty provided by the Almighty to all men.
It allows a man to think whatever he pleases and to decide according to his acceptability. For the boy who slapped, its his idea of
freedom and misconception that he is the one to introduce all changes and help others in manifesting their respectability for their
country.
Now rationality is a key term to explain freedom because with the advent and desperate wish of being rational we
have to give up a number of free wills. This issue can be best explained through a couple of essay by George Orwell, like Shooting
an Elephant or A Hanging where he encounters the face of rationality,
in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East
“And suddenly I realized that I should have to
shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got
to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward,
irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle
the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for
killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn
Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been
…
killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient
pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the
others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”
Shooting an elephant
For orwell it was more important to act like a sahib, a pukka sahib”. Because it was a rational act to maintain his dominion in the East . He
was unable to break the discourse of the Imperial Government Police of Burma.
Now let us try to define freedom. In spite of all these hindrances we can say that the herculean task to manage the most
acceptable definition of freedom is well curbed as Adam Smith* cited it that,
”society will be more prosperous when individuals are left to pursue their own interests in their own way, providing they do
not violate the laws of justice as set out under a well designed constitution supported by the rule of law. ”
We can notice that even Smith can’t help mentioning the necessity of a well designed constitution to run a society. Living in a group and
being in a society are altogether different issues, as Frederic Bastiat* says , “the law and morality are centrally important for a free
society” .whenever a group is transmuted to a community the burden of added responsibility and customs come in. therefore we can say
that freedom is an utopian state where calculated and well controlled expressions and acts help one to live a free life, if that at all can be
propagated as a “free state”.
Swami Vivekananda once said ,
“Liberty is the first condition of growth. Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress,
and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.”
This is probably the best way to attain an almost perfect conclusion. Injuring others is never a form of liberty, if being a citizen of a
democratic country one uses his or her freedom of speech to make a few comments which dishearten others then that form of practical
practices can never be termed as liberty. For example being a Hindu I can never use my dark opinions against other religious practitioners.
At this point an interesting question can be raised…
Now if a hindu boy is willing to marry a muslim girl and their parents are against this proposal then what should be the
accepted stand point. Their act of freedom is injuring someone else psychologically, which is against the notion of freedom. Hence comes the
question of practicality and rationality that compels one to sort out between the confusing ideologies. Therefore its evident that rationality
can hardly be avoided in case of freedom. Bruno Leoni * said that the word freedom means different things to different people and it can
never mean constraint , but implies it as a person can only be free if they can constrain in some other way other people to refrain from
constraining them.
Let us ponder on political and economic freedom. These are even bigger issues, leading us towards a larger context. It in no
time brings in the words like capitalism, socialism, feudal or despotic government, autocracy, democracy ETC. I personally believe
that I am too small a person to talk about these things . I just believe in the words of D.H. Lawrence who said,
“the great serpent to destroy is the will of power to have some dominion for one man on his fellow men. ”
No relation can escape the hierarchy of dominant and recessive factors . now these are generated from a number of reason starting from
capability to acceptability. Its easy for one man to dominate his weaker fellows, but as George Orwell said in his Road to Wigan Pier
that no modern man in his heart of hearts wants to keep a dominance on others by invading their own lands.
The population explosion is one of the most important contemporary problems coming in the way of freedom as Peter Bauer
*said that it was a call from west to increase population whereas in China it’s a huge problem to deal with. According to Bauer its difficult
to judge. Economic balance is dismantled due to population overflow. The scarcity of natural resources is another burning agenda which may
lead to a hurly burly in world economy. Equality is one thing that was, is and will acquire the central position of importance during the
discussion of freedom. A number of movements gathered its fuel from this very issue. Like the movements of Marxism, French Revolution
etc. Equality involves the gender question as well. Swami Vivekananda said that we captivated half of our powers in the kitchen (i.e.
the women). In the writings of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay* , Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Kamala Das and many more we
notice this issue as a sparkle of light. Mary Wolstonecraft in her book Vindication to the Rights of Women , or Virginia Woolf in To the
Lighthouse dealt marvelously with these issue. They talked of the rights of women propagated by the New Woman Question in the late
Victorian era.
Freedom has always demanded a quick reference to WAR. In the Golgotha of the first and the second world war the basic
intricacies of freedom is violated. As Shelley rightly puts it,
O Liberty! if such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears?—The solemn harmony…
Ode to Liberty
In Freud’s words we belong to a ‘hetero-normative patriarchal society’ where even a few years back homosexuality was a
crime and no women were allowed to pop up with the rhythm of the males. Its almost farcical as G.B.Shaw said that to choose between
two corrupts is equivalent to autocracy.
I personally can say that In spite of being free in text, sometimes I feel like belonging to a world where the word freedom is well
controlled and shaped according to necessity. As we find in the essay A Hanging by George Orwell that in spite of not willing to hang the
man they were forced to do so, where the constant uttering of the man “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!” compelled them to say, “kill him, stop that
abominable noise.” This is a moral defeat and a subversion of the lines by Shelley,
“A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations :Liberty
From heart to heart…”
Death of discrimination is the only way to attain freedom.
BY ARGHA BASU :banana:
all if he prefers it.”
G.B.Shaw in his famous essay ‘Freedom’
The first word that can be associated with freedom and probably solely responsible for its development is ‘civilization’ which marks
the beginning of the arrival of the question of being free, or in an inverted way independent. Does an animal need to be in a drobe
when he is out in the scorching heat of summer, or does it require a home to live in , in particular, or does it mind making love
without falling in love? Don’t think so. The irony lies in the fact that these inferior (in accordance with psychological and intellectual
development) living beings can neither feel nor enjoy their freedom. In spite of being an animal a man is bound to be mastered by the
accepted code of conducts well established by social norms. There are two words “normal” & ”natural”, though apparently both of
them sounds the same still there is fine line of difference between them. The previous one deals with social norms and the later one
means according to nature. The action of a common man is studied against the reference frame of normalcy. Now there is none to
explain the source of these ideas. The violation of this format is considered as the act of an outcast. Let us take an example,
While watching an electrifying India-Pakistan match in the common room of my hostel a senior student suddenly
slapped a junior saying,”sala! Beiman, bejat…”(you bloody creep, traitor… ). Now this makes no sense to me. Being an avid admirer
of the game cricket I can support anyone I like. Here comes the question of free will. A faculty provided by the Almighty to all men.
It allows a man to think whatever he pleases and to decide according to his acceptability. For the boy who slapped, its his idea of
freedom and misconception that he is the one to introduce all changes and help others in manifesting their respectability for their
country.
Now rationality is a key term to explain freedom because with the advent and desperate wish of being rational we
have to give up a number of free wills. This issue can be best explained through a couple of essay by George Orwell, like Shooting
an Elephant or A Hanging where he encounters the face of rationality,
in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East
“And suddenly I realized that I should have to
shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got
to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward,
irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle
the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for
killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn
Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been
…
killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient
pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the
others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”
Shooting an elephant
For orwell it was more important to act like a sahib, a pukka sahib”. Because it was a rational act to maintain his dominion in the East . He
was unable to break the discourse of the Imperial Government Police of Burma.
Now let us try to define freedom. In spite of all these hindrances we can say that the herculean task to manage the most
acceptable definition of freedom is well curbed as Adam Smith* cited it that,
”society will be more prosperous when individuals are left to pursue their own interests in their own way, providing they do
not violate the laws of justice as set out under a well designed constitution supported by the rule of law. ”
We can notice that even Smith can’t help mentioning the necessity of a well designed constitution to run a society. Living in a group and
being in a society are altogether different issues, as Frederic Bastiat* says , “the law and morality are centrally important for a free
society” .whenever a group is transmuted to a community the burden of added responsibility and customs come in. therefore we can say
that freedom is an utopian state where calculated and well controlled expressions and acts help one to live a free life, if that at all can be
propagated as a “free state”.
Swami Vivekananda once said ,
“Liberty is the first condition of growth. Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress,
and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others.”
This is probably the best way to attain an almost perfect conclusion. Injuring others is never a form of liberty, if being a citizen of a
democratic country one uses his or her freedom of speech to make a few comments which dishearten others then that form of practical
practices can never be termed as liberty. For example being a Hindu I can never use my dark opinions against other religious practitioners.
At this point an interesting question can be raised…
Now if a hindu boy is willing to marry a muslim girl and their parents are against this proposal then what should be the
accepted stand point. Their act of freedom is injuring someone else psychologically, which is against the notion of freedom. Hence comes the
question of practicality and rationality that compels one to sort out between the confusing ideologies. Therefore its evident that rationality
can hardly be avoided in case of freedom. Bruno Leoni * said that the word freedom means different things to different people and it can
never mean constraint , but implies it as a person can only be free if they can constrain in some other way other people to refrain from
constraining them.
Let us ponder on political and economic freedom. These are even bigger issues, leading us towards a larger context. It in no
time brings in the words like capitalism, socialism, feudal or despotic government, autocracy, democracy ETC. I personally believe
that I am too small a person to talk about these things . I just believe in the words of D.H. Lawrence who said,
“the great serpent to destroy is the will of power to have some dominion for one man on his fellow men. ”
No relation can escape the hierarchy of dominant and recessive factors . now these are generated from a number of reason starting from
capability to acceptability. Its easy for one man to dominate his weaker fellows, but as George Orwell said in his Road to Wigan Pier
that no modern man in his heart of hearts wants to keep a dominance on others by invading their own lands.
The population explosion is one of the most important contemporary problems coming in the way of freedom as Peter Bauer
*said that it was a call from west to increase population whereas in China it’s a huge problem to deal with. According to Bauer its difficult
to judge. Economic balance is dismantled due to population overflow. The scarcity of natural resources is another burning agenda which may
lead to a hurly burly in world economy. Equality is one thing that was, is and will acquire the central position of importance during the
discussion of freedom. A number of movements gathered its fuel from this very issue. Like the movements of Marxism, French Revolution
etc. Equality involves the gender question as well. Swami Vivekananda said that we captivated half of our powers in the kitchen (i.e.
the women). In the writings of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay* , Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Kamala Das and many more we
notice this issue as a sparkle of light. Mary Wolstonecraft in her book Vindication to the Rights of Women , or Virginia Woolf in To the
Lighthouse dealt marvelously with these issue. They talked of the rights of women propagated by the New Woman Question in the late
Victorian era.
Freedom has always demanded a quick reference to WAR. In the Golgotha of the first and the second world war the basic
intricacies of freedom is violated. As Shelley rightly puts it,
O Liberty! if such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears?—The solemn harmony…
Ode to Liberty
In Freud’s words we belong to a ‘hetero-normative patriarchal society’ where even a few years back homosexuality was a
crime and no women were allowed to pop up with the rhythm of the males. Its almost farcical as G.B.Shaw said that to choose between
two corrupts is equivalent to autocracy.
I personally can say that In spite of being free in text, sometimes I feel like belonging to a world where the word freedom is well
controlled and shaped according to necessity. As we find in the essay A Hanging by George Orwell that in spite of not willing to hang the
man they were forced to do so, where the constant uttering of the man “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!” compelled them to say, “kill him, stop that
abominable noise.” This is a moral defeat and a subversion of the lines by Shelley,
“A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations :Liberty
From heart to heart…”
Death of discrimination is the only way to attain freedom.
BY ARGHA BASU :banana: