Freedom Fighter

Last time, a friend of mine narrates, when travelling on a bus, a Maltese teenager was heard speaking to a couple of foreign tourists. She was praising their lifestyle and saying how she envies them because they’re so liberal…they can have sex before marriage without being condemned. In Malta this can’t happen.

Since when has the notion of freedom been reduced to such a level? Is freedom truly the possibility to do whatever one likes and desires? Does freedom really mean the presence of no constraints?

I pity the girl for believing that freedom is translated into such an easy equation. In fact I believe that the freedom she describes is the greatest limitation ever put on the human being. I find the belief that one can do whatever he likes simply as irrational.

Constraints are the true fabric of human being. Scientists in the field of language study that meaning (semantics) can at times be incomplete as the human being has not yet managed to categorise the linguistic universe around him completely. Thus freedom to do whatever one likes is impossible in human nature.

There are primarily three reasons for such an assertion. The first reason is related to man’s finitude. Man is no immortal being. He is born dying. Therefore time is his greatest limit. In fact certain philosophers believe that time is being. Therefore, despite we possess a mind which can transcend from the present and travel into the future and past and to different locations at the same time, we remain trapped in a dying body. How can ever a dying creature believe it’s free to live?

The nature of dreams provides the second reason for my assertion. There are dreams that are highly unlikely to become a reality. We still fancy the idea of becoming rock stars or top football players even if we know that the likelihood of these becoming a reality is next to zero.

Secondly, the girl’s dream of having a liberal society where everything is free for all is a dream on which the whole market economy is based upon. Economics are a major constraint to our dreams as money is always short of supply therefore limiting our freedom of movement in the free economy. In modern societies we buy our freedom. We are born workers who want to buy and consume freedom in their own free time.

Therefore, if the human being, essentially, psychologically and economically is not free in the sense that he can do whatever he likes, what scope does freedom serve?

I think that the notion of freedom is an artificial idea that is meant to regulate the social aspect of the human being. Law in society is a perfect example as it determines what one is free to do and what one isn’t. Convention - and no dogma - determines freedom as laws are agreed upon by an authority which generally enjoys the support and allegiance of the majority of society. (The fact that the human being controls the level of freedom may even show how much freedom is not free, at least from interference from the human being.) This effectively means that freedom – in that there are freedoms, guaranteed by the law (thus convention) which one enjoys – is an essential aspectsa in society.

The question flows naturally: If freedom is reduced to convention, and if convention may be different in different societies thus making freedom relative, then would this make all societies free?

Therefore would this mean that being free to have sex before marriage makes Maltese society as free as any other which tolerates sex before marriage?