The issue of individual freedom in society has remained relevant for many centuries. This topic needs to be achieved by a generally accepted and shared opinion in the society. Unfortunately, the truism that "freedom" and "permissiveness" are two fundamentally different categories is still not clear to a part of the liberal community. The famous formula "the freedom of one person ends where the freedom of another person begins" can be universal only if all members of the society understand freedom in the same way, which is still unrealistic in today's world.
It is common knowledge that the category of "freedom" is understood by each every person in his own way. The 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, highlighting this problem, said: "The sheep and the wolf understand the word of freedom differently, and this is the essence of the differences that dominate in human society." Freedom to destroy and freedom to build are two big differences. Everything begins with creation or destruction of morality, rules of relationships, culture of society, and continues in prosperity and development of society, or ends in crisis and terrorism. Both the first and the second options (scenarios) always have reasons and doers: customers, developers, organizers, performers, victims, and beneficiaries.
Famous formula of C. Marx "Freedom is a conscious need" leaves too much of a concomitant meaning in the default and erroneously refers to freedom any conscious necessary call, which is very difficult to accept. Vladimir Lenin was right to highlight the limitedness of freedom in society by writing: "It is not possible to live in society and be free from society." European thinkers have repeatedly expressed similar positions. They believed that freedom should be restricted to the laws of society. But it is common knowledge that laws may be in conflict with an objective natural right or simply be imperfect, so overemphasizing such point of view would be clearly incorrect.
Albert Einstein, when recognizing the limitations of freedom, rightly believed that the objective freedom had only one solution in each particular case. He wrote: "In today's world human freedom is like freedom of a man that is doing a crossword puzzle:" theoretically, he can fill in any word, but in fact, there should be only one word for the crossword puzzle to be done." That is, in each case, there is one optimal solution to the problem of freedom in the crossword of life. Life can be perceived this way when a man feels the predetermination matrix of being (Providence) in the multivariant reality of life.
Let us consider the difference of the notion of freedom in the position of a morally healthy human being and a morally unhealthy one. What is the difference between a morally healthy person and an unhealthy one? Basically, a mentally and morally healthy person is distinguished from an unhealthy one by the following features:
- He understands what is happening and what he is doing about it.
- He knows why he is doing that.
- He foresees the consequences of this doing.
- He is always responsible for such consequences.
Only the totality of these four conditions gives a qualitative difference between a healthy and an unhealthy (in a mild interpretation - adequate from inadequate) human being. Let us consider each condition in more detail.
The first condition involves developed discernment and intelligence. The ability to discern is the first sign of a person's mental health, and this is an interesting topic for a special article. The notion of intelligence is known in the context of artificial and natural intelligence. What is the fundamental difference between the man-made intelligence and the God-made intelligence? Computer intelligence can establish only a correlation between statistical patterns, and the human intelligence establishes causal relationships of phenomena even in the absence of large statistical data. And this property allows the human being to successfully identify the pressure factors of the external environment and to set targets for these factors. These processes may be impeded by stereotypes of thinking and a distorted overall picture of the world that are inadequate to the objective reality. In the course of life, people can develop their world viewing and correct their stereotypes, but, as practice has shown, grown-up people have difficulties in doing so. Some people either do not want to change their stereotypes themselves or do not think that their stereotypes are not adequate and universal for all occasions.
The second condition is that, by taking decisions and even more acting, it is not enough to answer the question "What do I want?", then we have to answer another important and relative question, "Why do I want it?" Psychologists know that in practice there is often a case when the answers to these two questions may not be logically linked, therefore the consequences will be disappointing in terms of their results.
For example, a person dreams of being a hero and seeks to participate in an armed conflict, assuming that this will enhance his authority and status. But in practice, it often results in the opposite. Participation in a real armed conflict aggravate unhealthy psyche and alienate it from adequate attitude to life. Another example: A man dreams of a red sports car, implying that owning this property will make him happy. But in reality, owning a red sports car doesn't make a man happy. Moreover, even if such objectives are subjectively close to his understanding of happiness, achieving of a goal may have serious concomitant effects that can depreciate any such a result of human craving. That is, the desired private objective should not be a goal in itself, but should be the real basis to achieve a subsequent strategic goal. If the strategic goals of different people go beyond their families and one generation in duration, and at least are partially agreed, there appears an interconnected network that integrates people into society.
The third condition is a combination of the ability to look ahead (a property not only of a psyche, but of the mind as a whole) and the ability to feel ahead (a property of intuition) the consequences of one's decisions and actions. The option of "they do not realize what they are doing" is a clear example by contradiction. The difference from the second condition is that the person is thinking about the extent his subjectively expected outcome is similar to the objective circumstances of real life, including the associated effects that are related to the goal. In fiction, this phenomenon was described as the "Monkey Paw Effect", "Butterfly Effect," and so forth.
The fourth condition is that a person is willing to accept and answer with his or her life (or its quality) for a situation or process that has been created by his or her involvement (action or inaction), and in some cases, for a situation created by others (cases in point are Christ, Muhammad and some other memorable devotees that remained unknown). As we live in a society and are interconnected, the consequences of human actions or inaction will necessarily affect family members and colleagues at the very least, and as a maximum they will affect the social medium. However, their reaction can also include concomitant effects and new processes, far from the desired scenario. Thus, freedom is always inextricably linked to responsibility, as do rights always involve duties.
In the context of the basic conditions described, freedom for a mentally and morally healthy person is a conscious need to do good and righteousness. Righteousness is the right of every human being to comprehend and realize his or her raison d ' être. The answer to a question about the meaning of life requires a separate in-depth study. For centuries, the best minds of mankind have sought to respond to it. Perhaps the reason for the controversy on this topic is to try to give a universal definition without taking into account the specific circumstances of life or the cultural specificities of a particular civilization. That is, a universal definition of the meaning of life should leave the mentioned conditions in default and give the abstract meaning of life each person fills in with his or her specific content. In such a case, one can say that the raison d ' être of human life is self-fulfilment for the benefit of society (in a particular socially useful occupation).
In real life practice, projects and processes fail even when they are participated by highly qualified and good professionals. Such processes can be anything from a simple project at the level of a mere organization, firm, municipality, to the process of building a civil society throughout the country. If you leave the conflict of interest (a mismatch between the target vectors) of the event participants out of equation, the underlying causes are related to the problems described above. Breaking a logical chain of the four conditions, inability or unwillingness to improve one's world viewing and stereotypes, the gap between intrinsically interrelated notions: "Freedom and Responsibility", "rights and obligations" negates all good collective efforts to implement any project.
In our opinion, there is no freedom beyond the meaning of life and righteousness. These are interrelated phenomena for any given process and person. The precise meaning of these fundamental values of life is determined by each individual himself, and the latter is responsible for the consequences of his choices and actions. If we all get the idea that we are dependent on each other and live in a shared, fragile world, we must treat each other and our common fragile peace with great care. That is, "you can't throw stones living in a glass house." Freedom to create is the only safe and mutually beneficial way for society.