Liberty and Free Will
Is freedom a privilege or an intrinsic right every living thing in the world should possess? I do believe that it is both a right and a privilege. It is a right in the sense that every single being on this world has the right to live, and if living does not encompass the right to be free, then life becomes an irony in itself.
With that, liberty is also a privilege. If we cannot prove that we can make good use of our right to be free and not abuse this freedom of choice that is granted to us, I believe we ought not be given this gift in the first place. Should humans even have free will? Are we spiritually mature enough to exercise this power carefully? Free will gives us absolute power over our actions, and that means the power to influence the events around us. This also means that there is a high propensity for abuse of power, especially if there are less than astute reasons for doing so.
One thinker ever argued that free will was nothing more than a simple illusion, for people will always be influenced by the events going on around them to arrive at a decision, and therefore we are choosing based on circumstance, and hence free will is an illusion. Perhaps it is. We often find ourselves entrapped in some rotten corner of the alley, pushed to our ends and realising that we have no choice but to do the thing(s) we hate to do most... I guess in this way free will is but an oxymoron. A paradox.
How often has the eternal struggle for freedom resulted in revolutions that have changed the way we look at the world? History tell of countless stories - of which many are repeated in folklore, myth, legend and fable. Why is this desire to be bound to no one so strong in man? Can man not accept submission to someone equal in stature with himself? But what if a person has complete power over another, and the one in lower authority will die at the choosing of the other? If man can bow down before the omnipotence of God, why can't he just submit to someone more powerful than him?
War is upon the world. All because man had the choice to decide.
Is freedom a privilege or an intrinsic right every living thing in the world should possess? I do believe that it is both a right and a privilege. It is a right in the sense that every single being on this world has the right to live, and if living does not encompass the right to be free, then life becomes an irony in itself.
With that, liberty is also a privilege. If we cannot prove that we can make good use of our right to be free and not abuse this freedom of choice that is granted to us, I believe we ought not be given this gift in the first place. Should humans even have free will? Are we spiritually mature enough to exercise this power carefully? Free will gives us absolute power over our actions, and that means the power to influence the events around us. This also means that there is a high propensity for abuse of power, especially if there are less than astute reasons for doing so.
One thinker ever argued that free will was nothing more than a simple illusion, for people will always be influenced by the events going on around them to arrive at a decision, and therefore we are choosing based on circumstance, and hence free will is an illusion. Perhaps it is. We often find ourselves entrapped in some rotten corner of the alley, pushed to our ends and realising that we have no choice but to do the thing(s) we hate to do most... I guess in this way free will is but an oxymoron. A paradox.
How often has the eternal struggle for freedom resulted in revolutions that have changed the way we look at the world? History tell of countless stories - of which many are repeated in folklore, myth, legend and fable. Why is this desire to be bound to no one so strong in man? Can man not accept submission to someone equal in stature with himself? But what if a person has complete power over another, and the one in lower authority will die at the choosing of the other? If man can bow down before the omnipotence of God, why can't he just submit to someone more powerful than him?
War is upon the world. All because man had the choice to decide.
