Freedom

I've been thinking a lot about freedom today.  Like "they hate us for our freedom" or that we here in the US have the most freedom - more freedom than other first world countries.  I'm not sure I buy it.  I mean I do think that we have a lot less government control than other developed countries.  There are a very few things I can think of that you actually have to do.  You have to file taxes.  You have to have car insurance if you want to drive.  You have to educate your children.  Most places you have to get your children vaccinated.  Most places.

Even that list starts to fall apart a little.  There are exemptions for vaccinations.  You can home school, with no accounting for what is involved.  So the list of compulsory activities is pretty short.  We have a lot of free reign in other areas - most areas.  My question though is what do we get out of it.

It seems like most of our freedoms eventually lead to the freedom to suffer.  You have the freedom to be ignorant.  Not sure what that's worth.  You have the freedom to not have health insurance.  That freedom can lead to economic ruin or death or both.  You have the freedom to choose your profession without any real guarantee that it will lead to a sustainable living.  You have the freedom to choose where to live without any assurance that there will be housing there you can afford or work there for you to do.

Is it possible that all this freedom isn't what it is cracked up to be?

Would it be better to have slightly less freedom but have a more solid chance of being happy?

Do we need to do a better job of protecting freedoms we have carved out?  You are free to have whatever gender identification you want, or whatever religion you want, or whatever sexual orientation you want; but you are not necessarily protected from discrimination for exercising that freedom.

That "have less freedom" sentence is a scary one.  It cuts both ways, and who it is that is making the decision really starts to matter.  There definitely is a yours ends where mine begins thing here.  someone's freedom to carry a weapon ought not diminish someone else's freedom to not get hurt.  Freedom makes for good sound bites, but the reality of it is much, much more complicated.  Like most things I guess.

FWIW, I am exercising my freedom to count this as Sunday's post even though it is going live at 12:06am Monday.  Oops.

Nice to also have the freedom to make mistakes.