Why liberty?
You, and only you, know the best way to live your life. True liberty allows you to be you. Demand your liberty and you'll be rewarded with happiness.
Liberty is not philosophy. It is your actual day-to-day existence. I argue, for you to improve your happiness requires you to think about liberty and your self-interest daily.
Your liberty in our society defines what you can and cannot do free of coercion as you exercise your freedom balanced by your responsibility to not harm others. When you are not harming another, you should always have maximum liberty without coercion to choose your own path, and to live with the consequences of your decisions. To then choose the next point on your journey, and so on until the end of your days.
Admittedly, liberty at its birth in Western consciousness was never for all. Only the freeman citizen of Athens could enjoy his liberty. Women, slaves and foreigners did not enjoy personal liberty, they could not pursue their own personal interest. The Founders of the United States of America—white men with property—were much like their Greek freeman counterparts in holding that liberty only applied to them. Many of their white men descendants and pseudo-intellectual heirs still think like this today.
Fortunately for you and me, liberty is actually universal. But each of us has to grab it for ourself. No one is going to do it for you, and there are plenty of people who will gladly take it from you if you are not guarding it with each breath.
John Stuart Mill early on in On Liberty states, “The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used by physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. The principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in the interfering with the liberty of any number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”
If you as any member of a civilized community are not harming others, then Mill lays out very clearly what liberty really is, “In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
I’m going to take liberty (ha!) with Mill’s words from 1859, and attempt to present a more universally human version for our needs today, “In the party which merely concerns a person, their independence is, of right, absolute. Over themself, over their own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
Think about these words. Do you believe yourself to be sovereign over your own body and mind? Do you believe every one else in your community should also be sovereign over their body and mind?
I for one believe I am sovereign over my body and mind. While I’m open, maybe, to hearing your opinion about how I should lead my life, at the end of the day, I choose. And so do you. The truth is, even when you give up your power, your freedom and your liberty, you did so as your own sovereign. You chose to give up this most important right received simply from being born human.
There is great joy in being able to lead your own life as you see fit. The joy does not guarantee any outcomes, desired or undesired. But from that joy of choosing on your own, I believe you will always find a bit more happiness. And that is the answer to why liberty.
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