The concept of freedom or its existence in the modern world keeps stemming into my mind. Whether this comes from the extreme nonsense of people refusing to wear a mask to the multifaceted aspects of this covid age such as mandatory vaccinations. Which is an essential means to navigate the times.
When we factor in the freedoms we gladly give away when we log into social media accounts and utilise search engines. Such as the new evidence that when using chrome even in private mode, google is watching everything you do, creating an individual dataset that details your triggers, personality, interests, and vulnerabilities. When we like more than ten things on a social media account an algorithm can determine aspects of your personality better than your loved ones could astutely infer about you after years of knowing you. Other online modes of knowledge seeking on social media platforms such as youtube have been noted to create extreme versions of confirmation bias in individuals through algorithms designed to show you more of what you might like based on your viewing history. When this comes to people seeking news from personalities not factual sources it becomes worrying. Do the viewers note their freedom of access to news with integrity taken away at each click of a button towards a more entertaining figure, do they care?
I digress.
So, what is freedom? One could ponder on philosophical aspects of whether freewill even exists or are our lives somewhat predetermined… that’s a rabbit hole.
Freewill or determinism. In the age of data and analytics, financial disparity and the many modes of governance.
The depth of thought can be endless.
In a more practical sense, observing the world in its current state I keep coming back to the same sentiment. Freedom isn’t free, there is always responsibility. To yourself, your kin, collective, the society you reside in and humanity.
Your freedoms are limited in a way required to minimise harm to the whole. Everyone has a right to safety. Everyone is on their own individual journeys to find a moral and ethical baseline to their human experience. It can easily be inferred that a human’s baseline value system is beset by the actions of their kin. These morals, ethics and values then align to the greater circles of connection.
How this alignment happens is generally through providing services, gathering, markets and trade. The threads of societal structures that once damaged are hard to repair. We can see this damage of disrepair currently in parts of the world such as Syria and Yemen through the ongoing conflict after the Arab Spring. Once a system is irreparably damaged, it is hard to repair and rebuild. While I can fantasise that the UN could have this financial lottery that it awards to a region to rebuild after they attain a peace and prosperity plan, I know that is an unrealistic ideal. (When I say rebuild, I mean to the cutting-edge standard of sustainable design future proofing an area to potential climatic changes, but alas as a realist I know that such a financial kitty may never exist and if it did it may foster more conflict than anything).
The unease of the current times is that we are unable to see how to navigate these opposing freedoms. To maintain a society that can cater for the dying, to not overburden the system we have in place to the point that sick are not cared for. Yet to maintain the pathways of our social structures and ability to connect to maintain an alignment to each other. Ensure isolation of individuals does not create the breeding ground for a totalitarian regime to take grip. To know what our collective morals and ethics and values are amongst this. As, when we have different experiences of the same problem, we then seek out a confirmation bias that suits our experience. How do we build a social structure where people actively seek a collective empathy? Collective empathy over individual.
To find and have sources of integrity in our news and our trade. What does integrity even mean in this modern day?
The issue with how to ensure adequate governance of these group values is who is doing the governing?
And who has the power to govern? Looking ahead it is easy to see there will be interplay between corporations and governments that will continue to exist for adequate governance and control of the masses. As we cannot have democratic society does not allow a choice of bodily freedom. But we can have potentially totalitarian regimes within corporations- such as a requirement of vaccination for employment. But is that really totalitarianism or just being business savvy?
It depends on the ethics of the situation, or rather the motives. What freedom of speech does a person have about the company they work for? While the saying don’t shit where you eat is relevant, freedom of speech is a somewhat relevant indicator of freedom itself.
So as always, we have a dichotomy. The need for business to have morals because we rely on it to connect. The need for the economy to not be the main driver of our value system as humans. The need for there to be an ever-present undertone of environmental awareness for ecological and human rights to be maintained and therefore freedoms preserved.
So how can the world evolve within the dance of these dynamics. Who will have the power of the governance of the land when corporations ultimately have more power over people because they provide income and employment? Or will the interplay between government and corporations be balanced, and how so? The profits of multinationals largely outweigh any nations government so how can we ensure they are reinvesting in the land where they are reaping the larger benefits? This is where social credit comes into play as a factor in business, for we choose who we interact and trade with. We need citizens to care about their land, their backyard and understand the interwoven nature of ecosystems that means that the earth itself is their backyard.
We have these narratives that need to intertwin for the progression of humanity. Yet also the undertones of decentralisation that need to exist. Because that is how freedom truly exists in the diversity of the whole. Many kin, many mobs, many codes of being and behaviour. Of culture and self-expression, many modes of being that must exist for strength through diversity and that must interact with each other for the necessary friction to grow.
Healthy debate, healthy challenges. Diversity and equality. Equal access to healthcare, equal access to prosper individually and collectively through social support. These ideals we have created as an undertone to Australian society, yet existing gender and racial tensions remain. Mental wellness and traumas past are still simmering under the surface of all aspects of our social structure, while integrated culture and ambition of new arrivals. The way forward to long term peace and prosperity within the current world climate with an acceptance of future issues and challenges seems like a far reaching utopian ideal.
While acceptance of utopian society as a polarity of the human collective experience and dystopia the other I think collectively we know that each of these functioning states of society exist at different parts of the world at every moment. Is that the only way for balance?
If we are to accept that every human is on this journey of finding their own heaven and hell, how are we to create a society that allows freedom of expression for everyone’s journey, while protecting the whole.
I feel this age of information without integrity is a threat to our freedom. What is created is a need for a government to track its citizens and create laws such as the one recently passed in NSW regarding surveillance of citizens.
Does it come back to the core of how we form our societies and methods of relating to one another? Through the knowledge we gain at an early age and inner tools we all need to be taught to be given the chance to flourish. Do we need to re-evaluate what core education is required for the society we want to live in?
I have created more questions than answers for myself but I think they are questions that need to be asked.
Redb 