The philosophy of freedom.

Man.
I see people talk about freedom being something you get, but you’ve got it all wrong.

These points would make perfect sense if freedom were what you think of it.

Freedom is synonymous with will. You may feel as if you are constrained, as in the prison example, but within your environment your options for potential behaviours are never ever limited. From where you sit now or anywhere, you can move, speak, think, whatever however you please within the constraints of reality – but those constraints on reality never invalidate the very nature of the freedoms of your existence.

You’re thinking in terms of freedom being something ATTAINED. What IS ‘freedom’ then if it’s something to be acquired “out there” in the world? Who’s got all the freedom? Who distributes it? Who defined it in the first place? Where are any of the rules set it stone?

@Sean D Stevens, your chains-courtyard-parole example reminds me of Zeno’s Paradox. It states that if you’re always reducing the distance between “here” and “there” that you will never get “there” because there is always an increasingly small fraction of distance that can be reduced. This is a true logical paradox, but like all paradoxes only seems to be true because of the illusory duality of “here” and “there” when there is only “Here” in the universe.
The paradox is at odds with reality because you can easily close the distance between yourself and a destination to nil. Similarly, the premises that the paradox is based on are at odds with reality – there is no “There”, only one infinite “Here”. Similarly, you can never GET “Freedom” if it’s “There”, “Attained”, “Acquired”, etc. It comes from within, it’s part of you.

http://www.wimp.com/zorromichigan/

@rdorris120,
actually, I think Americans are the best at infringing on other nations freedom. They are the only nation fighting abroad on other nations territories for motives of greed and control.

I think it all comes back to how you’re definining freedom: positive freedom or negative freedom.

Positive freedom: the freedom “to do” something; @IJesusChrist ‘s example, “I have the freedom to reply to you right now”
negative freedom: the freedom FROM an overbearing force; ex: “Police can’t stop me and demand to see an ID card” or even, going back to the OP, “I am free from being murdered randomly”

Once you begin thinking about freedom in these terms, other important factors present themselves. Which type of freedom do you associate with being “free”, which do you associate with being “enlightened”? I’m still asking myself these questions.

I think loss of ALL fear and attachments would result in absolute freedom. Our actions are only limited by various fears and attachments(fear of losing). More the fears, more the limitation. If we can embrace all experiences NO MATTER WHAT then we are totally free.

IMO the physical world just exists as a part of mental perception. It is just a part of the waking state among the 3 states of consciousness – waking, dreaming, sleep. For attaining total freedom, I might need to discover an all inclusive transcendent unchanging essence/understanding/perception and should be able to unwaveringly stay in it.

Nice forum! Even nicer conversation! :) I believe we need to see freedom from a different spectrum because that one’ s too depressing! :P
@birdflyinghigh, @ijesuschrist, Freedom exists! In fact I believe freedom is confused with superability, which means ABILITY to do everything, whereas freedom, I think, means the ability to choose of what’s is within your abilities. So we are TOTALLY FREE to think or do whatever lies within the boundaries of our abilities. And I think these boundaries belong to two categories!
1st. The physical laws
Example: I wanna fly but I can’ t
2nd. Our needs
Example: I am hungry so I can’ t concentrate to study
So in fact we experience total freedom! Theoretically a blind man has the “same amount” of freedom with a healthy one. Basically I think that freedom is not an entity (meaning someone could say the expression more or less freedom) but a quality!
What we lack is the ability, but our freedom awaits us!
What do you think?
-Excuse my elven, it’s not my native.