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Taking it further, it's worth asking if we're talking about: 1. Freedom TO or 2. Freedom FROM? Both are valid in discussions of freedom, but I find the west

Taking it further, it's worth asking if we're talking about: 1. Freedom TO or 2. Freedom FROM? Both are valid in discussions of freedom, but I find the west tends to focus considerably more on #1 than #2.

kelseyfrog 1y ago
Thanks for bringing this point up. I may have incredible freedoms inside a market, but I have little to no freedom from markets (or capitalism) I have no practical freedom between different economic systems. Capital has eaten it all. I detest being essentially forced to participate in a system I don't believe in where the alternative (living in the woods alone) isn't really an alternative at all. It's Moloch or the wilderness.
saurik 1y ago
This wording isn't as useful as it comes across at first, as the issue itself is often two-sided. Steve Jobs--one of the defining users of these phrases in tech--saying that it is important to exert his puritan values on everyone to provide a "freedom from" porn by normalizing taking away someone else's "freedom to" install whatever they want is also him exerting what he feels should be his "freedom to" build centralized cryptographic locks and take away many peoples' "freedom from" authoritarians, whether here or in China. The west, for numerous reasons, tends to focus a lot on "freedom from" such control, and it happens to manifest as a "freedom to" do things, but a "freedom to" do something is always commensurate with a "freedom from" the constant intrusion of the people who insist that you can't. GPL software guarantees me both a "freedom to" do things with it, but it's moral purpose is to ensure "freedom from" all the shitty things developers can do to me if I don't have those guarantees. At the end of the day, I feel this linguistic contrivance is maybe useful if you've never before realized the world is made up of tradeoffs between multiple interests, but then it starts to lose its usefulness once people try to apply it as a shortcut for how to analyze or judge morality.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  I feel like we can simplify this: Alice's freedom to do something is in conflict with Bob's freedom from Alice doing it to him. And then we're back to "you should have the freedom to do anything that doesn't harm someone else" and people get to argue forever about what counts as harm.
samdoesnothing 1y ago
Thats just positive versus negative rights, although people often frame positive rights as "freedom from", i.e. "the freedom from starvation", which is just the positive right to food. Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights.
- RIMR 1y ago
  How exactly does the right to food "imply slavery"?
  - kristianbrigman 1y ago
    Where does the food come from that you have the right to?
- wredcoll 1y ago
  > Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights. I think you're probably a better person than this.
  - samdoesnothing 1y ago
    Hmm, let me explain and then you can be the judge of that. All rights that a person possesses implies obligations that everyone else must meet. For example, if I have the right to not be assaulted, that implies the obligation of others to not assault me. The difference between a negative and positive right is that the obligation for a negative right is inaction, but for a positive right it's action. If you're forced to act in a specific way, you're robbed of your agency and ownership of yourself. What else would you call that?
    - zestyping 1y ago
      Are you able to understand the difference between taxes and slavery? If you can, try your hand at explaining why taxes and slavery are different. I'm am not merely asking rhetorically; I'm serious. It's a worthwhile exercise because it reveals something about your underlying model of the world.
anon291 1y ago
It's the opposite and highly different across the western world, with America mostly focusing on 2 and Europe obsessed with 1
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  I have no understanding of the "freedom to ..." and "freedom from ..." phrases that would align with your claim about America. "Freedom from..." is generally used to form phrases like "Freedom from hunger", "Freedom from homelessness", "Freedom from being thrown in the back of an unmarked black van by unmarked people wearing masks". I don't know what version of America you've experienced, but the one I know absolutely does not focus on this notion of "freedom from".
  - RIMR 1y ago
    Yeah, look at the state of our freedom of religion. Conservative Christians love to push the idea that religious freedom includes the right to legislate from scripture, but honestly, it feels like people should know better. People tend to think that when you get the government involved with something you are passionate about, that passion will now influence the government. Still, the reality is that you're handing control over that passion to the government. This is how a "Christian America" would play out. Whatever beliefs are held by those in power would be written into law, despite the actual opinions of America's Christians. The government would declare itself an authority over Christianity and would start telling churches how to operate. This was already partially true in red states before marriage equality (and probably still true today, to some extent). Progressive churches that believed same-sex marriages were holy in the eyes of God were told by the state that they could not perform same sex marriages - in some cases, even barring a pure non-binding ceremony as a form of "attempted marital fraud". If you are an American Christian and you care about your right to worship freely without government interference, you should cherish secularism. Enforcing the Bible as a matter of law means that interpretations of the Bible you disagree with will be enforced against you. Requiring prayer in schools will lead to vicious fights between teachers and parents over which prayers are the "correct" ones. Literally any piece of scripture you write into law will become controversial even amongst Christians. But still, people insist that their freedom would somehow be enhanced. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that a Christian America would turn non-Christians, especially Muslims and Jews, into a lower class of citizens. It is unfortunate that he current powers controlling all branches of our government are primarily interested in taking rights away, and that those who voted for it think that this is freedom.

kelseyfrog 1y ago

Thanks for bringing this point up. I may have incredible freedoms inside a market, but I have little to no freedom from markets (or capitalism) I have no practical freedom between different economic systems. Capital has eaten it all. I detest being essentially forced to participate in a system I don't believe in where the alternative (living in the woods alone) isn't really an alternative at all. It's Moloch or the wilderness.

saurik 1y ago

This wording isn't as useful as it comes across at first, as the issue itself is often two-sided. Steve Jobs--one of the defining users of these phrases in tech--saying that it is important to exert his puritan values on everyone to provide a "freedom from" porn by normalizing taking away someone else's "freedom to" install whatever they want is also him exerting what he feels should be his "freedom to" build centralized cryptographic locks and take away many peoples' "freedom from" authoritarians, whether here or in China. The west, for numerous reasons, tends to focus a lot on "freedom from" such control, and it happens to manifest as a "freedom to" do things, but a "freedom to" do something is always commensurate with a "freedom from" the constant intrusion of the people who insist that you can't. GPL software guarantees me both a "freedom to" do things with it, but it's moral purpose is to ensure "freedom from" all the shitty things developers can do to me if I don't have those guarantees. At the end of the day, I feel this linguistic contrivance is maybe useful if you've never before realized the world is made up of tradeoffs between multiple interests, but then it starts to lose its usefulness once people try to apply it as a shortcut for how to analyze or judge morality.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
I feel like we can simplify this: Alice's freedom to do something is in conflict with Bob's freedom from Alice doing it to him. And then we're back to "you should have the freedom to do anything that doesn't harm someone else" and people get to argue forever about what counts as harm.

samdoesnothing 1y ago

Thats just positive versus negative rights, although people often frame positive rights as "freedom from", i.e. "the freedom from starvation", which is just the positive right to food. Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights.

RIMR 1y ago
How exactly does the right to food "imply slavery"?
- kristianbrigman 1y ago
  Where does the food come from that you have the right to?
wredcoll 1y ago
> Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights. I think you're probably a better person than this.
- samdoesnothing 1y ago
  Hmm, let me explain and then you can be the judge of that. All rights that a person possesses implies obligations that everyone else must meet. For example, if I have the right to not be assaulted, that implies the obligation of others to not assault me. The difference between a negative and positive right is that the obligation for a negative right is inaction, but for a positive right it's action. If you're forced to act in a specific way, you're robbed of your agency and ownership of yourself. What else would you call that?
  - zestyping 1y ago
    Are you able to understand the difference between taxes and slavery? If you can, try your hand at explaining why taxes and slavery are different. I'm am not merely asking rhetorically; I'm serious. It's a worthwhile exercise because it reveals something about your underlying model of the world.

anon291 1y ago

It's the opposite and highly different across the western world, with America mostly focusing on 2 and Europe obsessed with 1

PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
I have no understanding of the "freedom to ..." and "freedom from ..." phrases that would align with your claim about America. "Freedom from..." is generally used to form phrases like "Freedom from hunger", "Freedom from homelessness", "Freedom from being thrown in the back of an unmarked black van by unmarked people wearing masks". I don't know what version of America you've experienced, but the one I know absolutely does not focus on this notion of "freedom from".
- RIMR 1y ago
  Yeah, look at the state of our freedom of religion. Conservative Christians love to push the idea that religious freedom includes the right to legislate from scripture, but honestly, it feels like people should know better. People tend to think that when you get the government involved with something you are passionate about, that passion will now influence the government. Still, the reality is that you're handing control over that passion to the government. This is how a "Christian America" would play out. Whatever beliefs are held by those in power would be written into law, despite the actual opinions of America's Christians. The government would declare itself an authority over Christianity and would start telling churches how to operate. This was already partially true in red states before marriage equality (and probably still true today, to some extent). Progressive churches that believed same-sex marriages were holy in the eyes of God were told by the state that they could not perform same sex marriages - in some cases, even barring a pure non-binding ceremony as a form of "attempted marital fraud". If you are an American Christian and you care about your right to worship freely without government interference, you should cherish secularism. Enforcing the Bible as a matter of law means that interpretations of the Bible you disagree with will be enforced against you. Requiring prayer in schools will lead to vicious fights between teachers and parents over which prayers are the "correct" ones. Literally any piece of scripture you write into law will become controversial even amongst Christians. But still, people insist that their freedom would somehow be enhanced. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that a Christian America would turn non-Christians, especially Muslims and Jews, into a lower class of citizens. It is unfortunate that he current powers controlling all branches of our government are primarily interested in taking rights away, and that those who voted for it think that this is freedom.