A Common Oversight of Freedom Advocates

I’ve been noticing that many people on the pro-freedom circuit, for lack of a better phrase, are very much into their religious belief. This, on its own, is fine. After all, freedom enables that. Many are also non-religious and rely heavily on scientific data, statistics and the like. Also fine.

What freedom also enables is a massive variation in possible lifestyles. This means that some people will live in ways that you yourself wouldn’t necessarily live, nor want for your own family, and for all sorts of reasoning behind that. This is not only fine, but needs to be celebrated.

One example of this would be gay couples who will want to raise children. Now, a religious person might have a problem with that because it goes against something in their particular doctrine. A “believer in science” may also have a problem with it because of some study or statistic that says that kids are better off or develop in prime conditions when they grow up with a mother and a father.

Right here, a flag needs to be planted: the validity of the statistic is irrelevant so long as you’re living in a place that offers you freedom. The same goes for the religious doctrine. This is part of the variation in lifestyles and upbringing that needs to already be priced in to your concept of freedom. You’re still free to hold whatever views you like and to choose to live your own life according to them.

However, the moment you start to use your religious or scientific justifications to try and micro-manage other people’s lives, especially when it comes to deciding which certain perceived groups or classes of people can and can’t raise children, you have to drop the freedom talk.

If you want freedom, you will have this variation among people. Learn it, expect it, accept it — that’s part of the deal. On the other hand, if you want a kind of uniformity that ensures this kind of thing can’t exist, you have to ask what’s being sacrificed to create that, and notions of freedom will have to be the first sacrifice.

Personally, I’m happy to err on the side of freedom because it’s more likely to empower future generations physically, psychologically, intellectually. But when you start to err on the side of uniformity, where government and religious institutions, or corporations and academia, dictate how you should behave and what kind of life you must live, I recognise that this runs a serious risk of leaving future generations wide-open to tribal division, manipulation and having to un-learn a lot of ideological nonsense later on in life— and for what? Mostly, for short-term political and financial gain.

Decide what you want. Do you want freedom, or do you want to tell people what they should do and think? Do you yourself want to explore and potentially face the unknown, or do you want to be told what you should do and think?

This is one of those situations where the two things can’t be true at once.