Is freedom a meaningless concept?

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Every freedom you get denies you another, ultimately. The right to own private property denies the freedom to roam around wherever you please. The right for women to a career denies them the right to NOT have a career. Being 'privileged' in a society, by being white or whatever, denies you the right to be proud of your culture. The right to freedom of speech denies you the right to not have to hear opinions you find distasteful. If we were given the right to murder, we'd lose our right to walk around safely.

I'm not saying we shouldn't or should guarantee these kinds of freedoms, but I sorta think the entire concept of freedom is false for this reason.

It is a concept with many contradictory (and, ultimately, individual) definitions, but it has meaning.

Freedom is just meaningless rhetoric. I always find it hilarious when a free speech absolutist tries to silence me when I say there are some things should be censored.. I mean I'm just giving my free speech right? Free speech will attack free speech which attacks free speech. People are wrong when they assume that words can solve all our problems. Their just words. They don't mean anything.

We're all doomed to be free.

A friend of mine who comes from a country where there is very limited freedom of speech, once said you have freedom, but freedom means risk. I have noticed that the people in mainland China are more keen on the idea of working towards common goals. They are less indivualistic than in the west. I don't know how long that trait has been the case. But putting all the differences of circumstance to one side I think freedom lies within the indiviual person.

Freedom means to think freely.

It would be good to have as much freedom in a society as it is possible without much problems.

In the broadest sense there is no freedom. You do not have total control over your body or your brain.
Often people do not even control their thoughts.
But it's bad to think that you are unfree (This allows you to be depressed).
But when you know that you can't be free than you can't think that you are free.

That's why we draw balances - like the idea that your rights end where someone else's begins. It's all about a reasonable compromise between different people. This is one of the reasons why I find the notion of inalienable or natural rights to be irrational; their subjective nature makes it is obvious that rights are simply part of the social contract.

We have rendered it meaningless. The proper meaning of "freedom" is simple freedom of tyranny, and tyranny is simply ruling without law over unwilling subjects. In America, we started talking about "freedom" because, under our form of government, we are ruled by laws rather than by the whims of some overlord. A pure monarchy could still be a free country, for example: if the monarch rules according to an established and generally accepted law under which all subjects are held to the same standard and play by the same rules, if that monarch is beholden first to the law, then to the people, last to his personal whims, it's a free country.

Unfortunately, people these days have it mean whatever they want it to mean. They only say it, so they can say, "whoever disagrees with me is the bad guy and out to do you wrong!" We've ruined it.

It isn't that one freedom denies another freedom, but that freedom always comes with responsibility. Responsibility is the compromise that allows everyone to have the most freedom with the least interference. Freedom isn't about having your cake and eating it too, but about having the power to make good or bad choices with the least interference on other people's freedoms.

Everyone has a different idea of what freedom means, but I prefer to keep it simple rather than get caught up with semantics. You have complete freedom in the wilderness and complete security in prison. One must be sacrificed for the other.

Nope! The absence of law is not equivalent to freedom. In a wilderness, your overlord is the local apex predator. The local apex predator dominates a territory, and it "owns" anything there. If you are in that territory, you are a commodity.

But almost everywhere are persons without any understanding of responsibility.
So a compromise isn't possible.

Quite true. Actually in nature, there are no rights at all of any sort. It is from law that rights are born.

Right on. Liberty, Freedom and Rights are human artifacts, not natural states.

ruveyn

And artifacts can be lost if they are not properly watched and cared for.

But don't you listen to the religious right? Democracy and liberty are handed down to us from the Almighty!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It is still a rather nebulous and arbitrary concept. Technically freedom could be considered infinite in all cases. Even in a prison you have the freedom to plot your escape. Even under the utmost oppression you still have the freedom to resist as long as you're willing to face the consequences which could be imprisonment, torture, and/or death.

I also don't believe in the definition of freedom as the right to be left alone. Ideally freedom should maximize possibilities and choices, and many cases simply leaving people alone actually reduces their freedom. For instance, simply leaving a severe drug addict alone may lead to a worse outcome than putting them in a rehabilitating environment. That environment temporarily limits their freedom to indulge in their addiction, but ultimately they will have more freedom once they are free of addiction.