My posts are becoming more sporadic of late. Too much going on in my personal life. More getting out, as the pandemic is becoming less prevalent to the people around me. Not that the pandemic has left us; simply that people have decided to move on with their lives regardless.
Over the past few weeks, I have come to realize the significance of asymmetry. Specifically, I was considering the nature of freedom and how it is something that simply cannot exist for everyone. When the Freedom Convoy drove to Ottawa to fight for freedom, the question of who’s freedom stuck out in my mind. After much personal deliberation, I have come to realize that there is no scenario where everyone can be free. In fact, it seems to me that very few can ever truly be free.
The primary driving force in this though is the fact that when I express my freedom, I automatically remove the freedom of those around me in the process. Perhaps this is where Jean-Paul Sartre ended up in his own deliberations, resulting in his model of freedom as being adversarial. A war between individuals trying to dominate in order to practice their own freedom while removing the freedom of others.
This is not to say that I disagree with Simone de Beauvoir in her description. Honestly, I still side with her over him in this debate. I prefer to think about freedom as being something we cooperate with in order to practice. However, even in the act of cooperation, one or both parties must make concessions regarding their desires. At least one person will not entirely get what they want. In a true compromise, likely both parties will have given something up in order to gain a greater whole in the end.
Herein lies the asymmetry of everything. If I wish to express my freedom, others must give up their own freedom in some way, either voluntarily or by force. If I am not the one who is expressing my freedom in some unrestricted fashion, then I may be the one who is making the sacrifice. In fact, I know that I often make sacrifices during the exercising of my freedom. This observation is typically flowing from an acknowledgement of my empathy.
Empathy seems to me to be the primary motivator to resolving conflicts relating to expression of freedom. I recognize you as a free, autonomous entity, much as I see myself. I see you as thinking and feeling much as I do. I cannot know that you do, but I assume that you do. I am choosing to disagree with the likes of René Descartes; mine is not the only consciousness in existence; all of you are not merely very convincing robots.
This is itself an exercising of my freedom. The very act of deciding that there are other free beings around me, practicing their freedom and autonomy, is itself an expression of my own freedom. By deciding this, I am generating a foundation for my relations with those other entities. It flavours how I interact with other people. I am not interested in using others and disposing of them when I am finished, because I do not like it when others try to do this with me.
Thus, I try to be very careful in the practicing of freedom. I have my desires and projects, and I do try to complete those projects, but in my pursuit of progress I always consider how my progress will affect others. In many cases, I will adjust the particulars in my pursuit so as not to unduly affect the pursuit I see others making. As such, I also never truly express an unrestricted freedom either.
I also must acknowledge that in my pursuit there certainly exist cases where I did crush another’s freedom in the process. There have certainly been cases when I steam rolled over another’s practice, removing their freedom by force. Sometimes those other people have appreciated my efforts, adjusting their world views and deciding that my way is the better way. However, more often it has led to painful interactions and hate. After all, having one’s freedom undermined and outright removed is a painful experience itself. This is why there was a Freedom Convoy in the first place.
The model we see here is of a world with constantly shifting borders and boundaries. A world where there are many people attempting to realize projects, and most of those people failing in their attempts. Or perhaps it is better to say that they are not failing entirely; an individual can abandon their project, or they can chose to change and adjust it in order to realize a similar project in the end. This is the heart of compromise and collaboration.
All this said, there are still clearly cases whereby an individual (or group of individuals) have chosen to steam roll over many, many others’ freedoms in order to realize their own projects. We often refer to this as oppression, as in the case where the indigenous peoples of North America have been oppressed by the invading Europeans for many hundreds of years now. The indigenous peoples have been unable to practice their freedom for a long, long time. It may look like they are finally getting that chance, but upon closer inspection, it should be clear they are not. At best, they are pursuing highly adjusted projects that barely conform to the existing superstructure held in place by the settlers.
This is the way it must be. Not necessarily that the indigenous peoples must be the ones who suffer. But someone is going to suffer. A lot of people must necessarily suffer for the remaining few to be able to express their freedom.