On freedom

I don't think I have found a definition of freedom I like. Freedom is what slaves got when they escaped the plantation. Freedom is leaving the house early in the morning and seeing the sunrise. Freedom putting down my pen after the last exam in June. Freedom is 5PM (a little later today). Freedom is the weekends, but it's also waking up on a weekday and knowing, deep down, that if I decided not to get up, not to go to work, no one would come looking for me, it wouldn't be the end of the world. Freedom is exhilarating and fun and good.

Freedom isn't well defined. Is it doing whatever you want? Yes and no. Ortega y Gasset once said "I am me and my circumstances". This is the first curb to freedom. My circumstances. I was born at a certain time, in a certain place, to a certain family, with certain genes. I grew up in a certain way, and I learnt certain things. I had a choice over some of this, but I didn't have a choice over most of it. So am I free? Yes. And no. I am me, yes, but I am only me because of a set of circumstances. I could go into the extent of genetics, but I don't really care. There is a fundamental question which isn't asked often enough: if one were born again, in the exact same world and with the same exact parents, all things equal, would one make the same choices? I suspect the answer is yes. I suspect every choice is a balance, a broken balance provided by circumstance, which leads to the fact that all things equal, faced with the same choice one will make the same decision. So we are not free. Yet we live under the impression of freedom, so I'm going to go further into the topic.

Today I was talking to a workmate and we were discussing government interventionism. I said what I thought, and realised when I was saying it that it is really what I think. I believe the government should interfere as little as possible in people's lives. I think people should be treated like adults and should be free to make their own choices. Of course, most people will heartily agree with me when I put it like this. Of course we're all adults, and we should make our own choices. What does this mean practically though? It means that most things aren't illegal. It means that smoking in public places should be regulated not by the government but by the owner of said public place. It means I should have the freedom to buy a weapon if a shop is willing to sell it to me. It doesn't mean, however, that I am free to kill someone with that weapon. That would curb the other person's freedom. 

How do I decide which actions are "free" and which actions shouldn't be permitted? I have the simple rule that any action that doesn't hurt an individual physically (unless that individual is choosing to hurt him or herself) is free. If I choose to smoke, I am free to do so. I am not free, however, to smoke in any place where a non-smoker asks me not to. Unless we are at a bar owned by someone who allows smoking inside, because in that case the non-smoker has chosen to enter the bar and therefore has chosen to be with smokers. Sure, the definition isn't foolproof (for one thing, what about psychological damage? Discrimination?), but at least it's a start. I want to be free. I want everyone to be free. I don't need anyone to tell me that something should be illegal because "people don't know what they're doing and we need to take care of them". What we need to do is accept that people are grown ups, and that they can make their own choices. We need to be free and let others be free.