When can freedom become a danger for freedom itself?
I started thinking about this question after reading something by Erich Fromm and at the same time observing what’s going on in our society (at least in Italy, where I live).
People are free but often they don’t treasure that much their freedom and they freely and voluntarily become slaves of fashion, sports, social rules.
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it“ – George Bernard Shaw
“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom“ – Andre Gide
If we loose the freedom to question ourselves and the world are we still free?
Which is the edge between being free and free will? Schopenhauer can give good hints but a lots of questions arises…
And a significant and sad example can be found when the concept of freedom id used to define press or media in general: Italy has been put backward in the ranking of press freedom(Freedom of the press: free thoughts from a country just declared ‘Partly free’).
What does it means?
We are still free to talk about our ‘loosing’ freedom, so isn’t it a paradox?
But maybe we are free at the point that media freely try to achieve audience and people demand just ways not to think what to do with their freedom.
So we are loosing voluntarily our freedom…
