Freedom quote. Do you agree?

spectratg said:
"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" pretty much got it right! :D
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Did it? Say it all.

Life-the death penalty. Liberty-free speech, free movement etc is curtailed in many places. Pursuit of happiness-😂 so many laws so many restrictions; depends on what you are pursuing to give you happiness

Sadly the Bill of Rights may be outdated
 
Aneeda72 said:
Did it? Say it all.

Life-the death penalty. Liberty-free speech, free movement etc is curtailed in many places. Pursuit of happiness-😂 so many laws so many restrictions; depends on what you are pursuing to give you happiness

Sadly the Bill of Rights may be outdated
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When you visit other countries, online or otherwise , and see how there is very little freedom, then you will view our freedoms here differently.
 

I think Aneeda72 summed it up pretty well. Then there are all the "mental/emotional attachments" that we may not be aware of.
Become still and quiet...take an honest look at all the useless crap you've been programmed to crave. Let the nonsense go.
You'll be lighter.....but never TOTALLY free.
 
Gary O' said:

Freedom quote. Do you agree?​


Interesting comments

Freedom?
I don't have much of an answer
But
I know this;
The power of choice comes into play
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My Dad said we always had the freedom to choose how we acted, including breaking society's rules/standards or his but that we should weigh the natural 'consequences' of our choices against what we might gain/enjoy by making such choices.
 
down2earth said:
I think Aneeda72 summed it up pretty well. Then there are all the "mental/emotional attachments" that we may not be aware of.
Become still and quiet...take an honest look at all the useless crap you've been programmed to crave. Let the nonsense go.
You'll be lighter.....but never TOTALLY free.
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We, in America, are so spoiled that what we take for granted, is so desired by others in other countries. Take women for instance. In other countries they cannot show their hair or faces, and other countries they can only have so many children.
 
feywon said:
My Dad said we always had the freedom to choose how we acted, including breaking society's rules/standards or his but that we should weigh the natural 'consequences' of our choices against what we might gain/enjoy by making such choices.
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Wise teaching. My parents raised us to make good choices. If they were bad however, the consequences were not desirable. And in a job at work, the same paid off in a less than desirable fashion too.
 
Nathan said:
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I frequently try to remind those hellbent on curtailing the rights of of others of that line.

Also often say that every 'right' (whether civil, natural or if you believe it is 'God-given') comes with responsibilities, chief among them to extend to and protect those rights for others. Not positive where i got that notion as i've had it since childhood (tho then i talked about in terms of 'fairness'). Perhaps a combo of things my Dad said and the 'Golden Rule'. (Which has been expressed in many cultures, faiths.)
 
feywon said:
I frequently try to remind those hellbent on curtailing the rights of of others of that line.

Also often say that every 'right' (whether civil, natural or if you believe it is 'God-given') comes with responsibilities, chief among them to extend to and protect those rights for others. Not positive where i got that notion as i've had it since childhood (tho then i talked about in terms of 'fairness'). Perhaps a combo of things my Dad said and the 'Golden Rule'. (Which has been expressed in many cultures, faiths.)
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Yes! I wish some knew that. Responsibilites seem to be not so valued today. In my opinion.
 
fancicoffee13 said:
Yes! I wish some knew that. Responsibilites seem to be not so valued today. In my opinion.
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The concept of rights and responsibilities being irrevocably connected, like two sides of a coin, came from my Dad.

Not only are responsibilities not valued by some, many people do not even want to take responsibility for their choices, their behaviors. Honestly i think that avoidance along with the inability to see the link between rights/responsibilities has been a factor in popularity of cults, and of attraction to autocratic leaders of any kind. Some prefer believing they have no choices, because they think it absolves them of responsibility.
 
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On a trip to Romania in 2018, I sat on a bench in Sibiu and spoke with a young woman on her lunch break. We got around to discussing the changes that had occurred since 1989 when Nicolae Ceausescu was 'removed' from power. She said that many older relatives and friends had a difficult time adjusting to the new freedoms. They were not accustomed to having to make their own decisions and having to take responsiblity for their choices.

There are always trade offs - but I prefer as much freedom as possible, and am willing to take responsibility for the bad choices I have made. We try to protect children from poor decisions as they are growing up, but at some point we have to give them the freedom to become independent.
 
fancicoffee13 said:
Exactly. I use the coin saying often.
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When i was raising my kids i used a lot of my Dad's teaching methods. A foundational concept was that the more responsibility they took for their behaviors and things the more freedom/control they got in regard to it.

By the time my twins were 8, they chose their own bedtime tho i set a time when activities needed to be quieter. They would often read for an hour or more before sleep. And near the end of summer would choose earlier lights out time knowing in a week or two they'd have to be up earlier most days. Daughter was same.
 
"It appears that the wanton use of our freedom and technological power have led us to the brink of ruin. The very cultivation of our powers has left us exposed to a nature that refuses to be tamed and is increasingly unsympathetic to our interests."
~~from Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene by Clive Hamilton
 
Freedom, for me, is the absence of stupid people making decisions that affect my life. You can't be free when there are stupid people with the power to tell you what to do.
 
"Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged."
~~Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to W. N. Hardy, 1940
 
We cannot all have freedom because the freedom of one person removes the freedom of another. (You might need to think about that and the implications of a society where everyone is free to do as they wish.)
 
SeniorBen said:
"Freedom is measured by the amount of control you have over the things upon which you are dependent."
- C. Wright Mills

I'll need to sleep on it before I respond.
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A French philosopher commented "Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains", (something like that, by Jean Jacques Rousseau?), so maybe backing up your quote.
 
officerripley said:
"To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power..."
~~from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
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officerripley said:
"Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged."
~~Franklin D. Roosevelt, letter to W. N. Hardy, 1940
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These are so relevant today and connected to each other and the 'alternative facts' phenomenon and how while it easier than ever for reasonable people to ascertain and verify facts, it is also easier to convince people who were not taught how to assess the validity information that falsehoods are true.

The saddest part is that a large segment of out population facillitated this by accepting that opinions presented as facts by a 'news' outlet are indeed facts. No government suppression required. Some outlets with the support of those who prefer comfortable (meaning aligned with their fears and prejudices) lies to unpalatable facts used 'freedom of press' to undermine the intent of that principle: To give people that facts.

Disclaimer: This is motivated more by my fascination with human nature and psychology than the political impact of this phenomenon. Thanks to the form of capitalism we practice in USA, you can see the disregard for honesty/integrity in everything from advertising to news headlines to the titles slapped on YouTube videos. The intent often is not just to play/prey on how audience feels but to influence how the audience feels and use to their advantage.

Stay wary, question everything. If freedom is dependent on ability to choose, one needs accurrate info base one's choices on.
 

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