The Essays for: Is there really freedom in
a democracy?
----Essay
by Ruel----
Hello
Lawrence,
Below
is the link to the essay I wrote for Sunday's PhiloMadrid's topic:
Best,
Ruel
----Essay
by James----
IS
THERE REALLY FREEDOM IN A DEMOCRACY
Is
there freedom in democracy? The first thing that we should ask ourselves is
what exactly is freedom and what is democracy.
The Oxford online Dictionary says that “Freedom: is the power or right
to act, speak or think as one wants”. While democracy is described as “A system
of Government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state,
typically through representatives”. However consulting the dictionary only
gives us a theoretical definition which may often be interpreted in a different
way by citizens and representatives alike. On the one hand a large portion of
the population think that they have a license to do as they please, while on
the other hand many politicians, political parties, public institutions and
private business corporations see too much freedom as detrimental to their own
interests and whenever possible try to control the individuals liberties. However, nowadays it is not acceptable for
the powers that be to use coercion to achieve this goal so instead persuasion
and conditioning are alternative methods.
As
far as freedom in a democracy is concerned, it is true that anyone eligible to vote
has a say in selecting their representatives. However it is extremely important
to have an educated electorate in order for the system to function properly. If
the population are not well informed then they are not using their right
effectively and the results will lead to disaster. We only have to look at the
problem with BREXIT and the election of Trump. Furthermore, in the run up to an
election we are bombarded with propaganda from the different political parties
in a bid to condition our decision. Very often the electoral manifestos are
influenced by private business which invests in the political parties
campaigns. This comes at a price of course, take the case of the United States
where the amounts of money donated to the parties is astronomical. In the last
Presidential Elections, Bernie
Sanders, the independent candidate that lost questioned the influence of Wall
Street on politics. Many
of the lawyers who donated to the Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
campaign represented big corporations and banks.
Consequently, even though we may think that we
have voted for the candidate we deemed fit for that office, it is does not
necessarily mean that he really has ours interest at heart. Without doubt,
sometimes the politicians have other more important interests. Returning to
Donald Trump whose campaign was supported by the NRA (National Rifle
Association), after the latest mass shootings and the many fatalities that
occurred he still took the side of the NRA. In order to try to bring attention
away from a gun control debate, Trump focused on the problem of mental health. But
this is nothing new, for many years the NRA have supported the campaigns of
other ex-Presidents.
Incidentally, apart form the freedom to vote in
either elections - to select our representative - or in referendums I cannot
think of any other areas where citizens can participate actively to influence the
decision-making of their governments. Evidently this is not a very democratic system!
What can be done to change this? According to Noam Chomsky citizens should
organize ourselves into groups and challenge the present way of doing thing. So
as to improve the functioning of the system and to ensure a real democracy
where the population participates in its decision-making and hence a true sense
of freedom. In fact, with the technology available today it would be easy to
develop a system to allow the people - rather than their representatives - to
decide on many issues.
Chomsky believes that Government policy can also
be influenced by public institutions and private business. He is quoted as
saying “those who control the economy also have control over State
policy”. As a result a situation has
developed in recent years in many countries where the public institutions are
gradually being privatised. Moreover private business has moved into and
controls institutions such as health, education and even transport. In these
sectors, labour conditions have declined. Workers have lost many benefits that
were obtain with great effort and sacrifice over previous decades. Such is the
situation nowadays that in many jobs, workers do not protest about their
conditions for fear of losing their positions. This reversal in labour laws and
conditions needs to be dealt with and the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of
needs should at least be catered for.
In
the definition of democracy above, there is a reference to “the eligible
members of a state”. This evidently suggests that certain spheres of the
community are excluded. Obviously the
term alludes to prisoners, school-going-children and adolescents, people with
mental illnesses, the member of the community with special needs, the Gypsy
community, immigrants and of course the homeless. Paul-Michel Foucault referred
to these, as other spaces or Heterotopia (1).
He has also addressed the relationship between power and knowledge, and
how they are used as a form of social control through societal
institutions. He is quoted as saying “Schools
serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions- to define,
classify, control, and regulate people”.
Clearly he has a point because generally speaking, people educated in
certain centres such as religious schools often acquire a conservative
viewpoint while on the contrary those who attend non-denominational schools
obtain a more liberal or progressivist indoctrination.
On
the contrary, there are certain situations or even crises where a Government
may understandably decide to curtail our freedom. An example of this is
whenever they need to declare a state of emergency because of a natural disaster or because of an imminent
terrorist attack. Furthermore situations can arise that may even demand a
curfew to avoid the looting of a city. Other examples of when freedom may have
to be suspended would be in the case of a war - with conscription or
military service -, imprisonment for a crime, or committal to a Mental
Institution.
In
conclusion, there are democracies of different calibre throughout the world.
Some of them having more or less Freedom but a common denominator to them all
is that the population has been conditioned to accept the idea that freedom
must be limited. We are told that too much freedom is counterproductive for
society and would lead to anarchy and social unrest. (2) “The smart way to keep people passive and
obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion”.
The Postmodernism movement is quite critical
about abuses in the use of power and in the curbing the individuals rights.
Governments and Members of Parliament have their essence in political parties
which can be susceptible to the influence of economic powers such as the
financial institutions and large business corporations - multinationals -
. In recent times we have seen evidence
of this in the countless cases of corrupt that has been covered by the media.
Furthermore we have seen the privatisation of many public institutions such as
hospitals, schools and public transport. Clearly, all of these influences by
private enterprise restrict our freedom in different ways.
(1) “Of Other Spaces, Utopias and Heterotopias” work by
Paul-Michel Foucault, the French philosopher.
(2) Quote from Noam Chomsky
Regards,
James
----Essay by Lawrence----
Is there really freedom in
a democracy?
No, but the problem is not with
democracy.
There are a number of issues with
freedom that makes the subject as useful as a contradiction. For our purposes we
are concerned with two types of freedom, philosophical freedom and political
freedom: I assume that the democracy part of the question is political
democracy.
A rough and ready definition of
freedom for our topic includes freedom of action and free will. Freedom of
action implies no constraints to act whereas free will is the idea of choice.
The distinction can be subtle, the common idea of free will includes the idea
of responsibility; we are still held responsible for our actions even if we are
as determined as anything. Freedom of action might be limited by external
causes thus limiting the scope of our choice. So the issue for us is what are
the constraints on our philosophical and political ideas of freedom that makes
this concept of freedom much weaker than our everyday use of freedom?
At the basis of our everyday use
of freedom, political or otherwise, is that we feel we can choose amongst
options and that we do this at will.
Our idea of freedom today is a
product of past philosophical thinking that today we would be more careful and
circumspect before we express this thinking in public. A quick glance of the
concept of freedom we see the hand of dualism at play. Freedom is something
that belongs to our sense of “being” rather than our sense of being some
mechanical instrument. Maybe our past view of freedom is that gravity might
affect our body, but it does not affect our “mind” or “soul” and hence our
freedom. In other words, we are immune from the effects of the material world.
But just because we feel we can
choose A from B it does not follow that we are free to choose A from B. Many of
us are also aware that just because we feel we are free to choose something it
does not mean it is the best choice make or the right choice to be had. So, are
we mixing up freedom to choose with ability to select?
A key reason why our idea of
freedom is false, or certainly not 100% sound, is that we are limited by our
epistemological state of mind (brain) about the choices we are making. We are
basically limited in what we can know and be informed about a situation or
opportunity. Of course, one of the limitations is that we do not have access on
how things will pan out, or develop, before they do happen. It is ironic,
however, that we can predict the movements of celestial bodies but not whether
Kant would have been punctual for his lectures on a given day.
Indeed, I would argue that we
make choices because we don’t know all there is to know about a situation. We
might know that our choice is made either from experience or from thinking
things out, but the key point here is that we do not know the status of that
choice because there is nothing to know; if events have not happened then there
are no facts to know about that event. But this is not enough, information
about said events might must reach us first anyway to be able to know anything about
them. In the meantime, never mind that we can only choose from what is
available to us at the time and place we are at the time of choice making.
Another issue about our
epistemological limitations is that we do not know the intentions of others.
This is even difficult about someone we know, let alone someone we don’t even
know they exist. Despite the wonderful maths of actuarial science it is still
difficult to predict the intentions of someone else despite evidence to the
contrary. In a way, our epistemological constraints have a similar effect on
our freedom to act as much as a ball and chain tied to our ankles.
At the physical level, maybe we
are in a better position to predict future physical event: I can safely predict
that I will never be judged a Mr Universe, unless the organisers have a short
circuit in their brain and start selecting men for their philosophical prowess,
and even then I doubt it.
The advantage of the physical
world is that many times we know immediately our limitations due to the cause
and effect principle. But we also have the advantage of knowing what we can do
in the physical world: I can walk to the bus stop within four minutes from my
front door even if I have to wait at the traffic lights. Predicting when the
bus will arrive is another matter.
Our view of democracy, however,
also depends on our idea of this philosophical freedom we have inherited from
the past. The idea of choice on who to vote for gives us a sense of freedom
which is probably unjustified. But there is another side to our idea of a
democratic political system which is that we are not oppressed or punished for
our opinions and ideas. Compare my thinking that the Queen of England has
unflattering hairstyle and the President of North Korea equally having
unflattering hairstyle. The Queen of Britain probably doesn’t care what I
think!
Political freedom is a negative
reaction to the use of fear by those in power rather than by any other
conceptual creation. Indeed, fear is used as a political weapon to influence
our choices. Vote A if you want a really good health care service, Vote B if
you want to become financially independent.
Sure, in a democracy we expect to
have a wide range of options on how to run government and political society;
but we are still constrained by how things will develop in real life. Our sense
that we are free to choose the party we support is not indicative that there is
real freedom in democracy.
Look at the 2017 election in the
UK where the two main parties were offering the same flagship policy: Brexit.
Thus 74% of the United Kingdom (eligible to vote or not) did not have a choice
about the future of the country. And if you think that is bad, 48.2%
(vs 46.1%) of Americans eligible to vote voted for Clinton but still got Trump.
(vs 46.1%) of Americans eligible to vote voted for Clinton but still got Trump.
But there is an antidote, even if
not a perfect one, to this chimera we call freedom: one criterion is called
knowledge, the more we know about things (to use modern parlance) the more we
narrow the gap between having a false beliefs and choosing a possible
favourable outcome. In other words, we first need to have the freedom to know
things and the right skills to learn before we can even begin to think about
choices.
Another, criterion is that of
having the means to know things and learn about things. But true freedom in
politics, is not work, nor study, but having a choice of what to eat tomorrow
without having to dig the ground ourselves. Political freedom is first and
foremost not being afraid from where the next meal is coming from. Poverty is
the ball and chain of freedom; we are free when we can really choose what to
eat. In effect if, according to Napoleon or Fredrick the Great, an army marches
on its stomach, so do the citizens of a democracy.
Best Lawrence
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