It is weird to think that a government document outlines our rights and freedoms. It would seem to me that anyone who goes to the government to recieve rights and freedoms is the least free person of all. The charter says i have a right to 'freedom of opinion'. Is the charter giving me the right, or is it explaining a pre-existing right. This is not clear. Maybe the charter is a useless document only to be used by lawyers.
Truduea's Counter Argument: You need the government to help you be free because you can not become free alone. Becoming free is a fight and the charter can help you in your fight. Becoming free is like paddelling a canoe against the stream of the river. Every Canadian must learn to paddle against the stream and seek their own freedom in the face of the homogenizing forces of the modern world.
My rebuttal: if every Canadian is being encouraged to paddle against the stream and find personal freedom, have we not already constructed a homogenizing concept for the freedom of canadians.
Nardwar's interuption:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
We are free like a fish in a bowl is free to swim around.. free like a river that flows along a path.. deterministic? perhaps.. but fish can jump out of the bowl and rivers change course over time...
as far as the homogenizing concept of freedom for humans, that is a keen observation – and I agree. But I think this idea of 'being free' should not be seen as a destination or as crossing the finish line whereby you are freed forever thereafter... freedom is a way of life and I don't think it's like paddling against the stream; it's about making your own river.
If all other rivers have been diverted into the same flowing deluge, we are faced with three options:
1) To flow with the current and end up in the same place as all the other fish - the ocean (or whatever big body of water you prefer)
2) Swim against the current and perhaps find a nice little nook where the water stays calm.
3) Create your own river, yet this may be tough if you have trouble breathing outside of your element.
Perhaps a form (or step) of evolution, or adaptation, must occur in order for step three to become a reality.
As for freedom as a way of life, I feel that what we have been taught to think of freedom has been implemented as a way of life. Freedom is having no restrictions what-so-ever. To me freedom is more of a personal sovereign choice in how you want to live your life - a fashion of thought that is adopted personally as a way to live your life.
However, the notion of freedom in today's world, especially in N. America, is and will continue to be largely dependent on agreement between you and your neighbors in society. There are too many of us humans and we are way too unpredictable - hence a structure of law and punishment and what have you. Idealistically, I guess, an ideal free state would allow people to live a life in which they choose to live and garner the means to survive in whatever style chosen (market driven or not market driven). Unfortunately though, soon one way of life will constrict the other. Freedom is never fully attainable in my opinion. If one were to go and build a cabin on crown land and live off of the land creating his own rules and philosophies on what life is and how it should be lived - then one may have achieved the closest notion as to what freedom is: no restrictions. Even then, physically we are slaves to eating food and taking shits. Not to mention that if the government were to sell off the land, and its resources, you'd be back to square one - and probably be put down for being a 'wild-man.' Yet, how does one actually own the world or a piece of land? It was there before humans, so what gives any human, let alone the small few who actually do, the right to own land and sell it to other humans? I am going to stop here - I gotta take a shit (I am such a slave).
Post a Comment