“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.” George Bernard Shaw
I believe there are only a few, who haven’t watched the epic war film Braveheart (1995) and whose arms didn’t break out in gooseflesh at William Wallace’s (Mel Gibson) cheer: “They can take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!” The film, which is based on a true story (probably not exact to the letter) about a Scottish knight who leads his rebels against the English dominance in Scotland, has left no one undisturbed. Show me the one who hasn’t shivered with fear for William’s fate, or the one who hasn’t shed a tear during the film. William Wallace is no doubt a hero, easy to identify with: proud and brave, with a tremendous charisma which inspired the men to fight for a true cause. Freedom is of such importance to him that he is ready to sacrifice his life.
In the history, individuals, groups or nations had many an ordeal when their freedom was limited, broken or taken – they fought for freedom in wars and rose in resistance in revolutions. But modern western society has the ordeal of a different kind – to face the opposite: the abundance of freedom.
Capitalism and freedom
In the book Fear of Freedom (Escape from Freedom) Erich Fromm, a German psychoanalyst, explores how man’s attitude to freedom has been changing through history.
In the past socioeconomic systems the individual’s freedom has been limited by different authorities such as the Church, the class society system, monarchs and tradition. Capitalism is the first system to place freedom to its final position, for there are no tyrants in power anymore. And furthermore, traditional values have been marginalized and the Church has lost its predominant political influence. The individual is no longer supervised by a vindictive god or merciless absolutist, and his status is no longer defined by tradition. Every man has become the architect of his own fortune. Human freedom has therefore expanded: not only the negative one – “freedom from”, but also the positive one – “freedom of”.
One of the fundamental premises of capitalist economy is active citizenship individualism: the individual is expected to exercise critical thinking and to be a responsible and active member of society. Unlike Medieval feudalism, where the individual’s position was clearly defined in an orderly and transparent social system, the capitalist economy forces the individual to stand on his own feet. He is responsible for everything, therefore his success or his failure is nobody else’s business but his own. (Fear of Freedom p.94). Together with growing individualism (freedom from) another phenomenon has occurred – loosening of human bonding, which consequently makes the “capitalist” individual feel isolated and lonesome.
In his anxiety and helplessness, resulting from the loss of authorities, the individual can either escape to other forms of submission (religious sects, the far-right political movements) or he takes responsibility for his freedom and fulfils his own authenticity and creativity.
(Super)abundance of freedom
Since 1941, when Fromm’s book was published, western society and its attitude to freedom haven’t changed much. All spheres of life are tightly connected with freedom: we have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and religion, artistic freedom, political freedom. We are free to choose our job, our career, our life partner, where to live, to have a family or not. We are free to believe in god or not. We are free to choose our own clothes, what diet to take, what free time activities we will join and who our friends will be.
And as consumers we assert our positive freedom every day.
A member of modern society must be free (even if he doesn’t want to be): he is not free to not be free. Positive freedom – the freedom of choice has become a kind of imperative and every man’s life is irrevocably entangled with it. Psychologist Barry Schwarz in his TED speech Paradox of Choice analyses the contradictoriness of choice that we are faced with in the capitalist world. He establishes that more choice does not bring more pleasure. In the speech (See video below) he states an example from his own life showing how the formal premise that “more choice – more freedom – more benefit” brings us to a false conclusion.
This is how the story goes: For many years Barry wore the same pair of jeans. He had bought them a long time ago, when there had only been one brand of jeans in shops (similarly as in the time of socialism in ex-Yugoslavia). Those jeans suited nobody, they were uncomfortable, plain, but if you wore them long enough, you started to feel comfortable in them. After all these years Barry decided to buy a new pair of jeans. The salesman asked him what type of jeans he wanted. Barry answered that he wanted the ones they used to be the only type in the past. Of course, the salesman had no idea what the customer wanted, so he began to enumerate all sorts and styles of jeans available in modern stores: slim-fit, bootcut, bottom-bells, tight, straight, ankle-length, low-rise, mid-rise, high-rise, flare jeans, wide-leg jeans, with a zip, with buttons, light-washed, monochromatic, ripped… After the first shock and dismay at all the choice, Barry finally managed to find a pair that became him much more than any other before. But as he was leaving the store, he felt worse than before. The abundance of choice made him raise his criterion to meet his expectations of what a good pair of jeans should be like. Now he was haunted by a feeling that the jeans he had chosen were quite alright, but not as perfect as they could have been.
But the paradox of choice does not lie only in the fact that our expectations become higher but also in the fact that we have to choose one item from a vast number of alternatives. When we have picked out one pair of jeans, it means that we have refused 136 other pairs. It also means, that we have missed and rejected all other options.
This wouldn’t be a problem in itself if it weren’t for our brain’s ability (frontal lobe) to simulate possible realities. This ability allows us to imagine how it would feel to have a pair of jeans we haven’t chosen. And since our reality simulator is prone to exaggeration the best jeans are those we have left in the store, and if we had that very pair, we would be truly happy. Therefore, we can’t find contentment in owning the new pair of jeans, but we feel uncomfortable for having missed so many better options due to our choice.
The problem of choice does not end up with consumers’ freedom, but it often causes “paralysis”, stresses and anxieties of decisions, which are important for our future, success and happiness. We all know that the sun will not extinguish because we have chosen cheese with nuts instead cheese with green peppers, or that there will be no Great Flood if we haven’t explored all the options and have bought a telephone with only 289 functions. However, decisions about which study to take, what job to choose, what career to pursue, which partner to pick out to be the best choice for us, or whether to have kids or not – may have consequences of apocalyptic proportions. After all, everything depends on truly important life decisions of the individual: his life course, his happiness and the worth of his life itself.
Freedom and responsibility
Freedom of choice, nonetheless free, is, one way or the other, conditioned. Our decisions are always conditioned by our personality (which is again conditioned by genes, by the environment we were brought up in, and the zeitgeist we live in), by expectations of important other individuals, by public opinion (at one time it was ‘in’ to have a family and children and at another time it is ‘out’), by personal endowment and limitations (most likely you will not become a professional sportsperson if your favourite activity is watching TV and eating fried onion rings).
Although the individual’s choice is never entirely free, the choice itself as well as its consequences are entirely the individual’s responsibility. When facing an important life decision, our head is swarming with different doubts and second thoughts, which make our decision even more painful than it is in itself: Have I made the right choice? How will my choice affect my life? What if the choice I have made will make me miserable? What better options will I miss because of my choice? What will other people think of my choice? What if I’m not capable enough? What if I don’t succeed?
In such a situation we wish we didn’t have to choose at all, or that, like in Greek tragedies, a handy deus ex machina (or at least a semi-god) would come down on a rope and lift us out of trouble. Our burdens of freedom and responsibility cannot be laid on god, neither our destiny, nor parents, but we must carry them by ourselves.
Free choice and choice of freedom
Fromm suggests that anxiety over freedom cannot be solved by escaping, but we have to plunge into freedom even deeper. Our ‘freedom from’ can be solved by freeing from psychological patterns that disable our authenticity. And our ‘freedom of’ can be accomplished by creativity and presence.
We can decide to follow somebody else and go their way, a guru, for example or a priest, a personality advisor, a coach. We can also find help in recipes-for-life books with shining covers, such as “Be What You Are”, or “Ten Steps to Success”, or “Twelve Pieces of Advice on How to Reach the Happiness and Inner Peace.”
But we can choose our own way, the one that was chosen by Zarathustra: “This – is now my way: where is yours?’ Thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way’. For THE way – does not exist!” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
For the way of freedom is for each and every one of us – once again and anew- one’s own choice.