Freedom and Responsibility

Modernity took a wrong turn into a dead end. And now here we are, you and I.
Trapped between two ideas that we neither fully understand nor know. These ideas
are in tension, contradiction, opposition. We believe desperately that we need both,
but we can only have a balance between the two.
That paradox is modernitys dead end.
The first of these ideas is freedom. The most essential thing to know about freedom
is that it is a lie. My freedom is your slavery. This is the story of, course, of America.
We are a country that pretends to have been born in and for freedom, but of course
the simpler truth is slavery.
That freedom is a lie is truer in general. What are you free to do, be, know?
Everything in you is conditioned, determined, dependent, contingent. Your degrees
of freedom are tiny at best. You will only date this kind of person, work there, do
this, think that, know this. That is what you have been told to do, after all. My
freedom is always your slavery in this sense. I will only love this kind of person, not
that, and so I exclude them. But to choose is to forego, and to forego is to sentence,
condemn, judge.
To believe that one is free in this life is a kind of denial. A defense strategy of the
ego to preserve its ability to inflict harm on others, and still maintain a sense of
righteousness while doing it. Thus, one can say that one was free, and in that
derive security, value, safety, comfort. The ego may be soothed this way. But the
pain of living only grows. The true self asks: if I am free, why do all my choices seem
to lead me to the same place? It is not because all roads lead home. It is because
one is not choosing at all, but being led.
Only in the moment one accepts one is not free can true freedom be born. What is
true freedom?
Responsibility is the second great idea of modernity. Before, we werent responsible.
We were merely beholden. To the gods, fates, stars, kings. We were subjects, and
they were objects.
Now we are objects, pursuing other objects, and thus creating and perpetually
engaged in cycles of pure objectification. I am what you want, you are what I want,
this is what I need. The language of modern desire makes it very clear.
So we must become responsible. We must respond to the many stimuli around us,
as if we were rats in a maze. So we must learn to fend, fight, scrape, struggle. To
get to the finish line first, whatever todays contest might be.

But if we are responsible, we are not free. Either we have no responsibility at all,
and we are purely free, or we have total responsibility, and no freedom. Herein lies
the great tension of modernity, and its impossibility, the dead end it has reached.
We are walking contradictions, time-bombs, nobodies. We want to be perfectly free,
but we also wish everyone else to take perfect responsibility. How can this be? The
two are in stark opposition. If I accept responsibility, I am not free, but if I dont,
then I am not responsible. This is the hollow logic of modernity, and why modernity
is failing. The two ideas, freedom and responsibility, can no more coexist than fire
and ice.
The result is profound neurosis, both within people and society. Inside the individual,
there is a sense that if one is not perfectly free, one can never be happy, but if one
is not perfectly responsible, one can never be valued. But both cannot exist at once.
The dilemma, the paradox, creates a deep sense of helplessness, powerlessness,
that ends in supplication to the strongman, the savior, the demagogue.
Socially, the result is a fatally broken contract between institutions and people.
Institutions demand that people take responsibility. They push costs and risks
onto them. Yet at the same, they claim to be advancing freedom. How can both be
true? The paradox is the lie. The lie creates a profound sense of mistrust, anger,
rage, disillusion, at and with institutions and leaders who have failed. Just as the
paradox creates neurosis in people, so it creates sick societies.
But the truest price is deeper still. To think in this life that one does not have to
choose between freedom and responsibility is the thinking of the child, the criminal,
the animal. It is immature, pure ego, all appetite, governed only by satisfaction
seeking and pleasure maximizing. We are reduced when we believe that we are
both free and responsible. Something in us vanishes. The person who believes that
they are both is inevitably not just cruelbut empty, dead, unaware, blind.
Such a person has been dehumanized in the truest sense of the word. Their
humanity has been removed as if by a scalpel. Not even a god could have the
power to be both absolutely free and totally responsible. By denying the limits of
our selves, so we also remove our power to be creative, just, wise, defiant, noble,
true, whole. A person who believes that they can be both absolutely free and
perfectly responsible cannot act with love, for beauty, with grace. They can only
ever act with, for, through desire.
And that is where modernity has left us. In a dead end. Prisoners of desire, captives
of bottomless appetite, hostage to the illusion that we can be both responsible and
free. Chasing the mirage, we wander further and further into the desert. And then
we ask the sun to send us rain. But it is we who left the garden.
Freedom and responsibility

By Bart Verheggen
Arguments about how to address climate change often evolve around the concepts
of freedom and responsibility. I was reminded of this by a recent discussion on
the climate-policy blog Prometheus, where several comments from attorney
lgcarey hit the nail on its head. E.g. here, (s)he writes
the key question here is about fraudulent conduct, not free speech. Free speech
does not immunize me from liability for telling the guy who is interested in buying
my house that the basement is dry as bone when I know that it leaks like a sieve
every time it rains.
Of course, the issue is not whether a layperson is liable for expressing a thought
that runs counter to the consensus. In complex issues, many people tend to not
believe something of which they dislike the perceived consequences (Back to the
stone age!). Its unfortunate and perhaps unwise, but you can hardly put them on
trial for that.
The issue is whether an entity (person, industry) with a financial interest in the
matter, who knowingly distorts the evidence to increase their financial profit, is
liable for doing so. To that, the answer is (or should be) yes.
The background to this discussion is some resurfaced old news that an industry
funded lobby group distorted evidence about the reality of man-made climate
change. Just like lobby groups before them did regarding health effects of smoking.
History has a tendency to repeat itself. The NY Times has since published an
addendum, but it didnt change the bottom line very much in my view.
People opposing action on climate change often claim that their right to free speech
is being stifled by, uhm, yeah, by whom, really? I guess by the climate mafia,
headed by Al Gore.
People calling for action on climate change on the other hand rather frame the issue
in terms of responsibility.
Of course, both values are important, and a balance needs to be found between
them. Freedom without responsibility leads to reckless anarchy, and responsibility
without freedom is like a prison.
I, for one, hate it when somebody tells me what to do, or what not to do. I very
much like my freedom. And I dont want to take anybody elses freedom away.
However, freedom has limits. Your right to your freedom shouldnt interfere with
other peoples right to their freedom. I think that should include the freedom and
rights of future generations and of nature at large.

If you dont want to take your responsibility, its far easier for peace of mind to
ignore the signs that you may adversely affect others, than to live with that
uncomfortable knowledge.
If Im addicted to smoking, I may be more likely to downplay the risks of smoking
than if I werent a smoker. I would be pretty pissed off though with all those people
around me telling me that indeed it isnt harmful, especially if I somehow sensed
that they withheld or twisted information to the contrary. And if decades later,
suffering the full consequences of having smoked all that time, I found out that the
tobacco industry had funded efforts to mislead and confuse the public regarding the
health effects of its products, how would I feel then?
Will that be how future generations feel about (some of) us?
Havent we learnt the risks associated with Buy now, pay later? Isnt it asocial to
let somebody else pay for what you buy now?
As uncle Ben said to Spiderman: With great power comes great responsibility.