Limitation and Freedom

You give and you get

Once upon a time, in my previous life as a theater guy, I was working on an adaptation of the medieval English mystery plays for a student production at the university I had recently graduated from. It was a big, ambitious project, rewriting old dramas based on the Bible and then taking their same simple, verse-based approach to new stories from more modern history, exploring and critiquing the idea of God-sanctioned sacrifice or slaughter. With songs.

The chair of the theater department stopped by one day to watch rehearsals. We were working on a scene where the Israelites have escaped from slavery and are receiving the Ten Commandments (after celebrating the drowning of the pursuing Egyptians: “justified” slaughter). It was a big musical number that included members of the cast singing “freedom” over and over again. The chair, a proud and jowly old Irish Catholic, laughed at the proceedings and said, “leave it to a Jew to have people singing about freedom when they’re being handed a bunch of laws.”

I thought it was a strange thing to say, because to my mind, the idea of law was exactly what allowed us to be free. Maybe I was just a weirdo. Was and am.

I’ve never thought of “freedom” as a complete lack of restraint, as license to do whatever I please—to act upon the world without restriction or care. That always felt like chaos to me, like Hobbes’ state of nature. It might feel like freedom for a second or two, but only until some bigger, stronger, nastier person decided to avail himself of the same freedom to act without limits in my general direction.

To me, real freedom means having a protected sphere of liberty within which I can act without worry, as long as my actions don’t harm anyone else. For that to work, I have to limit my behavior to stay within my sphere, and, importantly, someone has to protect the borders of that sphere against other actors. If it’s me doing the protecting, all by my lonesome, then I’m only free to the extent that I’m able to defend myself against…everybody. And how much “doing as I please” will I have time and energy to do if I’m busy defending my borders all day long? The idea of law (people abiding by it and other people enforcing it)—gives me some room to breathe and enjoy the nicer aspects of the world, to do more than watch my back, knife in hand, all day. That seems like a good thing to me.

Do I surrender some amount of liberty in order to avail myself of the good things of the world? Sure: I have to abide by the law and play by the rules, just like I expect everyone else to do. I know that’s a lot to ask of people these days, but there it is.

And: in a democratic society, I should have a voice in where those lines get drawn and what I’m willing to give up in order to get that room to breathe. In some countries, those lines are drawn pretty restrictively, circumscribing individual rights to protect public order and safety (or so the authorities would claim).

I wouldn’t want to make a trade that extreme. I’m an American, so I hold with old Ben Franklin, who said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” But Ben, being a careful wordsmith, hedged his bets with qualifiers like “essential” and '“temporary.” Is it all right if I give up a less essential liberty (like, say, following the speed limit and stopping at traffic lights) in order to purchase a more permanent safety (like not getting killed on the road)? Unclear.

Wherever you are, life is a series of trade-offs and compromises. Nothing is absolute or pure, despite what the fundamentalists and the smooth-brained among us might think. We’re always calculating the odds and making bargains and deals with the world to manage life as best we can. We’re always giving up something in order to get something else. That’s just life (sorry, Ben).

But there are people who aren’t satisfied with that equation. They think real freedom and real strength are defined by the ability to take everything and give back nothing; to always have and never share; to act and never be acted upon. The free man is he who can romp and stomp and roam wherever he pleases.

Of course, not everyone can live this way—only those who are strong enough (or rich enough) to impose their will on the world. And to some people, I guess, the fact that they may have enough power and money to do unto others gives them the right—and maybe even some weird sense of obligation—to do as much unto others as they possibly can, and to give it to them good and hard.

It’s a worldview that seems…fine…I guess, as long as it’s always in the first person—what I get to do—rather than what someone gets to do to me. No Rawles-ian veil of ignorance here—what’s right is right only as long as it’s me doing it.

We have a federal government run by people who seem to think this way. They think this way about the country and also about themselves. Freedom, to them, is the ability (and therefore the right) to do anything to anyone, anywhere, without limitations or consequences. It’s what they long for, what they’re willing to turn the world upside down to have.

It feels like a lonely life for a country or a person—without friends or allies or anyone watching your back. A life defined only by what you can do to people, never what you can do with them or for them. It’s a bully’s code, caring about no one but yourself and projecting aggression outward in all directions at all times in order to make sure everyone knows you’re not to be messed with. That doesn’t feel like a strong and confident way of going through life to me. It also feels exhausting. And unnecessary.

From where I sit, nothing demonstrates strength and confidence more than the decision to live in society with people, accepting mutually binding laws and a few limitations on your individual power for the health, happiness, and security of the group (including yourself). It’s a risky bet—to give up something that’s in front of you to get something in the future. But the payoff can be substantial.

It’s not just national or international policy I’m talking about here. We do the same thing when we take wedding vows, ceding a small amount of personal freedom in order to create something bigger, better, and stronger than just our lonely selves. It’s a brave thing to do. If you’re not psychologically ready to make that deal, you end up angry all the time, feeling cheated out of your freedom and thinking about all things you don’t get to do anymore. But if you’re ready, and you do it right, binding yourself to another person can be freeing.

I wonder if my old theater chair would find that idea laughably paradoxical. Probably. It’s exactly the bargain God asks the Israelites to make at Sinai. Accept these laws and you can make a good life together for yourselves and your children. Ignore them and watch what happens. When God talks about the “blessing or the curse,” he’s not talking about heaven or hell. He’s talking about life right here on earth. He’s talking about how we can live together without sword in hand.

Having that level of trust in a spouse or in a citizenry requires confidence—in yourself and in the people around you. It’s not a transaction that the weak of heart can make. It’s not for children, who think only of themselves and their immediate wants and fears. Living in mutual trust and support, despite all the vagaries of the world, requires some inner strength. Living among people who are a little bit different from you, giving them space and grace to be themselves, requires some maturity. And maturity seems to be in short supply these days.

Demanding conformity to your views just because they’re yours, and adopting some kind of barnyard view that “might makes right…” those are creeds of the weak and the insecure—howls of id made by peevish, overgrown children who think the “I” in “I want” is some kind of God-given entitlement.

At least, that’s how I see it.

Also, you know, we live in a big, complicated world. “Act without limitations or consequences” can be a tough act to pull off. Might can make right, I suppose, but only for as long as your arm is strong enough to hold up that sword. Time and tide take their toll on all of us. We’ll see how long these allegedly free and sovereign tough guys can manage it, whether they’re tech oligarchs or elected blowhards or just the guy down the street braying about his “stand your ground” rights.

The historical record is littered with id monsters and bullies who thought the world and its people were just clay waiting for them to press their grand selves into it. We’ve seen them in all times and in all places. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Time has never been kind to them.