Free like a bird

17/06/2023 Nilson Lattari

Freedom is a usual word wandering on people’s lips. Some people express it and describe it as life without rules, and they complete it: “free like a bird”. In fact, are birds free? If we were like birds would we be free? Really?
As said Jacques Mauritain, a French philosopher, in his book, “Fundaments for a humanistic politic”: the cage of birds is in Nature, and they get along in its existence following its natural cycle of life. As well as the animals in Africa running to complete their annual peregrination.
Then these animals move to the same places throughout the African savannahs during their journey. They will cross the same fields, the same forests, and the same rivers. They and their descendants will fight against the same crocodiles and their descendants that will try to attack them. Lions and other predators will try to devour them as well, in an endless cycle.
Then, the laws of nature submit freedom, and this freedom walks through the same spaces. Is this freedom? Are human beings free because they are far from this behaviour?
Well, we need to discuss the process of independence. Being independent is to be independent of people, society, and other prescriptions, and independent of nature as well. Especially when we find things that we need in other places because we don’t need to move from our space to others. Or, if our survival doesn’t depend on another place because the weather there is bad for us. On the other hand, when we have ways to tackle it, and at the same time to tackle our questions about life, and we can create a conscience to question everything.
If we think like that, and our conscience is totally free, but we still have a connection with thoughts that include this world a little, we aren’t really free. Even if we think so our nature and our instinct for survival submit us. We are living in an unsafe world, although we are not thinking of this, and there is a supposed safe life because there are people around us. But this is not freedom.
Choosing his side and free will are civil rights but submitted to obligations, duties, and laws. As if this choice gives us benefits it is always a choice between two ways (legal duties and civil rights), or we cannot do anything. By the way, if we decide not to do anything, this is a choice too. In this case, it will be a choice when we can do things or not to our benefit but they will be always connected with economic, social, cultural, and geographic conditions.
Freedom, equality, and fraternity are ideals of the French Revolution. They were the motivation that involved the French people in a moment of History. But, if freedom needs to join equality and fraternity to bloom, it is not a lifestyle that we can achieve because it depends on other conditions. Freedom is a good by itself. We have to understand freedom like a self-sufficient being.
If freedom needs something to support it, it isn’t really freedom.
There is no freedom for each person because there isn’t freedom according to levels of freedom. Freedom is unique and each living being, in this world, is free as far as possible. Like us, human beings, we are not totally independent, and we live in societies, and we can’t choose what we want to do because we are subordinated to social and economic, and geographic conditions. Our survival is important and we don’t go outdoors to walk without responsibility because we need to live in society and work hard to create conditions for our survival.
Then, it’s not enough to be free because freedom is a consequence and not a cause. Nobody executes something because he wants it. And we don’t do everything that we wish because we depend on others’ wishes and there are reactions against our wishes.
Poor people are not free because they depend on the benefits that they get from rich people. Rich people are not free because they depend on people who serve them to keep their wealth intact. There are rich and poor people because they depend on each other. Who is free, in this case?
Freedom is equality and fraternity, then freedom happens when we are equal and we don’t depend on each other unless to help us within this equality. Being free is to be equal. Or when we don’t need to argue about freedom because it exists in our life, and we feel it.
There are moments when we call for freedom and think of equality and free speech, and at the same time, equality of speech: voices working at the same level within society. All people who have power can express their ideas because they have access to media and other expensive methods. And they live together with other people who haven’t got access to this equipment and they haven’t got the same power, especially economically.
Then, we can conclude that to achieve freedom times we need to achieve equality times. And we could be birds, because we imagine that they are free, but are they concerned about freedom?